She looked at me, and when her large eyes connected with mine, I noticed that they were dark, like black coffee. She smiled, and I immediately felt exposed, so I looked down and around hesitantly at the shelves of self-help books, the potted plant, and the box of tissues strategically placed beside the large armchair. I imagined the people who had cried in that chair and wondered what pained them. My eyes finally landed on a random patch of carpet, ashamed of the sadness they held in direct contrast to the peacefulness in hers.
Once we settled down opposite one another, N thanked me for coming; it took bravery to do so. I felt neither brave nor deserving of the compliment. She handed me a form on a clipboard and, with an accent I still cannot pinpoint to this day, she asked me to sign a simple contract: to refrain from suicide during the time we worked together. I stopped to contemplate the things that might happen if I chose to stay alive. The thing is, I wasn’t afraid of death; whether or not to kill myself was just another important decision to be made, with relative detachment. To me, it was much like deciding whether to take that lucrative job in a distant city; it was just a logical weighing of pros and cons.
I will end my suffering.
But my family may be traumatized.
They say you don’t feel pain in heaven.
But if I kill myself, they say I’ll go to hell.
I will no longer be an emotional burden to G.
But I will miss having children one day.
If I did feel any fear in that moment in N’s office, it was of being left without a choice to kill myself if it ever became too unbearable to live. But I agreed to the terms for one year, at which point N and I would reassess. After all, I figured that I had nothing to lose and could always go back to suicide if I found nothing else more effective.
The time I spent in N’s little office over the next year was a mixture of many things: controlled, confused, triumphant, slow, intense, curious, sad. Most of the time I felt as if I had no idea where I was and if I was getting better at all. I wanted to see results fast, and after some weeks I became bitter at the irritatingly slow pace of improvement. I resented role-playing, annoyed by the make-believe when I had “real problems” to solve. I would walk away wondering if I was just wasting my time trying to live. I remember feeling embarrassed when she suggested that I draw out my feelings on large sheets of paper with multicolored pastels, which felt impotent and uninformative. It was no use, I pre-analyzed the meaning behind every line and shape before I placed it on paper, a lingering skill from my many years of art school critiques. I presumed that hard, dark scribbles most likely signified some repressed anger, or a bright green blotch would communicate hidden hope, and it all just felt…stupid. And I felt even more stupid for needing the exercise.
During each session, N would ask me how I felt. I was never really certain. The feelings were cloudy and evasive and often I would answer with a question, tiptoeing to see if I got it right. “Bad? Maybe?”
One day, she pulled out a photocopied sheet of paper, on it a grid of simply-drawn cartoon faces. A smiling face, and under it written “happy.” Another with an open mouth, pointed eyebrows, and strained eyes: “angry.” One with tears falling from the eyes and a downturned mouth: “sad.” I searched through the faces trying to find one that looked most similar to my own and settled tentatively on one with a curled mouth and a furrowed brow: “confused.” But I had no words. I was so thoroughly disconnected from myself that I didn’t even have the ability to express the most elementary emotions. When I saw this, I knew it was unhealthy and I wondered if I was so far gone that I couldn’t even be helped at all.
The confusion came and went like tides, washing in and out for over five years. At times, what was once difficult to grasp became instinctive, which encouraged me to continue. But then I would become confused again, disheartened, as if the progress I had made was only something I had imagined. I began discovering what gave me joy, like a perfect hamburger (medium-rare with a good bun and iceberg lettuce), scattering seeds for little birds in my garden, or a line of pewter sequins on a new wool skirt decorated with bright fuchsia and orange flowers. As I gave myself the space to exist, to have things to like, it occurred to me that I also had dislikes, that I deserved to feel delight and feel hurt as well. I had been taught that feeling hurt was a burden to others, and that I had likely done something to deserve it. So I began fighting, mostly against this ancient idea passed on to me, for permission to feel angry for the first time since I was a child.
III
SOME MORNINGS BEFORE WORK, I WOULD SIMPLY LIE IN BED, lifeless, and some days G would wrap me up in a blanket, lift me onto a chair and say lovingly, “Today, just do the minimum. Just do things that will help you respect yourself.” On other mornings, my depression was too heavy even for him to bear, and I could feel him moving away from me so that he could breathe himself.
One winter afternoon, I lay in bed crying. I was exhausted from pushing so hard, feeling again as if I was getting nowhere, ever. I prayed to God, asking why it had to be so painful, so hard, and an incredible shrieking rose up from out of me, an anger at being forced to live. I screamed and sobbed uncontrollably for many minutes, clenching my fists and finding nowhere to punch except my own thighs and head to release my resentment. G opened the door.
“What’s the matter?” he asked quietly, his concern mixed faintly with exasperation.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
“What?” he stayed in the doorway, watching me.
“Everything!” I yelled. “Haven’t I been through enough already? Hasn’t God given me enough shit to deal with? Haven’t I worked hard enough? I’m so fucking tired!” My words descended into a long sob. “I just want to be happy. Why is God doing this to me? When will I just get a fucking break? I’ve done my best, I’ve paid my dues, when will this end?” G was silent.
He watched as I buried my face in the blankets, using them to wipe my face. Then he spoke. “Life doesn’t owe you a thing, Jackie. It doesn’t owe you happiness. And I don’t want to be insensitive, but all the pain you feel, you’ve probably created it yourself. You are not a victim; you’re being a spoiled brat. Every choice you make has a consequence, and you have to deal with it. The pain is there to teach you what you need to change. You can stop making the same decisions every day and expecting something different. You have a choice here.” I stopped crying immediately. I was stunned. His words slapped me back into a rational state.
“Why haven’t you ever said that to me before? Wait…have you?” I wondered aloud, my eyes darted back and forth as I searched through past conversations. G didn’t answer. Maybe he did, but I wasn’t ready to understand it. Or was I so afraid to hear the truth that I chose to continue drowning in my own self-pity?
“I have a choice here?” I looked at him, confused.
“Like with your mom. You want for her to be a different person than who she is. Each time you see her, you try to change her. Afterward, you come home upset that she’s done the exact same thing she has done every single time. And then the next time you see her, you try the same thing with the same result. You can’t change her, or anyone. You can only change yourself,” he explained. I still didn’t understand.
“So what? I just have to keep being hurt by everyone around me?” I retorted.
“Think of your mom as a lion. You want her to be a dog, so each time you see her, you try to pet her, but lions bite. Respect that a lion will bite, and change your expectations and the way you interact with it,” he continued.
“Lions are lions, and dogs are dogs…” I began to understand.
“And if you don’t like getting bitten, you don’t have to pet the lion. If you find yourself in a situation you don’t like, you also don’t have to stay. That’s your choice.”
Examples began to cycle though my mind, of the times I was bitten, the times I stayed, not knowing I had a choice. I began to see just how true it was, and how far this idea that I was a victim had spread into e
very detail of my life. A hazy veil began to lift.
“And if you like something, do it again. That’s your choice too,” G added.
I let that thought circle in my mind for a long while.
IV
PRECISELY A YEAR AFTER WE FIRST BEGAN MEETING EACH other every week, N checked in with me.
“Jackie, would you like to continue?”
It was time to choose again whether I wanted to live. Even though I had begun to take control of my life over the course of my time with N, making big and small decisions for myself—how I spent alone time on weekends, changing the way I interacted with lions, choosing where I wanted to sit in a room, placing a flower or two at my desk, buying a beautiful mug for my morning coffee—it was a new skill that I sometimes struggled with. I regularly stumbled and found myself exasperated by the effort it took to remember that I had a choice in everything. I was undoing a habit that was deeply entrenched in me. So each morning I still reminded myself of the contract I’d signed, and then made the choice to be alive.
Each time I felt discouraged, when I couldn’t see any end to the struggling, I would reach into my back pocket to feel for my “get out of jail free card.” It was always there, the suicide fallback plan, reassuring and comforting me in the risk to live. I sat on the decision, not wanting to let go of the feeling of safety I had created with the idea of death.
As I was driving home one day, lost in my own thoughts and feeling particularly defeated, I instinctively reached for the comfortable idea of death to soothe myself. “I could just kill myself if this gets any worse.” The thought came like a reflex.
I stopped the fantasy. I saw that I was perching on a fence, refusing to commit to life or death, living but not fully dead or fully alive. I was neither getting the relief or freedom that I believed there was in death, nor was I getting the beauty of living wholeheartedly. Instead, I was struggling with the disadvantages of both: the fantasy of death had become a crutch, and if I continued to use it, I would never discover how strong I had become. And if I refused to take a chance, if I held myself back in the search to find happiness because I was too scared of failing, or worse, finding at the end of it that it didn’t exist to begin with…then I would indeed create this very fate anyway. I would never find the happiness I had been working for, and it would all be a waste. For so long I had dreamt of dying, to dispose of a life I despised in so many ways. But if I were to throw my life away anyway, I thought, maybe I could waste it living, doing whatever the fuck I wanted, however the fuck I wanted to. I would have been dead anyway.
So, then, I made the choice to throw away the life I despised, and to waste my life living, and to never entertain the idea of death again.
CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
This recipe has been adapted from the well-known recipe from the New York Times. I had tried many recipes obsessively over the years and narrowed them down to three favorites: this is one I still make often when I want an ooey gooey cookie that is chewy in the center with crisp, caramelized edges.
FOR THE VANILLA MALDON SALT
1 vanilla bean
½ cup (125 ml) Maldon salt
Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape out the seeds in the center with the back of a small paring knife. Place the husk and the seeds in a resealable container with the Maldon salt and mix gently with a fork to combine. Infuse for at least 36 hours at room temperature. You can leave the husk in the salt indefinitely to continue infusing, storing at room temperature. The salt will just pick up more of the vanilla scent and flavors the longer it is left to mingle. When the cookies are warm and just out of the oven, sprinkle a pinch onto the top of each one.
A NOTE ON THE USES OF THE SALT: This recipe makes more than you might need for the cookies, but I like to keep some on hand at all times. Vanilla salt is perfect for finishing dishes like seared scallops or on almost any kind of sweet such as brownies, cakes, cookies, and caramel ice cream.
FOR THE COOKIES
2½ sticks (10 oz/284 g) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup plus 2 tbsp (8 oz/227 g) granulated sugar
1¼ cups (10 oz/285 g) light brown sugar
2 tsp (10 ml) vanilla extract (I prefer Nielsen-Massey)
2 large eggs
3¾ cups (16.5 oz/468 g) all-purpose flour
1½ tsp (7.5 ml) fine sea salt
1½ tsp (7.5 ml) baking powder
1¼ tsp (6 ml) baking soda
10 oz (285 g) bittersweet chocolate fèves (I prefer Valrhona Alpaco; see note below)
10 oz (285 g) milk chocolate fèves (I prefer Valrhona Jivara)
Cream the butter and sugars in a large bowl or in the bowl of a stand mixer, until lighter in color and texture. Add the vanilla extract and eggs to the butter mixture and mix on medium speed until fully incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Slowly add the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda, mixing on low speed until just combined. There should be large streaks of flour still remaining. Add the chocolate fèves and mix briefly until just incorporated.
Cover the dough with plastic wrap or place in an airtight container, and then refrigerate it for 48 hours. Aging the dough melds the flavors and creates nutty caramel notes that won’t develop otherwise.
When you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 350°F. Remove the dough from the refrigerator about 30 minutes before scooping to soften it slightly. Line 2 sheet trays with parchment paper. Scoop balls of dough about 2 inches in diameter and place them about 2 inches apart on the trays. You can use a heaping #30 (1 fluid ounce) scoop if you have one.
Bake for about 15 minutes or until the cookies are browned and caramelized along the edges and centers are just set.
Top each cookie with a sprinkling of the vanilla-infused Maldon salt, about ¼ teaspoon. Cool on trays for 2 minutes and transfer to a rack to cool completely, or eat warm. Repeat with remaining cookie dough. Keep in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
A NOTE ON MEASUREMENTS: I have given measurements here in both volume and weight. However, I find I get the most consistent results using weight. A kitchen scale is reasonably affordable and you will find that it makes baking and cleanup much faster and easier.
A NOTE ON THE CHOCOLATE: While it is harder to find fèves (discs of chocolate) than chocolate chips, there is a distinct difference in the resulting cookie—the chocolate layers in the cookie in a way that does not quite happen with regular chocolate chips.
MAKES 30–36 COOKIES.
PORK AND CHIVE DUMPLINGS
{1921–2014}
Every truth has four corners:
AS A TEACHER I GIVE YOU ONE CORNER, AND IT IS FOR YOU TO FIND THE OTHER THREE.
Confucius
I WASN’T RAISED ON CASSEROLES AND GRILLED CHEESE sandwiches. Unlike most of the kids I grew up with, the concept of Ants on a Log utterly confused me. My classmates came to elementary school toting cheddar snack packs and carrot sticks with ranch dip, snacks that were completely foreign to me. I envied them because they were “normal” and I, nibbling on my pork floss with dried seaweed, wasn’t. So out of a curiosity for a culture I felt alien to, I used my hard-earned allowance to buy peanut butter, celery, and raisins to recreate a recipe dictated to me by a seven-year-old: “You take peanut butter, stick it in the middle of the celery, and put raisins on top, like ants…on a log.” Obviously.
To my all-encompassing delight, the celery, with its refreshing crunch and the way it made a convenient cradle; the sweet, chewy raisins; and the unctuous, fragrant peanut butter, were all, frankly, heavenly. I ate Ants on a Log obsessively for weeks afterward.
Before this revelation, my experiences with after-school snacks were of ethereal scallion crêpes, so wide they hung over the rim of our largest dinner plates, or whole-wheat buns, piping hot from the bamboo steamer. I would methodically peel the dried bamboo leaf from the underside and cut the bun into slices. Wholly un-Chinese, I also slathered it with pats of butter so generous th
at they would melt on the hot bread and drip down my fingers. Even at a young age I knew butter was a beautiful substance.
I was very lucky to have my grandmother live with me as a child. Ah Lau or Lau, as we called her, was a talented cook with a critical palate, trained in the school of necessity from raising her nine hungry children. She would not have known Ants on a Log.
My large family consisted of my parents, my grandparents, two uncles, an aunt, two cousins, and my sister. We lived snugly, cooking and eating together at the dinner table every night. Weekends were reserved for grocery shopping as a group in Chinatown. I followed the adults, both mesmerized and repelled by the dried seahorses in herbal shops, picking at bins of dried lily bulbs and overhearing consultations on matters such as how to pick the sweetest watermelon. (It should “hit back” when you slap it with your palm.)
I
LAU CARED FOR ME WITH TENDERNESS AND PRACTICALITY, and she raised me with food. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the staccato rhythm of a hefty Chinese cleaver chopping vegetables on a butcher’s block as she and my mom made dinner. I would often watch from the side, trying to absorb all the smells and wanting to know what came next, but staying well out of the way.
Lau also taught me my first lessons on food. As she mumbled aloud to herself, she dropped hints and tips like a breadcrumb trail that I listened to as I played beside her: how to balance the flavors and textures of noodles and soups; how to smell saltiness in a dish without tasting it. I felt moments suspend as I touched dough to sense how much water it needed to make perfect dumplings. I learned that chopsticks bubble in oil when the wok has come to temperature, and that only the thinnest streams of egg will create wisps like smoke when dropped into corn soup. I was surrounded by food all the time, and I absorbed as much of it as I could.
The Measure of My Powers: A Memoir of Food, Misery, and Paris Page 2