one paragraph (45)

vibe a little different this week so wait for a regular paragraph next week if you want

I never think about what I’m going to have for lunch until I’m so hungry I can’t think, and then I’m under the type of duress that makes me feel ready to drive a car through a bridge and into a creek (“creek” rather than one of the scary ones because I love life and discomfort is temporary. I’m the first person who ever thought of that). Some would argue that I should consider “breakfast.” That’s not for me, because I don’t feel like it. Instead, I’m slathering peanut butter on a piece of toast and housing two bananas, which is likely what cavemen did to stay alive when they were trapped under rocks or whatever. Sucking down chia goo I forgot was in the fridge. It’s been in there for days, which I learned makes the mucus more sludge-like. Today is three years in remission, and making lunch from a recipe that might as well be in a book called Lunch for Perturbed Idiots feels disrespectful. Three years ago, on remission day, Noah and I went straight from the hospital to Veselka, giddy at a white blood count high enough to be allowed inside. I had my hospital bracelet on, wisps hair fuzzing in patches off my head like an electrocuted muppet, so happy to be eating the soggiest, most busted salad of my life. Even still, my burps would remain metallic and constant, and food would still taste muted for some time. I can’t remember how long, and now I’m too scared to check. It was one of the heaviest losses of chemo: for food to taste bad, or worse, like nothing. My favorite thing was (and is, and unless someone really pisses me off, will always be) to have people over on my shitty too-small couch (better classified as a molded foam lump), surrounded by a table that autoreplenishes with cheese board, nuts, chocolate, whatever’s in the pantry even if it sucks, tea, little bowls of candy or chevdo, anything to passively snack on, scenery more than food, an atmosphere that nourishes, a way of letting a hang stretch into hours (which…duh…). Even during treatment, when I couldn’t enjoy food, I still tried to maintain the magic replenishing table when friends (or more likely, one friend, no sniffles, covid test negative) were over. I baked cakes I had no desire to eat. The routine of assembling food was enough. Disassembly was also acceptable, even if less ideal. Three winters ago, on an unseasonably warm day, I met a friend for outdoor lunch and picked the lettuce off of my burrito because it wasn’t allowed. Three years later, my burps are no longer metallic, but they are still loud and largely involuntary (can something be a disability if it both makes people laugh and scares pigeons?), a remnant of illness so silly that associating the two things almost feels like lying. Food tastes so normal that I forget it ever didn’t, I don’t think twice about eating a raw vegetable at a restaurant, and instead of relief, I feel guilt about forgetting. Best to just focus on the chia sludge, which so far, has been uncontroversial to everyone involved.