Making Soup

In the limited light of a Friday November afternoon, I brace myself for the herculean task of making soup.

In the one hundred square feet of my studio sanctuary, soft jazz fills the silence. It’s not that I mind silence – I find myself craving it more and more these days – of all things, because I heard cows love it. Or, something about their nervous system loves it.

I set out the ingredients precariously – chicken broth and pasta stacked on top of my toaster. I found a rubber band in the toaster last week, ever so slightly smoking as it burned further into the metal grid. 

I said I wouldn’t stack things on top of the toaster after that, but I do. It’s too convenient not to. Or at least, it’s convenient for now.

The dutch oven carries so much weight, and I nearly take out a few ramekins wrestling it out from the back of the top of the fridge. With a thud, it lands on the stovetop burners I’ve been meaning to clean for months now.

Maybe next week.

I look at the mirepoix-to-be: carrots still going strong after a few days of fridgeratory isolation, celery on its last limbs and just passable to be cooked down and hidden in something larger. The onion, however, is brand new – hand selected from the masses at the grocery store last night coming home from school.

The onions will have to go in first, so I grab my dull kitchen knife and set to work. Some days I try to ignore the arthritis entirely, and other days it makes sure it is impossible to ignore. 

Proper knife technique is abandoned on the precipice of just getting things done. My whole upper body goes into halving the onion through the root, while shaky hands cautiously make horizontal incisions.

I think back to two years ago, when I had to cut off all my nails to avoid scratching myself up when I struggled to navigate the increasingly blurry divide between reality and nightmare. The scars I have on my hands were never consciously done by my own hands, but remain visible all the same. 

But now, I chop away – knife as comfortably as it’s going to be in hand. There is no more danger, no nightmares last night, only soft jazz and soon to be soup. 

The carrots are next, which consistently pose more of a challenge than the onions. Which is odd, because I always thought onions would be the hardest to get through. 

Onions, with their roots and layers and hard skin and soft skin. It turns out once you get to know it better, it was never difficult at all. It was the way you approached it.

Carrots used to feel easier. Peel away, chop off the head and tail, and cut it up. I don’t know if I’m growing weaker or these carrots are growing stronger, but my hands ache with exhaustion when I’m done.

The carrots follow the onions into the pot. Onions get a head start, which I soon realize is nonsensical. The heat and time wear the onion down and change its colour, but the carrots in all their stubbornness visibly remain the same. The carrots also seem to need twice as much time in the pot to soften, while the onions carry the burden of marginal overcooking. 

Next is the celery, and I can’t tell if I’m happy to put it to use on its last legs of life or if it feels like an unfair fight after the carrots. It’s soft, and straightforward, and too easy to cut through.

I’m so worried that I’ll become too soft and get cut right up and put into some soup that gets forgotten in a fridge and left to grow mold and die.

But I can’t stay a carrot forever. I don’t want to be a carrot. Impossible to cut through, requiring way too much time to soften, never changing shape, barely changing flavour. 

The crackling breaks me out of my weird, melancholic, vegetable thinking. Which is for the best, because I don’t want to personify the vegetables I will be eating later.

I’m not afraid of eating anymore. 

This dutch oven has a habit of overheating. The vegetables crisp up, the handles grow hot, and I routinely pick up the lid’s handle only to remember that yes, it is still hot. 

Why did I think it wouldn’t be hot this time?

I pour in a little extra olive oil and some pre-mined garlic. I’ll say I use it because some chef somewhere said it’s better for flavour – but I know it’s because my hands are tired. 

I don’t know why I’m so afraid to admit that I’m so tired.

I stir it all together, lifting vegetables at the bottom to the top. Everything is supposed to cook evenly, to get its turn cooking at the bottom or steaming at the top.

I pour in the chicken broth from the toaster coaster, as I have just decided to call it, and put the pot lid – less hot this time, though I forgot to check before touching it – back on and let it simmer.

Almost forgot – I’m supposed to throw in a parmesan rind at this point for “flavour.”

Between us, this initially sounded like some rich people shit. Parmesan is supposed to be the flaky little white stuff coming out of the shaker with an expiration date years past on it. It should not have rinds. 

So, I was pretty taken aback when just the discards of rich people cheese actually changed the flavour. 

What else didn’t I know growing up? What am I going to learn next? Are they going to find out I didn’t grow up like them? What’s going to give me away next time?

I restlessly get up off the couch and check in on my simmering soup early.

Simmering is an understatement – I forgot to take the lid off. I go back to that pot lid (the same one that is always hot, if you’re following along) – nope. I go back, grab a towel, and try again.

Everything is fine. A little extra heat never hurt anyone. 

I begin my hunt for this famous parmesan rind. Sorting through the mess of carrots, onion, and celery, I manage to weed it out. Sure enough, it looks boiled – little holes emerge, and I prod the new texture. 

Freaky little thing.

I take my handheld mixer (another kitchen secret these rich people have been holding on to) and indiscriminately blend everything together. 

The onion, no longer so hard to get through now that I know it better.

The celery, which ended up just as soft as all the others.

And the carrots, who in all their stubbornness must get the final say on the colour of my soup.

Oh, and the garlic. A low maintenance, last minute throw-in that brings it all together. 

Who is the garlic in my life? Who am I failing to appreciate and recognize in the moment? I am so scared I won’t realize how much someone means to me until they’re dead – again.

Everything blends together, and I now set it to boil on purpose. The recipe calls for pastina, but I’m convinced it’s some sort of italian way of messing with the rest us since I can never actually find it. The next smallest pasta I can find – ditali – will have to do.

With ten minutes of stirring ahead of me, I pull out and check my phone. Nothing.

It’s been like that for the last two years. 

Sometimes I regret telling people about what happened. I don’t know if it’s because they don’t know what to say, or if they pity me, or if they think I’m being dramatic.

But I do know that if I didn’t tell people what happened, if I chose to suffer in silence, I would probably be dead right now.

It feels like there’s this unspoken expectation that I’m supposed to be fine now. Hell, that expectation started 3 months after it happened. 

I think that’s when everyone realized I wasn’t going to get better anytime soon. And that was when the texts stopped.

Well, it still beats the alternative.

I get to work dismantling the rotisserie chicken, whose joints are just about as stiff as mine. There’s something meditative about systematically taking the chicken apart, making sure all the meat is put to good use.

There’s the usual line of thinking about how I weigh the chicken’s life below mine, now complimented by my recent realization I technically have hamster ovary cells inside of me and always will.

I think my brain has sectioned off the memories of being on all the hardcore arthritis drugs.

Microdosing chemotherapy throughout high school, steroids that made my face puff up and mouth taste funny for months afterwards, and the hamster-based biologics that altered how my immune system functions.

Still shaky and always freezing hands wrapped around the needle, clawing for any fat left around my stomach. The doctor threatened to take me off the meds if I didn’t gain weight. The needle goes in, but the initial adrenaline rush had run out months ago. Another Sunday injection, with side effects masked as Monday blues.

Yeah, I can’t blame my brain for suppressing that.

With the pasta cooked in the broth, I slide the chopped up chicken in and let it simmer (no lid this time). 

I already know this batch will be better.

The first time I loaded in too much chicken and pasta, trying to maximize nutrients and diversify food groups and ultimately making some sort of slop. Good, hearty, nutritious slop – but still slop. 

I’m not in a scarcity mindset anymore – I don’t have to be. Soup is just soup now, and I know there will be more later.

I sit down on the couch, frustrated that my body is so tired from something as simple as making soup. It’s a Friday afternoon, I should be gearing up for the weekend.

But with the rain, I told everyone I would be studying. And I will be. But I also won’t have it in me to do anything else. 

I don’t know why I’m afraid to tell people I’m in pain.

I think people know that I’m in pain anyways.

Whether they know or not, I worry they can sense that there is something wrong with me. That I have a lot of baggage. That I’m not being fully honest. That I’m hiding something. 

And I think that’s really taken a toll on everyone. 

I know that I need to open up and be honest to actually connect with people. I know that I’m the problem here. 

But I know what happened when I did tell people. And I’m so sick of it.

The pitiful looks, the self-censorship, the way people look at each other in a group when I say something “concerning.”

Or worse, when they finally get the answers they wanted so bad and decide it’s too much. Too much to believe, too much to handle, too much to care. 

It’s a trauma dumping catch-22 that I have no intention of participating in.

The smell of the soup settling on the stovetop begins to compete with the rain hitting the cement outside. I hope all of my Novembers smell like this.

The truth is that I am a happy person. Or at least, I think I’m a happy person. I love being alive and I love making soup – even when it hurts. 

I think the real issue is finding balance. I feel like an unwilling ping pong ball at times, bouncing between perfect days surrounded by good friends and never ending nights where I am haunted by everything I try to forget.

But then there’s other times, like making soup, where I feel everything all at once. 

When I find peace and purpose in chopping carrots, but feel the pang of frustration synced with the pain in my hands. 

When I settle into a quiet flow under soft jazz, but remember I had to research what kinds of music could help me manage my nervous system when it was convinced I was dying. 

When I remember I am in my beloved apartment that is full of so many happy memories hosting friends, but flash back to how I curled up in a ball on the same floor when the nightmares became too much. 

There is so much pressure to forgive and forget and let go of the past. There is so much pressure to overcome my disability and just act “normal.” And there is so much pressure to be everything to everyone while doing everything right all of the time. 

And I think that’s all bullshit.

Nothing about my trauma prevents me from experiencing joy now – but joy doesn’t make it go away.

Nothing about my arthritis is going to stop me from doing what I love – but I could never love something so much that I won’t feel pain.

Life is messy, and complicated, and never turns out the way you expect. And I think that’s part of what makes it so beautiful.

And soup is also messy and complicated – all you have to do is look at the state of my kitchen: a stray carrot peeling in the sink, broth splattered on the wall from the immersion blender, a stray piece of onion I’ll fish out from an unused burner later. 

But that mess doesn’t mean there’s no soup. 

There’s actually a lot of it. 

So I’ll turn up the jazz, breathe in some cold November air through the mesh window, grate more of that rich people parmesan over a heaping bowl of freshly made soup, and dig in.