10.03.2007

Cycling & Coping Mechanisms {i love to cook}

There's a lot to come to understand and absorb when who you are has been turned upside down by medicine - by the giant world of Medicine...Science, Treatments, Therapies.

When hormone suppression and chemo turn you inside out, and the add-back therapy alters you even more. When you are watching the person that you've been for so long be turned inside out by things which you cannot control.

You stand helplessly by, even more frustrated and bewildered than those who love you...because they want you to be the you that you have always been. They see your strength as something that should maintain the 'you' in all of this...but each moment, each obstacle, each impediment on the journey alters you a little more.

Until, finally you are standing in the wreckage, a changed person. And then, there's the hysterectomy at 30. There really aren't words - which for someone whose gift has always been with words is a whole other thing - to describe adequately the way you feel about who and how you are anymore. All that you know is that you're different. How you relate, how you percieve things, how you are in a world which has a harsh need to change you anyway...everything that you have come to understand and rely upon in your world becomes something unfamiliar.

And, the coping mechanisms that you have used for most of your life are failing you. Suddenly, the things to which you have always turned to alleviate stress and pain are providing no outlet, no reprieve. There is no mercy to be found now.

One thing which still helps me is cooking. I love to cook...I love the art of it - bringing together flavors and consistencies. I love the beauty of it - the response that can be generated by making something delicious. I love the passion of it...how delightful it is to make something so nourishing and enjoyable for someone or someone(s) that you care about. I love how you can take so many basic things and artfully place them together to create something grandiose and delicious. I love flavors...I love the skill that it takes. Not just anyone can create something magnificent out of not much in the kitchen. Not just anyone can see the art in the hobby. I love the sheer delight that can be heard in eater's voices when telling you how much they like what you have created.

And, I like cooking for me. I cook even when alone. I like the routine of it. The choosing of the herbs, the cutting, cubing, dicing...love watching how all of the colors come together...love the smellls. I love creating something nourishing for myself...not having to measure, not having to refer to recipes, not needing help to give benefit to my body.

In a time when not much is helping my body, I like to know that there is something I can do to help sustain it...and do it creatively and with pleasure.

I enjoy cooking. It is one of the few things left, from my old life, which still gives me a feeling of peace and serenity in my new life. I'm happy to have a part of the old me to hold onto.

And soon, I'm going to be happy to have this herb encrsuted pork chop and broiled vegetables in my mouth!

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