It's been six months since Dr. R increased my daily Lexapro dosage, first from 5mg to 10, and then to 15 mg. I asked C if he thinks it's working and if I'm getting better, and he responded with a resounding Yes! "You're cooking again, so yes!"
Yes, I've been cooking again, which, as I mentioned in another post, is so not me. Afterall, I do suffer from task paralysis and cooking is not just one task - it's a series of one tedious task after another, with dependent tasks complicating the process. For most of the past seven years or so, minus the first couple of months of the pandemic, I did most of my cooking via my phone: tap on a restaurant, tap on a meal, and tap Delivery. Wait for an hour. Serve food. But for the past few months, I've found myself slaving in the kitchen, trying various concoctions, praying we don't get food poisoning.
The last time I had been in a chemistry laboratory I was 17 years old, still naive enough to think that I would get a Chemical Engineering degree (I eventually transferred to English education, but that's another story). But up until now, I still approach cooking as yet another experiment - something along the lines of will NaCl really give my sauce a C12H22O11 flavor and I wonder what will happen if I add 5% CH3COOH instead of just C40H56. Of course I still follow recipes like a teenager following their parents' advice - with a grain of salt and a sprinkling of rebellion. Fortunately, I do have an 80% success rate - with the remaining 20% resulting in uninspired cooking, not a broken tummy, thankfully.
"What if you're really good at this but you just rebel against it?" That's C, posing that question to me during one of my more successful dinner.
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What, like some innate talent I've been suppressing?" Me, frowning.
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Yes!" That resounding yes again. His overenthusiastic yesses are beginning to stress me out.
Hmmm. Genetics could presumably play a role here, except that in my family, on both my Mom and Dad's side, the ladle is usually wielded by the men. My Mom can't cook to save her life (or feed a family) - she's a retired Civil Engineer though so what she lacks in culinary skills she compensates with her technical skills. My Dad, meanwhile, also a retired Civil Engineer, can cook anything from scratch. When I find myself stumped with a culinary mystery (
How do I clean the pre-cooked tripe I got from the supermarker? Is this radish stiill edible even if it has a brownish core? How do I clean this fish???), I usually have a Facetime show-and-tell with him.
So yeah, I probably got it from my Daddy. But why just now, and why all the culinary disasters from my past? When we first moved to our condo some ten years ago, I was excited to be in-charge of the kitchen. And for the first couple of years, I was doing some cooking too. But 2017 was a hard year, filled with personal and professional challenges (something we'll save for another blog entry). I slowly spiraled, became the poster-girl for high-functioning anxiety and depression, and the following year I began my six-year affair with Lexapro and clonazepam. The pantry ingredients expired, the fridge filled with take-out containers, and my kitchen and I got estranged.
Dr. R helped me wean off clonazepam while increasing my Lexapro dosage. I still get the occassional panic attack along with some days of bed-rotting and agoraphobia, but they are now manageable. I've established a new relationship with my Instant Pot, the air fryer welcomed me back, and the oven was happy I no longer just use the microwave. So yeah, maybe it is Lexapro.
Either way, I'm here in the kitchen, experimenting yet again, still happily and creatively rebelling against recipes.
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