I was really feeling good until the end of February. I mean, joint pain aside, that is. Mentally and emotionally I haven't felt THAT good in years. Then somehow at the end of February carrying thru the entirety of the month of March, it all went to shit.
I've been boosting my B12 and taking my iron in tablet form, hoping that it'll remedy the situation. My insomnia is back in full force. I feel drained all the time. And within the last seven weeks, I feel like I've aged 7-10 years. I feel old and frail and stooped.
My herniations in the neck and my seasonal allergies are kicked up into high gear.
I've been very depressed, and certain behaviors manifest themselves when I get like this, one of which is I tend to go overboard cooking. For normal folks with a household brimming with family, this would not be an issue, but it's just me and the husband, and though we like to eat most of the same types of foods, ideally, my diet is more protein based and his is more carbohydrate based, so really lots of times, I'm just making stuff for either myself or him.
Sundays are my usual "cooking for the week day," where I do big batches of stuff, or do up a week's worth of meals and package some up for the freezer, so on the days I don't cook, the husband can pick and choose what he wants to eat from the freezer. Just the other day, I pulled out a pint of double pork gumbo, so I just steamed up some rice and broiled up some blackened shrimp, and he was amazed at what lurks in the freezer.
The problem lies in the fact that I am a food hoarder, but not to the excessive extreme as I've seen on that dreadful t.v. show. I just like that sense of abundance, and that ability to just pull together a meal out of thin air. But there is a price to be paid, and that's usually a cluttered pantry that needs to be cleaned out regularly, as well as a freezer that needs to have the contents consumed more speedily.
But today, Easter Sunday, I don't just feel "flat" but feel like I've redefined bottom. I miss my dad profusely. Miss every little aspect of Easter Sundays that I'll never experience again with loved ones who have passed on, sobered by the knowledge that unless I break down and make a holiday call, no one in my family will call me.
Granted the holiday doesn't mean much to me anymore these days. By and large I feel forsaken, both, by God and by family, which of course, makes me cling to my husband even more, because my reality is, with the exception of some wonderful long-time friends, my husband is all I have in this world upon which I can rely.
Some days I get sucker punched with my grief, as it catches me out of the blue, unwittingly. I'll sit in my car and look up at the branches of the cherry trees or look up at the stars in the sky, and think if dad's anywhere, he's there. Or I close my eyes and I can visualize his face where my own face is, and he lives on in the facial expressions we both have. I rue about thinking, "Did we even exist?" "Where does the love go?" and I feel trapped.
My grief and sadness isn't exclusive to holidays. It happens out of the blue, like when I'm making a particularly delicious or adventurous dish. I think of the supreme compliment dad gave me one time after coming to my home in the 1990s for brunch, "I never know what I'm going to eat, but I always enjoy what I've eaten." So I think of him during delicious meals. I just wish that I had a few more meals to make for him.
In the fridge right now:
Leftover egg curry
Leftover pork vindaloo
Shrimp & chorizo marinating in garlic scape pesto to be cooked off tonight or tomorrow night
Pork loin marinating in ginger and teriyaki to be cooked up tonight or tomorrow
From the freezer (to make more room) leftover butter chicken & fenugreek potatoes
... and yet, I have a big bag of mixed fresh veggies which need to be dealt with before they spoil, and I was thinking of making a big batch of navratan korma (literally means 9 gems---nine ingredients, tho I don't know why they call it that, as it's got more than 9 ingredients), as well as a big batch of south Indian butternut squash stew.
So you see my problem. It's insane.
Oh, and the green room, my "den of iniquity," I haven't done shit to get it tidied up. It still brings a lot of anxiety when I come in here.
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