Anxious

Anxiety is new to me…at least the physical manifestation of it. Or maybe just this level of the physical manifestation. 

Before I left for the Peace Corps I couldn’t sleep. For a few days. I was up and packing. And then repacking. I was reading and rereading everything they had given me. But with the Peace Corps there really isn’t anything you can prepare for. I didn’t even know what language I’d be learning so there was no cramming for that. 

The two nights before graduate school started I broke out in hives. It was a first, something that was squarely in my sister’s domain- not mine. 

Last week I found myself in the midst of a panic attack. Pain in the center of my chest reminiscent pain, if wrongly placed, of the pleurisy I had so many years again and hope to never experience again. The panic didn’t hurt as much but it got my attention. 

And from panic, about what I don’t even know, to unsettling dreams that sit with me in feeling if not in substance, long after I am awake. I can’t help but think my body is telling me I need a vacation. That I need to settle my mind and body down for just a moment.

The kitchen offers me a small reprieve from the mounting crazy in my brain. Something about chopping onions and mincing garlic, grating ginger and sifting flour. I’ve taken to making things randomly, on work nights, at strange hours when I should be winding down. Instead my kitchen will be filled with the smell of yeast sparking alive and the warmth of baking bread, or last night- a final triumph of chewy oatmeal cookies. At last…AT LAST! I’ve been trying to make chewy oatmeal cookies for over a year and every time they fail, every time I’m left with crunchy cookies that I have no real desire to consume.

I can’t tell if the desire to cook is running in tandem with my anxiety or if I’m simply noticing it because it has a calming effect on me. All I know is that I read recipes and immediately think about what changes I might make, and try to conjure up when I might make them. I saw a recipe for a molten lemon cake on Saturday. Different from anything I’ve seen. And all I can think is that I need to buy ramekins so that I can attempt this dish. And then today I saw a recipe for some kind of Amalfi coast dumpling pasta made with ricotta cheese and nutmeg. Hater of nutmeg I can’t help but wonder what pulverized rosemary powder might do in its stead. 

And the angst lifts even in the moments when I am only thinking and writing about cooking, about eating, about food in some way or form. 

But in a moment, I am returned to myself and my chest feels heavy and my mind full and I am anxious for the weekend to find me again. For me to have an excuse to not think about what I must do for a few days. 

I worked from home today. Curled up with my laptop and 138 (now 150) pages of curriculum dedicated to AB 1629. And it isn’t happy stuff. Necessary. Powerful. Important. But not happy.

And everything can’t be happy. That isn’t how the world works. But for the moment I can’t help but look to the weekend and hope that it brings a new recipe to try out and whisk my brain and my taste-buds to some faraway place. Where my fingertips feel the  stickiness of dough and vegetables yield to the weight of my knife.

And maybe a good night’s sleep will waft in with the scent of bread and rosemary and I’ll yield blissfully to sleep.