The Hand That Feeds
By Jay Lounds
Nothing brings me back down to earth like the smell of onions caramelizing in a heavy bottomed pot. The sizzle uttered by greens and the hiss of steam they produce when added to a hot pan snaps me out of my head and into the moment. Feeling the heat radiating off a soup-tasting spoon tethers me to the present and fills my body with peace. It’s no mystery to me why I feel most connected to the body I’m in when it’s dusted in flour, and I often find I can only get my hands to stop shaking when they’re coated in a shaggy layer of focaccia dough.
As someone who struggles with PTSD from sexual trauma, I am often brought out of my body due to something as seemingly innocuous as the smell of stale beer, a misplaced joke, or an unexpected touch on the shoulder. These episodes can flare up to haunt me at any time and often come without warning, and I frequently find myself having to play catch up throughout the day after events like these occur.
In these spurts of disassociation, I can forget to breathe, start shaking or crying, or get so wrapped up in moments of the past that whole hours pass by. After all of the hurt my mind and body had endured, I had resigned myself to a lifetime of these moments and had assumed the only time I could feel at peace with my body and the trauma that inhabits it was through the support and presence of an expensive therapist.
This was no truer than during the coverage of the Harvey Weinstein investigation and the explosion of Tarana Burke’s #MeToo Movement. In these early days, I remember profound moments of panic, of not wanting to confront my own stories and experiences. With each woman who came out to shed light on the nefarious actions of Weinstein and many others, I recall being simultaneously devastated by the way these men had sought to exploit these women and decidedly envious of how the survivors had reclaimed their own stories. These brave women were working towards moving on with their lives while holding these men accountable, something that had felt unattainable to me and my own experience up until that point. The work the #MeToo movement put in to reshape Hollywood and the social landscape in general gave me great hope for my own process of justice, but the constant barrage of new reports of men abusing their power kept me on edge and full of anxiety. I spent those first few weeks of the reckoning flinching at every ding emitted from my phone and biting my nails down to the quick in anticipation of more horror stories, adding them to my own understanding of just how evil men can be.
Through the triumphs of the #MeToo Movement, many survivors of sexual assault and harassment have been given a platform to share their truths and stories to an audience who seems to finally be willing to listen. We have reached a societal tipping point with the grim understanding that one in every five women will experience rape at some point in their life, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. While sexual assault has been given more media coverage and attention over the past few years, much of the focus continues to be on the acts of assault and those accused, not on the lifelong healing process of victims.
Instead of fixating on the past or my present understandings of trauma, recipe development has allowed me the needed moments of distraction and has helped me reconnect with my own body. Sometimes the inspiration is immediate and organic, and I start cooking right away. Other days I scour magazines and cookbooks for hours, seeking intricate recipes that appear more like manuals—the more complicated and time intensive, the better. The sheer act of flipping through a food magazine has become less of a leisure read and more akin to someone methodically scanning a self-help book—the thin, glossy pages unrecognizable due to my frantic highlights and detailed notes. These pages have inspired many of my “Aha!” moments, and they have also been instrumental to the brief glimmers of release I can extract from my days filled with fear.
The fall of 2018, I threw myself into the creation of puff pastry, donuts, and fresh pasta just to distract myself from the seeming reality that every man with opportunity was a rapist. With each incoming news alert, my crowded countertop welcomed a new batch of homemade goodies. The process of discovering recipes or imagining my own kept my thoughts occupied with something other than my own experience with assault. The excess goods also worked to reconnect me with my social network, the people I had accidentally alienated myself from in bouts of anxiety-ridden self-isolation. It’s more difficult to devour twenty-something apple cider doughnuts by yourself than you might think, so I found myself inviting over old and new friends alike to help reduce the burden. These sporadic meals blossomed into weekly breakfasts, “kombucha-and-craft” nights, and holiday gatherings that acted as a consistent reminder that I no longer wanted to walk through this world alone and that there were always people around for me to lean on.
I soon stopped scratching at my arms and biting my nails every time I felt a memory resurface and instead occupied my hands with the folding of dumplings or massaging of kale. Being able to leave behind the coping mechanisms that only acted as a means for me to ignore or redirect my own pain helped me to focus my energy on my fight to live the life I wanted and not just struggle to survive. That fall, I felt my own power return to me, I had drive and passion again, and I could feel life coursing through me for the first time since I was a child. And though I was unaware of it in the moment, I had also stumbled upon my first understanding of compassionate self-care.
As I roll a fat rope of bagel dough between my palms, I can feel my heartbeat start to steady. I had decided to make bagels a few hours ago after a particularly bad panic attack, and I found myself stepping away periodically throughout the pounding of the dough into my tabletop to ensure my tears didn’t accidentally season the bagels. Throughout the night, I have watched the dough transform through its hydration, proofing, and rising. Shaping the bagels one by one into their signature rings and feeling the resistance provided by the developing gluten structure does more for me than any fidget toy could. I have passed the moments of panic, riding out the wave of unwanted remembrance, and I no longer feel the urge to pick at my fingers until they bleed. I look down at the dough sitting passively in my oiled palms and feel relief instead of regret. I rest when the dough does and allow myself a moment of quiet reflection while dusting off the excess flour from my kitchen counter.
My family jokes that I’m a Gen Z Keebler Elf, always kneading, rolling, measuring into the wee hours of the night to produce sheet-pans full of everything bagels, blackberry scones, and garlic focaccia. As a full-time student with three jobs, I don’t have a lot of off-time to dedicate to my mental wellbeing. Instead I steal any hours I can when I get home, often chopping and mixing as quietly as possible so as not to disrupt my roommate’s sleep or studies. In cooking, I can turn off most other aspects of my brain and just focus on the task at hand, the sifting and whisking and tasting consuming me. It is a freedom I am still not used to, and it remains to bring me both euphoria and meditative thought to this day.
I am not here to play into the tired narrative of anything “saving me.” What’s done is done and I will always have to reconcile with my past. But cooking and baking have served as a consistent means for me to re-engage with my body in a healthy and holistic way. Instead of relying on substances or bad habits to distance and numb myself from the feelings I’m experiencing, I have been able to reaffirm what my body is capable of and lessen the feelings of alienation from my own personhood through a process other than self-sabotage. That, for me, is as much of a miracle as I was ever hoping for.
The next morning, my friends gather around me, slicing through the bagels I had prepared. I am able to focus on nothing else but the seeds falling from the bagels and dancing on my countertop. I soak up my friends’ easy smiles as they press their fingertips onto the seeds, then into their mouths, not letting even one spare speck of flavor go to waste. I help a friend roughly chop a handful of green onions and watch him add them to a pan of hash browns, the golden brown hatch work of potatoes now dotted green. When the people I love grab my freshly baked bagels and stack them high with red onions, avocado, and heaping spoons full of capers, I am transfixed in the present moment; there is no room for my mind to wander to the darker chapters of my life. As we laugh over our starch-centric meal and engage in the age-old debate of to-toast or not-to-toast, I feel life run through my veins in place of fear. Right there, wearing my flour-saturated apron in my minuscule kitchen surrounded by dirty dishes and loving friends, I am present, with no room for me to drift into the past I had been running from for so long.
Jay Lounds
12/21/2020
Jay Lounds (they/them/theirs) is a queer and trans poet and writer. You can often find them scribbling out novel ideas with their cat, Earl, or making a huge soup for their lovely housemates.
