The rise of nonchalance is the death of passion

As soon as I walk through the door, my mother asks if I want prawns in pajeon – a Korean seafood pancake – or just on their own. We agree on pajeon and I can hear the sound of the batter hitting the pan, her long wooden chopsticks lifting the sides to see when to flip them. All the while I’m screenshotting a picture of me, a joyful, wine-fuelled moment I remember, and I’m zooming into my face examining the flatness, the roundness of it, and also my left arm that was once half the size in my twenties and in this moment, in this picture, seeing it all now makes me want to burst into tears.

My dad pours a glass of champagne, pink, my mother’s favourite, to celebrate her and plates and plates of food are put in front of me. I am instructed to eat and I try not to cry. I think about going spinning and how Pilates isn’t enough and how people say pictures don’t matter but when you’re single and in your thirties and scared of making conversation with strangers, pictures are everything and conversation turns to posterity and my mother looks and me and says, “please have a baby, any baby,” and I laugh it off even though I can feel the tears rising up from my gut all the way to my eyelids.

My mother is a passionate woman. She does not have a nonchalant bone in her body, because she could never afford to be so. Her passion comes from having to fight for her right to learn. It’s true that nonchalance really is a privilege. The irony is that she is passionate about me deserving happiness, safety and love. I think I might sometimes be passionate about the opposite.

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It’s easy to conflate logic with nonchalance, although I’m not too good at either, but both seemingly come into play after an unresolved relationship comes to a screaming halt on a Monday night at 8pm. I put the oven on as soon as I walk through the door, having been thinking about the chicken thighs marinating in yoghurt, soy sauce and tahini, the meat tenderising all day in the fridge. There’s rice left over in the cooker and everything to make a salad, so I let the oven come to temperature whilst I plug in my phone, crawl into bed and make the call. Thirty five minutes of unsurprising dialogue unravels: yes but only for a fleeting moment, no I’m not ok, yes I want to be friends, no that’s not fair, yes how can I help, no I’ve always been your secret, yes I think we can be friends.

I outline my feelings like a good strategist, organising them into comprehensive categories, themes and messaging pillars, providing ample evidence whilst also remaining balanced – taking responsibility, not placing blame, seeing both sides and using affirming statements like, I totally understand where you’re coming from. It is hardly surprising when the words land in front of me, and I remain logical although perhaps not so nonchalant but definitely dispassionate, a skill I’ve acquired in my thirties, for better or worse.

Half way through when everything I had thought for years had been confirmed, I check on the chicken and silently marvel in its blistered skin, the smell erupting from the oven and filling the kitchen with salt. My mouth waters before my eyes do. I turn the oven off and by the time I hang up the phone, the chicken is perfectly cooked and still warm so I slice it and pour the sauce that surrounds it over lukewarm white rice, perhaps too much but I’m sad and sometimes you just need to eat. The cucumbers provide cold refuge and I eat at my desk, resting my arm on my right knee and feel sorry for myself even though I know tomorrow it will feel like a relief.

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Earlier that evening I type a reply almost instinctively after receiving a “no spark” message from someone. I send it without checking and hope it doesn’t read like the equivalent of no worries if not, then archive the conversation. I did not even have to think about this performance because I have been prepping for this external denial of emotion for as long as TikTok has been telling me how to. After this, I find myself lingering on videos from a familiar creator who peddles a theory about women needing to act like black cats in order to play the perfect game and make men fall in love with them.

Don’t cry, don’t be upset, don’t get angry. Laugh it off, or write the truth of how your feeling then add “lol” or “hahaha” at the end to ensure your friends know that it’s really not a big deal and you only cry yourself to sleep once in a while when the lights are off and the midnight air is thick and the street lamps flicker and the roads still hum with traffic. I’m ok I’m ok I’m ok, you’re ok, you’re fine, it’s all good, it’s not a problem, no worries, of course, totally get it!!!!!!!

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Things I am passionate about: the way a pool of olive oil sits on top of water just before I turn the heat on a pot of beans; romanticising an imagined trip to Lisbon spent drinking vino verde and eating garlicky prawns swimming in oil and sitting at a table where the water twinkles next to me; driving down route 33 singing the words ‘honey shade of blue’ with the windows rolled down; the dichotomy of thoughts around my body as a vessel for joy and sadness.

At a recent dinner I hosted, I spent ten minutes explaining the premise of Yellowstone, my movements wild as I crouched on a chair. My friend Sam said he’d never seen me so animated and I thought about all the boys’ names I used to write in the back of my journal, before the crushes were too crushing, and how all that pent up passion had slowly been turned into something else.

I try to locate my passion for things outside of food and cooking and come up short until my hand happens upon a piece of paper busy with inky scrawled thoughts after a night with a man last May. I feel embarrassed by my earnestness, my use of words like ‘cosmic’ and the knowledge that five days later, I’d be standing in front of my flat asking what would happen next and then never hear from or see this man again.

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My mother moves around the kitchen like I do. Or perhaps it’s the other way around – learned behaviour from years of watching from this very spot. She always asks what I want to eat when I come home and this time I replied, “blonde pasta”. Mum has been making a version of this since I was young: chicken, parsley, lemon zest, olive oil and an incredible amount of softened garlic, which is what I can smell right now. I’m still trying to stop myself from crying, which might be because of the champagne, and I realise how instinctive it is to suppress these more passionate emotions in favour of performing my okay-ness. I think about how I can’t complain when my life is this good and that I should take the smallest portion possible even though I know I’ll have thirds and then I think about how a friend once held my legs and told me she could physically feel that I was a tightly wound spring ready to recoil.