What happens when you stop moving?

I’m told that the first step is admitting you have a problem. So here it goes: I do not know what to say. I do not know if I have anything to say. Or if I do, that it won’t come out like this incredibly self-indulgent, woe-is-me tome on how I have nothing to say (i.e. this). There is too much pressure (I am the pressure). I think about making a snack and writing about that, because after all, this is what I started this newsletter for. To figure out life through food. I wonder if there were any answers to be found in the bowl of breakfast udon I had at Koya Ko this morning. The way the egg yolk melted into the noodles. The way the fat had rendered on the bacon. The way the mushrooms had softened. The way it had all come together and turned itself from many parts into something whole. I think about all my different parts – my desires, my realities, my loves, my insecurities, my past, my what-next, my now, and wonder how they all might come together as a whole (I am the whole).

I’ve spent the last three nights falling down a rabbit hole on TikTok, watching people decode crime scenes and motives, a girlfriend duping her boyfriend into believing she sheds her skin every month, university students telling us all that ‘lucky girl’ affirmations really do work, people ten years younger than me appearing so deeply and inherently confident that I question my generation.

I do not believe the year has begun yet. I need another three weeks to catch up on everything I missed across the boundary of 2022. I’d like more time to feel better and write a novel and cook more recipes and sleep for 18 hours straight. As such, I have not set myself any real resolutions other than the lucky girl mantra that I’ve vowed to repeat everyday – a sort of Hail Mary in hopes of rectifying some of the not-so-good I’ve been feeling.

Since Christmas, I’ve been feeding myself every ounce of health I could find in the form of ginger-spiced soups, stews and broths; bowls of gentle legumes; leafy dark greens eaten raw and cooked with all the good things (ginger, garlic, chilli, spring onions, little enoki mushrooms); juices made every other day and consumed upon waking. This has become a habit. Not drinking has become one, too (although we’re only one week into January, so this is very much subject to change). I wonder whether I do these things so I can be more like myself, or more like someone else, but then quickly dismiss the question because while a year ago I would have been able to tell you who I am, these days I am not so sure.

Snack break: eggs boiled for nine minutes, plunged into cold water, peeled, left to cool, chopped then thrown into a bowl. There, a pool of silky mayo, chopped capers, a spoonful of chilli oil, a squeeze of lemon. Two slices of seeded bread lightly toasted, slick with salted butter, coriander masquerading as salad leaves.

Stability has taken the place of movement. In my twenties I was a person who ebbed and flowed. A person who ‘ran towards’ not ‘ran away’ (however accurate that might be). A person who was rootless in the world but rooted in herself. A person who chased the sun, who wasn’t always happy, but at least was in search of happiness. A person who fell and failed. A person who was never quite happy with how she looked but knew how to get around it most of the time. A person who wrote. Who moved. Who hosted. Who brought people together. Who made playlists for classes and had a best friend who pretty much lived with her; a person whose experiences made up the sum of her, as if each country lived in was a layer of herself.

What happens when you stop moving? When you stick instead of run? When you find yourself in the same four walls for three years? When you choose to be stable and it turns into stasis?

I figure this is just what growing up feels like. Slightly uncomfortable. Like you want to run away from it all. I still could, yet I choose not to. I can’t work out if I’m being adult by staying, or if I’m too scared to make a change. A friend and I spoke about this on the phone last night, discussing whether we should just accept that we will always be people who dream of leaving. But that life, responsibilities and stability make us stay. When I say it out loud, I feel ridiculous because my instinct screams at me to run.

But I have spaghetti and meatballs to cook for friends. A birthday lunch for my brother. A fish pie to make before watching The Menu. A pub to take my dad to and a boozy lunch at my favourite one with a friend. A launch to celebrate a friend’s cookbook and a chicken and rice dish to eat high above the river. A book of my own to propose. A brand of my own to launch. A team of friends to work with.

“I’m the luckiest girl in the world and I can’t believe how things always work out for me,” she repeats to herself, hoping this TikTok mantra sticks. I’ll take some good luck, a better attitude and more cooking in 2023.