I tried to make a batch of meatballs on Sunday and fucked them up. In retrospect, I think the pan was too hot and crowded; the meatballs blackened on the outside but didn’t cook. Midway through I scraped the black parts off the balls and mushed up the remains in the hope of making some kind of meat sauce. Wrong. Nothing browned, and I was left with two pans of raw, mushy, unsalvageable meat (yeah, I brought in an auxiliary pan to see if I could fix things, but I couldn’t).
I cried about this–real crying. Kinda disproportionate, that reaction, but of a piece with how I’ve been feeling lately. Frustrated, irresponsible, insufficiently adult, and sad.
But I think I’m going to turn a corner. My new stance will be, “Yeah, I fucked up those meatballs–who gives a shit about those meatballs? Great job for even attempting meatballs! It’s going to be okay!”
I mean, obviously this meatballs thing is trivial, but I wanted to exorcise those underlying bad feelings and this helps a little.
By the way, it’s much easier to write about meatballs than, say, my experience last week of overdrawing my bank account by $500. Bouncing checks to one’s significant other and a mental health professional in a pretty short span of time = anxiety, anxiety.
Now that I think about it, those meatballs may have been an indirect effort on my part to overcome my issues with facing the music, confronting things. I don’t cook. I never cook. I can’t cook. But there I was, after a hard week, trying to execute a fairly complex recipe without any help. I think I was trying to prove to myself that I am capable and competent; that I’m not stuck playing a child-role in my life and relationships.
I think those were anxiety meatballs.
