no life like this life
When I finally got my first blog site up and running, it was during a time in my life filled with turmoil. I was losing myself...everything I believed I had become; finally feeling confident in the path I had chosen and acknowledging all the people who helped me get to where I was. It was through food that I best demonstrated to my friends how much they meant to me. I call that time in my life the month of 35. In one singular month of March, the year I started this blog, I had 27 vials of blood removed from me over 1-6 hour period of time. During the weeks following that day, 8 test kits arrived on my doorstep, one by one. Sometimes, I'd just pull the box into my apartment and there it would sit for a couple days til I finally opened it to peer inside. Once opened, I'd read the directions, which I never understood, then I'd put everything back in the box as the tears welled up in my eyes and a sense of overwhelming sadness and fear took over. In that same month, in one single day, I stopped eating anything containing gluten...no bread, no brioche knots or sourdough baguettes from Cheese Board. No ramen, no miso, no chow fun... no to lots of things I soon figured out had some kind of gluten in it. It was that one day when everything started to slip out from under me. Epic meals at Chez Sue's would be different and more challenging if I still wanted my people to fill my residence for whatever it was I was putting on the table. If there were to be cookies coming out of my kitchen ever again, it meant I either had to accept they would not taste the same (translate into not good...not good at all) or I was going to have to convert every single recipe to their original glory - sans gluten. Then I basically laid down...fairly paralyzed and withdrawn... unsure of everything.
It took me a few months to get back on my feet -- to understand what was happening to me, to make changes in how I lived my life and with whom I'd live this life among. The one thing I always could count on, no matter what conflict or life event, was that I always landed on my feet. I re-created myself as a matter of survival. Why should anything be different this time?
So I got this site up. It took a lot. The site, for me, represented this identity I had believed in. I wasn't ready for it to die, my identity...and what my friends thought about when they thought about me -- my love for food and the process I'd go through to create epic meals and baked treats and how I took pleasure in sharing all this with them. There were a couple people who really lived through that really dark time with me, definitely. There were a few more who would see me at arm's distance....not many, just a very small circle. Everybody and everything else, I just let go of or they let go of me. That part was difficult. But what I was living through was difficult. What people saw and the internal turmoil I felt, were two different things. I was imploding, for reals.
Fast forward to now. How I got myself way out here to NYC, I will tell you, was not easy. The decision wasn't easy, leaving the what became a very small circle of people who supported me in good times and bad and the place I called home for almost half my life. But moving here, while often lonely, was one of the best, if not the best, decisions in my life. I stand here on my own. I got here on my own. I have a full and fulfilling voice filled with confidence and certainty I don't think I would've ever found had I stayed in the Bay. I'm living my best life in the best ways I know - feeding the people I love, near and far, with all the things I make from my heart and imagination to their pleasure. Not many things make me happier.