A Recipe for Disaster

Lately, I have been trying to break away from cooking with recipes. I spend hours scouring the Internet to find the right recipe that will fit my wishfully healthy diet. I read the reviews. I gather the supplies. And then after much anticipation, I make the thing. By the time I get finished jumping through the flaming hoops that are cooking a dinner via an NYT cooking recipe, I am exhausted.

The thing I spent the majority of the day in preparation for is overshadowed by the aching soles of my feet, or my spatter-stained shirt or the knuckle I accidentally grated, and then I am resentful of the journey through the grocery and my kitchen that the recipe took me on.

I always felt like I needed instructions to succeed. When I was headed off to college I wanted the input of the adults I respected or feared regarding the university I was going to select. Then for the next four years, I went through disastrous attempts at affirmation from those very same people that I consulted with on the location of my education.

I did what they told me. Global studies or women’s studies were too broad so I chose the utilitarian degree. I quit eating when my friend said I had gained some weight. I took the classes I should of and did the internship I should of and then when graduation came around I found myself in a young life crisis.

I could not envision a version of the next year where I was happy, much less acknowledge the irony that four years of unhappiness was supposed to get me post-graduation happiness. And then, I followed more of the instructions. I took the job that made me feel empty because it satisfied those around me. I moved to the place that made me cry as I unpacked every one of my belongings from a moving truck because I thought coming home was for losers.

I followed every single instruction put in place for me by society and those who I thought to be trusted advisors and I encountered unholdable amounts of sadness.

I continued to follow the instructions and drag myself to work each day because I believed them when they said life wasn’t supposed to be fun and everyone wants more time out of the office. It was audacious for me to think I deserved more happiness, that I deserved more than living for a job, that I deserved to want to get out of bed in the morning.

You know how the recipes say to sear the chicken breast for three to five minutes on one side but you just entered minute two and you already smell burning chicken skin. That's what was happening to me.

I was on fire with grief that all of those people in my life could not understand and I was begging for someone to remove my burning body from the heat. It was me or the instructions. Do I keep doing life in a way the people I was accountable to approve of or do I save me?

I chose to save me. Firstly because I do not like my chicken overdone or with charred skin, and secondly, because I like the way wanting to wake up in the morning feels.