Episode XXXII: I can't f**k but I can cook...minestrone soup

It makes my blood boil when I think of him with her.

There. I said it out loud (kinda).

The reality is that I don’t have any interest in actually being with him. Nope. I don’t care that Votato is with someone new and happy. In fact, I actually want him to be happy in life. And, no, I don’t want him back.

But the truth is that it bothers me how he is still with the same woman – the onion – that in my eyes came between us two years ago. I hate that it makes me upset sometimes when I think about it. I feel guilty thinking about it. And, my mom will say, “What do you care?”

Why do I care?

When I’m standing in my kitchen (which we redesigned together), it’s hard not to dwell on it all. Suddenly, something like Michael Chiarello’s super quick minestrone soup (which just so happens to be freakin’ delicious) becomes much more complicated, at least, emotionally. It is quick. It is easy. But it requires a lot of time chopping up veggies, pancetta, and herbs. And, there is something about that repetitive chopping that drives me insane. So, I spend a lot of time staring out the window. Chop. Chop. Chop. Chop. Thinking about all the things left unsaid. Chop. Chop. Chop. Chop. All the things I will never know are true. Chop. Chop. Chop. Chop. All the things I KNOW are true.

Why do I care?

Well, I can’t be the only semi-crossed girlfriend, dumped out of the blue when another woman moved into the picture, who wastes time thinking about it. I mean WTF. It’s human nature, right?

But here’s the thing: I’m happier today. Thank God. I am more inspired than before. In fact, I find myself not just talking about doing things but actually doing things I always talked about. Like this blog. But at least I have Votato to thank for that. Kinda.

Chop. Chop. Chop. Chop.

When we were together, the concept of this blog was born. In actuality, it was really birthed out of my self-loathing and his non-stop criticism of me. I stopped being myself, basically shutting off, shutting down. My life became petty arguments about things like shower curtains, whether I lifted the coffee table to vacuum or sat on a public restroom toilet. With the criticism, as one might imagine, it made me less apt to get down to business in the bedroom.

I found myself spending more and more time in the kitchen because it had become my refuge. Chop. Chop. Chop. Chop. I’d come home from work to an unhappy man and would engulf myself in cooking. There in the kitchen, I’d sometimes talk out loud, even to myself, living in my own fantasy world. One day, I divulged to Votato that I sometimes pretended I had my own cooking show in those moments. He found this amusing. By that point, the lack of, ahem, “action” had become a joke between us. Though he nagged and criticized me about that too.

“I can’t f**K but I can cook,” I proudly said one afternoon.

We both laughed. He didn’t deny it (as a boyfriend definitely should). And, so it stuck. Sure, I was poking fun at myself, but knew I was onto something when the words floated into the air. From that moment on, that sentence became my “go-to” for every time I produced something stellar in the kitchen. And, I’ll have you know, it was pretty damn often. I imagined a future of cookbooks filled with my recipes. You know, recipes that help you “keep your lover.”

It was a great idea, until, he ended up leaving me presumably for this other woman. He denied that there was another woman, of course. But my intuition knows that’s not true. And, today they are still together.  Sometimes I do doubt it and wonder if it really did happen. But it really doesn’t matter. I mean really. Why do I care?

Chop. Chop. Chop. Chop.

I wonder if she can cook.