Expanded Lazarus

Despair in the 9th house.

(Edit: this is a draft that has been kicking around since November, excuse the dated references…)

Have you ever just been…hungry? Like really, really hungry. Like ravenous hungry.

The other night, I came back home late from a concert. I needed to feed my cats before showering off and going to bed. While I stripped off my gear, I peeped in my fridge. I saw a little spoonful of tuna salad from a few days ago in a bowl that was far too big for it.

Impulsively, I scooped some out with my pinky finger. It was really good. I had actually made this myself. I used yogurt instead of mayonnaise so it had a sharp taste. But I didn't drain the tuna, so it was too much liquid. I scooped around the bowl for another minute then put it back in the fridge, empty.

I spotted my big box of spring mix salad greens. I've been using it as a snack lately, and to adorn my sandwiches. Red onions, capers, and salad make everything look so professional. Makes me feel like I'm in a real New York place. The box of greens is my abundance even though it's well past its due date. But it was still good, right?

Well, I noticed it was wilting. I took out the wilt and dropped it on the floor. Then more. I was aghast. My abundance was wilting and molding. I needed to eat this up. I started cramming fistfuls of salad mix in my mouth with little bites of feta cheese. I picked at some other leftovers. I've been dancing, I thought. I've been drinking. It's midnight. I'm a little dehydrated. Salad and red gala apples are just crunchy crispy water. It's okay to eat.

What is a normal appetite?

I haven't had a normal hunger in months.

It's either too big or too little. I cook plenty but it's the motions of eating sometimes. Now that I'm alone, I don't give much care to what time of day I eat. I try to space my meals out every few hours like you're supposed to. I eat snacks. I get peckish and distracted like anyone and find myself eating just for the range of motions of eating. I move my arms, I stand up, I chop onions and carrots. I have to look in the fridge for anything going dodgy. I have to taste. I play the game of opening and closing the fridge as if I'm not aware of what's in there everyday. But sometimes I'm not. I had wanted bok choy for so long, I was so incensed that I couldn't get bok choy for delivery! I finally found a store near me that had bok choy. I made one meal of it and it disappeared into the fridge, wrapped in a blue bag like Laura Palmer.

But guess what? Unlike the salad mix, that bok choy is still holding steady wherever it is. The tortillas I bought for street tacos over the summer are still holding steady. They're in a suspended state. Not dead yet. I can come back, I keep thinking. I can always come back.

I can't always come back. Some things are just dead, old, or maybe you should throw them away for your sanity. I once had a loaf of multi-grain bread that refused to mold. It was from one of the last grocery purchases my mom made before she went to the hospital the first time. Every time I opened the fridge, I would check it for mold. I would happily turn it over like, today must be the day. It'll be black in the underside of a fuzzy blue. But it never turned. It defied me in that way. I couldn't eat it. It was unnatural. I didn't even like multi-grain bread. It was too soft. Oh, god, the reminder of the passage of time was too much. It felt like an arbitrary line, a representative of the time when I was happy and whole and I don't have that now. I threw it out.

But I've kept salad dressing. I make my own vinaigrette, but I kept the ranch. I've kept the Kraft singles that will outlive me. And I've been so hungry for it all lately. I can make greasy bagel sandwiches with Kraft plastic milk instead of sharp cheddar. I can have a normal salad with ranch, and shredded cheese that will see me rot first before it does, just like the ones I used to eat when I was a kid at Shoney’s. When I was happy and whole. Oh, mama, I understand why you bought those things now. They were cheap, and they kinda taste good, and they do last.

I have been eating my abundance and my despair. Jupiter in Gemini has been a lot. It's not something you're really supposed to notice, but I do. I have been hungry and annoyed. I am not a particularly emotional eater, but I understand the connection of having too much food in the house and suddenly feeling very hungry.

I asked my mom a few times why she always complained about not being able to eat as much as she had before the weight loss. After a few perfunctory answers, she finally answered, “Maybe I just think it's wasteful.”

Neither of us are “leftovers” people, much to my dad's chagrin. But as he got sick, he had the same problem. He couldn't eat as much. Both because he wasn't supposed to and he just wasn't able to. We were a family of big eaters. The buffet shut down kings I called us. A brunch special hate to see us coming. Not being able to maintain our eating as we once had had driven us to despair one by one. I'm so grateful to be hungry. Today, I shoved a small handful of fried tofu in my mouth and ate the rest of an “Asian salad” for lunch. I made a paella before attending a vigil in remembrance of transgender lives. When I got there, I also ate a few snacks. It was my fuel, I thought. I'm bicycling home. I biked here. It's a 30 minute roundtrip. But I knew I was eating the despair when I found myself picking at cherry tomatoes and cold broccoli with ranch.

Kierkegaard talks about despair. Not sadness, not sorrow. The kind of despair that has you dropping molded lettuce on the ground at midnight. The despair that leaves you standing in your kitchen, stunned at cooking for one and generating so much abundance and god, why is no one helping me eat this? Kierkegaard says that the Christian understanding of death is earthly, not final, infinite. It is the despair that is the sickness unto death, the lack. I believe this. He also asks us, rhetorically, is despair an advantage or a drawback…? Then whips around and tells us that it's both. He gives his reasons if you read This Sickness Unto Death. They're complex and a little silly because we now know that other animals besides humans can experience what we call despair. We may never know if other animals can experience what we call dread, and perhaps that's a purely human invention after all.

But, Kierkegaard is right in his thinking. Yes, despair is a drawback and an advantage. I have been my most clear thinking in years because I have been the most annoyed I think I've ever been since high school. I read Kierkegaard later in high school and in college. I didn't understand at the time what made me so annoyed all the time. I suspect it was just youth. Now, I have a clear vision of what the annoyance is and I even have some ideas what to do with it. But sometimes I don't know.

I wish someone would come to my home and eat with me. I wish they would sit down and eat something I've prepared. My house is in the disarray that comes with sorrow, but how nice it would be to clear the table and set two plates down. To have nothing to throw away. Breaking bread has always been so personal to me. I've wanted to wash double the dishes. This is abundance too. I've thrown out so much of my abundance and wondered if maybe it was burden instead. My fridge seems like it's multiplying all the time. Has there always been two bottles of ranch? I reached so far back into my pantry that I found my ancient bottle of saffron. I wouldn't dream of buying that now, and I'm making almost three times as much money as I was when I did buy it so long ago.

Kierkegaard tells the story of Lazarus from the Bible and I think sometimes we all ought to grapple with that. I have been grappling a lot. Kierkegaard says the sickness unto death ought not be despair. Who really dies from despair, he says. But for those of us who believe death is not the end, the sickness unto death is the despair of not dying. That's the torment, the gag, the rub. Here. Unable to cook three meals again and always stuck on what to do with the rest.