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It’s perfectly socially acceptable to dine out in New York City while getting shit-canned wasted, with one eye open so that you can try to tell a cab from a plain yellow car during your wobbly wave down. Most bars don’t even serve food. The closest thing is ice or the juice you mix with your gin or the soda added to your bourbon. Working behind the bar in America’s largest city has shown me that money doesn’t buy happiness. But it can buy hangovers, bad decisions and total blackouts. And I have been the enabler.I have also been on the other end.

Working behind the bar in America’s largest city has shown me that money doesn’t buy happiness.

Life as a Female Bartender Includes Judgment and Unwanted Attention

People leave their numbers for me on coasters while they are on Tinder dates. One threw a chair at my manager when he was asked to leave after I tried to politely decline his slurred attempt at asking me out. Others have mocked me and accused me of sleeping with the owner for a job because I looked too young to serve alcohol, even though I was way over the age of 21. Another scathingly yelled at me after I denied his entrance because he wasn’t 21 by saying, “You will only ever be just a bartender!”To which I replied, “You mean, I’ll keep making money and have a ton of free time?”The judgment of those who spent hours slurping down whiskey while talking in circles to anyone who would listen was always revealing. America’s obsessive drinking culture has allowed for me to go on some sweet vacations, but I can’t help but feel how shallow and soul-sucking the job can be.

I See Toxic American Drinking Culture Every Night Working as a Bartender in NYC

People come to bars because they want to be seen. They want a scene. Some still have trauma from being cast out from the cool kid’s lunch table, and others want to blur out their trauma and slip into a dark abyss of libations. Taco Tuesday turns into Taco Thursday after one margarita turns into a bender and the dreams of a young, bright-eyed transplant of the city begin to fade in an effort to network and socialize. Let’s be real. America’s drinking culture is toxic, and we all know it. But we continue to post photos of our buddies doing shots on social media, and we continue to throw parties with only booze involved. We go to happy hour with our co-workers, and we pick booze cruises over learning to sail. And when we decide to stop doing it and replace it with an activity that is better for ourselves, we lose friends and are made to feel like we are losing out.

Let’s be real. America’s drinking culture is toxic, and we all know it.

Bar Culture Can Be a Sad Reality

As a bartender in New York City, I have watched people spend hundreds on drinks at a time. Some would order a bottle of booze at the bar for close to a grand, when it’s less than fifty dollars at the liquor store. The only difference is that it comes with a hot waitress carrying a sparkler and the opportunity to make the crowd wonder if the buyer’s famous (or if they can get a freebie from their bottle).People will wait in line to pay $40 to get into a club where the drinks start at $20 apiece. And now they’ll get vaccinated to do it because being around a bunch of hot, sweaty bodies grinding to techno in a room packed like a can of sardines gives them a sense of community.“I don’t want to eat because I won’t feel drunk,” I heard one patron say as I watched guys prey on a young girl nearby who could barely stand up straight.I’ve been called racist for denying service to someone who was clearly intoxicated. I had a group of grown men wait for me to walk out at the end of my shift, and I’ve had someone try to take a video of me, I assume in an effort to get me fired, after telling her it was time to go. The customer is not always right, and we make that known in the city’s darkest dwellings, but the entitlement always shines through. All for a drink.I often questioned if there was life outside these velvet-roped entryways that people want so badly to gain permission to pass. These places look glamorous and appealing in a movie, but they are merely filled with complacency and people swaying their bodies in a mimicry, dancing before they stumble out of the same doors at 4 a.m.

As a Bartender, My Social Life Was Rooted in Booze Culture

We discovered during the pandemic that without these buildings being open, there is little life in the city. I learned that most of my friends would rather come together for a drink than drive a few hours with me to go for a hike in the woods. I learned that if I didn’t see someone out at a bar, I probably would never see them again. I’ve learned all of this because I’ve started to crave more than what booze has to offer. My thirst for blue agave has diminished as my thirst for experiencing life has grown. This has meant saying farewell to the fake parties, the expensive nights out with friends that don’t keep in touch and staying out late for something that has become more of a nightmare than FOMO. But I’ll keep listening to stories of heartbreak and the celebratory speeches and keep watching disingenuous interactions take over while self-dignity is thrown away at the door—and I’ll still make you another martini before last call.

My mom was famous for her cooking. Everyone in the extended family loved to visit her house. Growing up in an Italian American family, our meals consisted of lots of pasta, red sauce, bread and cheese. Holidays were heavily laden with tomato sauce, ricotta, mozzarella, cured meat platters, garlic bread and tons of desserts. In the ’60s and ’70s, no one was talking about food sensitivities.I learned about acid indigestion at a very young age—Brioschi was a household word. My mom never imagined that the ingredients in her recipes could be making me sick. When I would tell her that the sauce on Sundays gave me agita (acid reflux that was fondly referred to as “nasty repeat”), she would give me more ricotta or milk to “cut the acid.” Coca-Cola was common at our dinner table. It also gave me heartburn, so Mom added milk to that, too.

Just one roasted pepper sent me into a tailspin and ruined the night.

I Had a Lot of Medical Issues, but Doctors Couldn’t Help

By the time I was 18, my doctors had already run upper-GI testing with no concrete results. I was sent off with a limited diet that really only cut out coffee, while still maintaining the “food pyramid” approach to nutrition. By then, my symptoms had advanced beyond acid indigestion to include painful gas and bloating.My food sensitivities created wicked digestive issues that regularly spoiled trips or interfered with special occasions. For many years, I struggled with stomach upset and continual weight gain. Because I had no knowledge as to what caused my issues, most of what I thought was helping was actually making things worse. I began to rely on daily doses of Prilosec and the like, which gave me a false sense of security and great anxiety about discontinuing it as the manufacturer recommends after a certain amount of time.I had allergy testing done and found that while I did have allergies to environmental elements, I didn’t have any allergic reaction to foods. This kept the search for answers just out of reach. Somehow, I knew it was the food, but no medical professional would believe my symptoms or my logic.In my adolescence, I was often sick with swollen glands, severe sore throats and postnasal drip related to upper respiratory infections. This was never tied into my stomach issues. but now that I have learned more about Eastern versus Western approaches to healing, I’m sure that the way my body was constantly battling to stave off my food sensitivities, my immune system was often compromised.My skin was another area where the effects of my food sensitivities would show. I had seen dermatologists for years and finally gave up with their approach after a brutal round of Accutane as a 40-year-old. In my desperation, I was willing to subject myself to regular blood tests and painful skin eruptions. Basically, their process is that your skin gets horrifically worse before you have any improvements. I have vivid memories of having conversations with other adults where I would keep my hands at my face and elbows on the table to hide my embarrassing skin.

My Food Sensitivities Finally Pushed Me Over the Edge

It was around this time that I undertook a high-pressure project to make costumes for my niece's dance team at Duke University. As my work was coming to the scheduled date to bring the costumes down to North Carolina for fittings, I haphazardly scarfed down a pack of those substandard airplane nuts on the way back from the local dance studio. It turned out to be a huge mistake and much too close to the time I was supposed to travel. The pain and gastric upset set my work back to the point where I had to bring my sewing machines with me to finish the costumes at the hotel. I was extremely sick for the days leading up to the trip, as well as during my stay, not only from the food reaction but also the stress of feeling like I had failed my niece and her team.This was one of the times where after the initial upset, I would not be able to eat and would have “dry heaves” and spasm with no vomit. Other times, I would vomit up bile after my system had been in turmoil for days.My journey along the Western medical path led to an unnecessary gallbladder removal and continued discomfort and pain, to the point that I couldn’t enjoy dinner out with my husband without dreading the aftereffects of the meal. On one trip to New York City, I spent an entire night between the bathroom and the bed in our hotel room while my husband and daughter waited it out in the next room. The hotel rooms in New York are extremely small, and needless to say, the upset stomach was extremely embarrassing with my family on the other side of the door. On that occasion, I had been very careful as to what I was consuming during the entire trip, but just one roasted pepper sent me into a tailspin and ruined the night.

My food sensitivities created wicked digestive issues that regularly spoiled trips or interfered with special occasions.

I Had to Look Beyond Western Medicine to Find a Solution

My son encouraged me to see a non-Western medical practitioner who specialized in energy healing, acupuncture and nutrition. They determined that my issues were based partly on my body’s sensitivity and intolerance to a range of foods and substances—grains, dairy, soy, sugar, tomatoes, peanuts, avocados, chlorine and heavy metals, to name a few—and partly based on the “stuck emotions” associated with past trauma that I had not addressed or acknowledged before. Four years into her care, I have learned to understand my body and how to nourish it, as well as how to send it into a spiral by ignoring my sensitivities. As a result of this experience and education, my skin is clearer, I have shed roughly 30 pounds of unhealthy weight and my outlook is bright. We can now enjoy a romantic dinner and not have the rest of the night ruined by my gastric upset. People ask me how I can survive without so many of my “stressors,” but until you have your life changed and freed from that kind of pain, you can’t really understand the motivation.I’ve struggled to understand the disconnect between Western medicine practitioners and their approach to nutrition. They seem to have tunnel vision and only follow what they learned in school, without considering what the patient is experiencing. I can only surmise that it is the influence from Big Pharma that is keeping doctors peddling drugs that only offer temporary help and often create other issues. There is no profit in patients that stay healthy by eating right.

Around five years ago, I suddenly decided to go vegan. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t munching on a Big Mac one day, lapping hungrily at the oozing meat that dripped onto my hands, and then the next, cutting out every single animal product from my food and drink, including wine.I’ve long been fond of the ol’ vino and, like all good binge drinkers, didn’t pay too much attention to its ingredients or anything other than the alcohol content. Did you know that in the winemaking process, fining agents are used to remove, among other things, yeast? And did you know that these agents ordinarily derive from animal blood marrow (again, among other things)? I didn’t know this, at least not until I’d done significant research into what a vegan lifestyle really entails. It wasn’t a pleasant discovery.Gradually, I began to cut out what little meat I ate, then after watching a number of eye-opening documentaries and reading a plethora of literature, I decided that being vegetarian wasn’t enough. I was thinking about veganism on a Monday, and by Wednesday, I’d gone over to the green side. I’ve never looked back.

It wasn’t a pleasant discovery.

The Ethics of Veganism Are Complicated—Even Among Vegans

The eating side of veganism is pretty easy, especially compared to even half a decade ago. Often there are options on every restaurant menu, and milk and cheese alternatives exist in most supermarkets. But we’re often labeled as “preachy,” asked questions by non-vegans about our diet and lifestyle and then attacked when we answer in an open, non-judgmental way. Some within our community treat it like it’s a competition. My husband and I started our vegan journey together and are now passionate advocates for animal rights. We’ve been to marches and a couple of vigils, which involve standing outside a slaughterhouse until the animals arrive in a truck, then caring for them as much as you can before they meet their tragic end. It’s as horrific as it sounds, but some attendees make you feel like just being there isn’t enough.

Personal Values Get Complicated Living With Non-Vegan Family

Last year, we moved in with an elderly relative because of the pandemic. We weren’t expected to pay rent or bills—it was an ideal scenario we were grateful to be afforded.An unspoken agreement of living here was to make meals for her. We were more than happy to do our bit, but this person was a meat-eater, and, surprisingly, for someone who grew up during and after World War II, when rationing was compulsory, she was very wasteful. We were expected to make meat-filled meals, despite our veganism being anything other than a secret. The house reeked of smelly, processed burgers and large, deformed pieces of bone-filled fish. She bought large packs of ham or cheese, and after one bite, the rest was left to rot. But we couldn’t refuse or argue about it because we should just be grateful to have a roof over our heads, right?This is our current situation. We’re very lucky and we remind ourselves of this every day; however, the feeling of betrayal that engulfs us whenever it hits 6 p.m. or the smell of gone-off processed sandwich meat leaps out of the fridge is overwhelming. The voices of vegans that are out every day fighting for defenseless, sentient animals ring in our ears, and their shouts mix with the screams that cast a dark cloud over the slaughterhouses we once stood outside.

Our Own Values Aside, We’re Mostly Concerned About Our Family’s Health

She’s old. She’s too stuck in her ways. Removing meat and dairy from her diet will do more harm than good. We’ve heard it all: from her, from family members that pop in and look at us like we’re aliens. We see it on TV advertisements, telling us—often in ways that should be ironic but are just plain disturbing (personifying a chicken to sell KFC, anyone?)—that if you don’t eat the flesh of a tortured, murdered animal or drink the milk of a mother cow that had her child ripped away from her, you’re the freak. You’re the outsider. The conversation around health is a complex one and, admittedly, still fills me with insecurities and doubts. When I first went vegan, I received an abundance of concerned remarks about my weight, with some people even telling me I had an eating disorder because I was so slim. FYI: If someone does have an eating disorder, it’s probably best not to tell them that. Thankfully, I have a good relationship with food, but such comments stick and crawl into your brain like a parasite. Am I lacking in vital vitamins? Going vegan is an ongoing journey of discovery, but you’re expected—by yourself and others—to know all of the answers.If you’re an elderly person, then the conversation around health is exemplified further. Our living companion is unable to do things for herself, including cook, which we’re happy to do for her. Would we like her to eat less meat and dairy? Be less wasteful? Of course. We try not to judge or “push” our lifestyle onto her, but we’re worried about her health. It’s never too late to worry about it.

Being over 80 years old and transforming the way you think about food is not impossible, but it’s unlikely.

I’ve Never Thought More Deeply About Vegans’ vs. Meat Eaters’ Perception of Food

We wish she knew how healthy she could be if more vegetables were in her diet or opened her mind up to lentils. The foods she eats—fatty meats, hard cheeses, non-vegan biscuits (there’s always a large stash in the house)—are all, according to England’s NHS, high in saturated fat, and they not only increase your chances of heart disease and a stroke but also, as I found when reading the incredibly eye-opening book How Not to Die by Michael Greger, Alzheimer’s disease. Tradition and routine are significant in keeping her eating the way she is. As humans, we’re deeply conditioned to do certain things. There’s emotion attached to food and the thought of altering or turning that upside down is terrifying. Can you imagine if everyone stopped eating turkey on Thanksgiving or if you didn’t give your loved one chocolate on Valentine’s Day? It’s unthinkable for many people. Being over 80 years old and transforming the way you think about food is not impossible, but it’s unlikely. Especially if you’re as stubborn as she is. From my experience, going vegan has to be done for the right reasons. A switch has to be turned on in your brain and you might never go back.

Our Vegan and Non-Vegan Relationship Is Growing on Me, but I Miss Living in an All-Vegan Home

I made quinoa for the first time recently, and, can you believe it, she loved the damn thing. Personally, I hated it but hey, there’s no such thing as a perfect vegan, as much as some people try to convince you otherwise. We’re all human, just trying to get by as best we can. Do I dream of a vegan world? Yes, but it’s far more complex than that. For now, I would just love a vegan home again. As long as we’re living where we are, we’ll continue to push more vegetables and fewer animal products onto our elderly companion—for her sake as much as ours. She’ll never change completely, but if you have someone in your life that is open to new discoveries, crack open a bottle of (vegan) wine and have an honest conversation about it.

After studying Renaissance literature at a competitive East Coast liberal arts college, I decided to try my hand in the restaurant industry. I had been vegan for a few years in school and still cooked vegetarian food at home. When I was forwarded a job opening at a gourmet, raw vegan restaurant in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of New York City, I thought it would be a way to get into my hands and out of my head. After one "trial"—restaurant speak for "kitchen audition"—in which I made raw chocolate bars (poorly), I was hired as a pastry cook, where my primary task, rather than to whip meringue or form the perfect pie crust, was to spend eight-hour shifts making "ice cream" out of raw coconut and cashews in a Vitamix. The process involved soaking dozens of pounds of cashews the night before and hauling massive bottles of agave—the restaurant didn't use sugar—up from the basement. Once, I repeated this particular recipe so many times that I ended up in the 14th Street Ear and Eye Infirmary because a piece of coconut meat got stuck in my eye and I developed an ulcer. The entire pastry kitchen was lined with dehydrators, where we'd also "bake" cakes without raising the temperature over 118 degrees. The ingredients were all raw and organic, and for this reason, the desserts were also exceedingly expensive. Once, I made a custom-ordered, tiered, raw vegan wedding cake for a couple in New Jersey that cost $900. The bride carried it on her lap in the car for the entire two-hour ride from the restaurant to the venue.

I felt the worst I had ever felt in my life.

Our Customers Were Obsessed—and Sometimes Famous

Besides locals with money to bleed, the place was a kind of celebrity portal, attracting famous diners from Neil Young to Nas to Lindsay Lohan to Alec Baldwin, who met his current wife there. The kitchen would stay open hours after closing to accommodate a rich celebrity or two who wanted to throw down hundreds of dollars on raw vegan desserts or sake cocktails. I invented a raw vegan "peanut butter" sundae, using peanut oil but not actual peanuts, and served it to Stevie Wonder and his entourage one night around midnight. Working there also revealed a level of obsession amongst regular customers that rivaled the lunchtime salad bar at the women's college I had attended. Some of their disordered behaviors were bizarre—there was one woman who only dined at our restaurant, and her daily meal consisted of three of the same salads in a row. Another regular would pour a mango smoothie over her lettuce for "dressing." I had a customer who was a high-fashion model who special ordered our raw granola in quart containers—not something we normally sold—every week, religiously. I'm not trying to belittle any kind of disordered eating but rather to cast aside the "chic aesthetic" of health that this restaurant espoused. Its Instagram account was full of customers—many women—who had high-pressure jobs, like well-known models, yoga or health instructors in New York, and used the restaurant's food as a way to assure themselves they were only eating "safe" foods. They frequently posted photos of their meals on social media that betrayed many of the obsessive, anxiety-filled experiences I saw them have in front of their plates.

The Job (and the Food) Finally Started Getting to Me

After shifts, the staff would often go to the tapas bar next door for beers and fried food, or else a dive bar in the East Village. Physically, I felt the worst I had ever felt in my life. My stomach hurt so bad from eating mostly nuts and fibrous foods in the restaurant, and as soon as my station was cleaned up, I couldn't wait to go find cooked food. Eventually, we started hearing rumors that the restaurant wasn't doing well, which seemed strange to a lot of us, as it had been open for almost ten years and we were serving over 200 customers on a busy night. It also had major investors from wealthy vegans in the entertainment and finance industries. At first, we brushed the stories aside, but then our paychecks began to arrive weeks late, and many employees couldn't pay their rent on time. The owner was aloof and sparse in her words, sending bizarre, circular emails to employees about talking with managers who could "vouch for" her "character." She was rarely on-site, often “in Europe traveling," occasionally showing up to try a dessert in the kitchen or sit in on a staff meeting. She reassured us that the restaurant's struggles were a temporary blip and that it would be back on its feet soon. Then, her husband began to fire managers who questioned the black holes in the bank statements and the strange amounts after closing shifts. He once came into a meeting and described the people he had fired as "cancerous cells" who had now been eliminated from the restaurant's walls.

Just a few weeks after I quit, the staff went on strike in front of the restaurant.

It All Ended Messily

It was around this time that a former sous chef reached out to me and warned me to leave. Something was totally up, they said, and if I didn't exit soon, I'd be working for free until the city's labor department swept in. Just a few weeks after I quit, the staff went on strike in front of the restaurant. The owner owed employees over $40,000. Then she disappeared.By this time, she was wanted by the city for labor violations but also by the FBI for tax fraud and grand larceny. They eventually found her in Tennessee. The police had traced her to a hotel room where her husband had called in a Domino’s pizza order. She claimed in an interview with Vanity Fair that she was still a strict vegan before being shipped off to Rikers Island.

A surge of adrenaline rushed through my body as soon as I heard the chirp of an incoming request. The book I was reading flew to the passenger’s seat, as if it had been trained to do so, and I looked at my phone to see what Uber was offering. The countdown timer pressured me to accept, but I had learned the hard way to use all 15 seconds of my allotted time to review the information on my screen before accepting or rejecting the request.This one was a delivery trip, but not from a restaurant. It was a Walmart grocery delivery. I had only done a few of those and it had never been a particularly pleasant experience, but the estimated payout was decent and the drop-off location was fairly close. A familiar fear set in as I contemplated sitting in my car for 20 minutes waiting for the next request. With only a second or two left before the opportunity disappeared forever, I hit the accept button, started up my car and launched into one of the worst experiences of my career as a part-time Uber driver.

The number one rule of Uber deliveries to an apartment without an elevator is that the door you are trying to get to is always on the top floor.

I Didn’t Realize How Many Steps I’d Climb to Deliver Groceries

Getting to Walmart was no problem. Like I said, I’d been there a few times before. I pulled into one of the designated grocery delivery pickup spots and called the number on the sign. The good news was that I didn’t have to wait long. The bad news was that it was the biggest Walmart grocery order I had ever seen. Eight cases of 32 water bottles towered over one of the two carts. They were flanked by cases of soda, a gallon of milk, a few cartons of fruit juice, canned food, frozen food and baked goods. I helped the two Walmart employees load everything into my trunk and backseat and set out.Just two minutes before reaching the destination, the familiar chirping of an incoming request once again filled the car. It’s not uncommon for Uber to offer another trip as I finish up the previous one. I knew that it would take me a few minutes to unload all the groceries onto the customer’s porch in the muggy heat, but I went ahead and accepted the McDonald’s delivery.It was only as I pulled up to the destination that I realized exactly what I had gotten myself into. This was an apartment complex, and the number one rule of Uber deliveries to an apartment without an elevator is that the door you are trying to get to is always on the top floor. This delivery was no exception. For every load of groceries, I would have to climb up a half-flight of stairs to get to the front door, open the aforementioned door with my hands full of groceries, climb up two flights of stairs, open a stairwell door, open another hallway door and drop off the goods in front of the very last door on the left.I knew the clock was against me. As far as the McDonald’s customer could tell, the whole time I was climbing those stairs might as well have been me sitting in my car playing a game of solitaire. Even worse, Uber’s algorithm doesn’t factor in the size of the order or the distance to the customer’s door when they estimate the payout for the trip. The only way I would get paid for climbing up those stairs was if the customer was kind enough to leave a tip.With the clock ticking and no good options, I did the only thing I could do: I ran. With every bounding leap up the stairs, more sweat poured down my face. I started with the eight cases of water, then moved to the soda, milk and juice before bringing in the bags of assorted other goods. I despised every minute of it, but to be fair, I could certainly see why these people had their groceries delivered.

My Night Got Worse When the McDonald’s Ice Cream Machine Broke

After more trips up the stairs than I cared to keep track of, I was on my way to McDonald’s with the AC on full blast. Looking at the Uber app, I saw a notification warning me that the McDonald’s customer was waiting and that I shouldn’t have spent so much time on the previous request. If I’d had any breath left in me, I would have laughed.Running across the McDonald’s parking lot, I prayed that the McDonald’s employees would be in a good mood today. Food delivery drivers have an interesting relationship with restaurant workers. My experience has been that most restaurant employees view drivers as their comrades-in-arms. We aren’t the customers; we are folks just trying to make a living like they are. Sure, a few workers here and there just don’t care or act like we are their enemy for whatever reason, but most workers will treat delivery drivers far better than they will treat customers. It’s not uncommon for workers to even offer a drink or some free food, especially around closing time.While the guy behind the counter at McDonald’s didn’t offer any freebies, he did offer some insider information. “You’re here for that order?” he asked. “Sorry dude, but we’re in the middle of cleaning the ice cream machine. It’s going to be a few more minutes before we can make your McFlurry. You might want to cancel the trip.”I thought about what he said. I knew he was probably right, but I didn’t want to cancel after all that hassle. Besides, canceling now might only mean waiting for another request in the parking lot, so I might as well wait for the McFlurry.And wait I did. It took nearly 20 minutes before the order was ready, which actually isn’t the longest I’ve waited for an Uber order at McDonald’s. Nonetheless, I wasted no time getting back out to my car and making sure the food got where it was supposed to go, albeit much later than anticipated.

Whenever I hit the button to launch the Uber app, I have no idea what my day will hold.

There Is Never a Boring Night While Driving for Uber

The instructions on the app told me to leave the food on the porch rather than hand it to the customer, so I never got to meet her in person. She didn’t exactly leave a five-star rating, but I certainly can’t blame her for that. She did not know what it took to deliver her food nor would she ever know.When people ask me what I like about driving for Uber, my answer is the same every time: Every day is an adventure. Almost daily, I meet interesting people and travel to parts of my own city that I never knew existed. I’ve seen head-on collisions and drug deals. I’ve been tipped $20 by someone who said she liked my taste in music. I’ve comforted a grown man who was bawling because his wife left him and took the kids to a different state. I’ve directed a woman in an abusive relationship to the help she needed. Also, I’ve lugged cases of bottled water to the top of an apartment complex and waited 20 minutes for a McDonald's ice cream machine. Whenever I hit the button to launch the Uber app, I have no idea what my day will hold. All I can hope is that customers will be patient with me when things don’t go according to plan. Every day is an adventure.

As a health professional and food expert, I always thought the biggest issue my clients faced around food was a lack of knowledge—about what foods to eat, about why to eat them, about why to avoid others, about how they impact health. The list of reasons goes on. But I realized that I actually got it all wrong. Here’s why: At the start of my career as a dietitian and nutritionist, learning about food and its effects on health made perfect sense. Eating healthy was obviously a no-brainer. In addition to this, working in the health industry and watching the rise of social media as a means to get information gave me a boost of inspiration to be a good example.My own eating habits became more than perfect, and I found myself obsessing over eating well, counting calories, not having any processed sugar or refined foods, alcohol, soft drinks or any other crap I deemed demonic to my well-being. I lived like this for over three years. I was running and training at the gym everyday, I planned my meals, filled my cupboard with supplements and had a nonexistent social life. I felt extremely disappointed at my friends who ate crap and even at my clients who couldn’t give up the junk food. I’d constantly think to myself: “What is wrong with you people?”

Then my body started to break down.

Being Overly Healthy Was Actually Hurting My Body

But then my body started to break down. I woke up one day and couldn’t get out of bed. My muscles were so sore, my knees hurt, my back was wrecked and I couldn’t stand up straight. My hair started falling out; my nails were splitting. Mentally, I was a mess. During this time, I attended a nutrition seminar about the effects of social media on the health of young adults, and I realized I had something called orthorexia. This is an eating disorder characterized by an obsession with eating healthy, where the quality of the food is more important than anything else. There I was, thinking I couldn’t eat too healthy, when orthorexia was, in fact, detrimental to my health. Upon reflecting on my eating habits, it all made sense. I was becoming obsessed with my body image, with training, with eating fresh and overly healthy. And social media was only fueling my need to be perfect with all its readily available “health advice.” I was only 24 years old at the time, and the realization that my obsession made me so ill and miserable was hard to take. My “healthy” lifestyle hurt me deeply, both physically and emotionally. And on top of it all, I was supposed to be the example to my clients. How?I put so much pressure on myself to be perfect and eat the best possible food that I lost connection with what being healthy actually means.

Individual Willpower Is a Difficult Thing to Harness in Today’s Climate

Letting go of my strict eating patterns was hard at the start. I needed help. After a while, I learned to enjoy a scoop of ice cream or a bowl of pasta without feeling guilty or sick. At the same time, I felt so disappointed in myself. After all, I’m the only one responsible for my health…or am I?Looking at my own experience and at my clients’ struggles, it became clear to me that the problem ran deeper than what I initially thought. Working in health and looking after people’s nutrition, in my case, has proven to be a challenge—a personal challenge. I obsess over it, all day, every day, but it’s been a real struggle to compete with the constant push for overconsumption and the dead-set pressure to be a certain way.Our social structure and public health systems put much of the responsibility for being healthy on the individual alone. It is my choice to eat something or engage in a certain activity. No one is forcing me, right? But how can I or my clients rely solely on our willpower to “do the right thing” when: The list goes on. Being healthy, whatever that means, is bloody hard! I got out of this vicious cycle because there was no other option. I was a wreck.

I put so much pressure on myself to be perfect and eat the best possible food that I lost connection with what being healthy actually means.

There Needs to Be a More Holistic Approach to Health Promotion

After turning down all the noise (I took a social media cleanse) and working to reconnect with myself, I can finally appreciate the present moment. By letting go of comparing myself to others, I’ve discovered who I really am.I now understand the role food has in my life, particularly its cultural and social aspects. I understand that having the perfect body means nothing. And I can finally enjoy food with my family and friends again, gathering around a table of home-cooked dishes made from fresh ingredients, followed by a delicious cake from grandma’s traditional recipe. Today, I eat not only to nourish my body but also to nurture my soul. Sometimes, I still feel guilty and shitty, but that’s OK. I’m only human. I know it’s not my fault and that I am being constantly influenced by higher powers.I do believe that our social systems need to support and enable us to live healthier lives. To become more aware of who we are, of how we feel and how to treat ourselves with kindness and love. There has to be a change in policies for food regulation and advertising (of all kinds). Public health efforts must consider a shift towards disease prevention. A more wholesome approach to health promotion has to integrate the workspace, public spaces, schools and the education system. And I wish for people on social media to share less vanity and narcissistic content, but rather use the platforms to spread ideas, to connect with others and normalize help-seeking behavior. Looking for help was hard, but it changed my life, and to be honest, I realized that less is more. Today, I feel amazing in my skin and in my head (mostly). And while I know this is never going to be a constant feeling—let’s be honest, we all have ups and downs—I am aware, I am awake and I have learned to enjoy the ride.

As a child, my hardworking and slightly stressed-out mom hated cooking, and my dad just didn’t think that it was his job. This annoyed my mom immeasurably, as it meant that the responsibility of feeding the family fell solely on her shoulders. She’d crash around the kitchen, angrily whipping together a semi-nutritious meal while noisily putting saucepans away and dropping things on the floor. The resentment was palpable.On the very rare occasion that my dad was left in charge of dinner, we’d end up with some weird mishmash of whatever he could find in the cupboard or freezer. It was the 1980s in England, so convenience and speed were top of the agenda, and cooking with a microwave was seen as quite sophisticated. Birds Eye Crispy Pancakes, boil-in-the-bag cod with parsley sauce and overcooked vegetables were regulars on our table. Suffice to say, I did not love family dinner time. As a grown-up, my relationship with food changed. I loved making dinner with my housemates at college, and I became slightly obsessed with watching cooking shows. We spent many happy evenings trying out new recipes and recreating cheap yet wholesome meals, such as shepherd’s pie and sausage casserole. We’d wash them down with cheap red wine and go to bed feeling full and happy.

Pushy relatives would quite literally load my plate with food, no matter how much I protested.

The Four-Course Meal That Changed My Life

Then 21, I met my boyfriend, a second-generation Italian who came from a big extended family where food was quite literally life. The first time I was invited over to meet his clan, we sat down for dinner on a very long dining table where olives, prosciutto and cheese complemented glasses of crisp prosecco. I remember greedily tucking into the appetizers before my boyfriend whispered in my ear that there was plenty more food to come, and I would definitely need to leave some room. And man, was he right.A five-inch-high piece of lasagna packed with boiled eggs, pork and beef mince and sweet tomato sauce was served as a starter, followed by grilled chicken and pork with salad and deep-fried courgette flowers. Just as I thought I couldn’t fit another morsel into my mouth, a platter of cheeses, bread and nuts was laid out before pushy relatives would quite literally load my plate with food, no matter how much I protested. I’d never known a family to eat in such a way on a Friday night. It wasn’t even a special occasion. Then came the dessert, the course I quickly realized was every meal’s crowning glory. My mother-in-law, as it eventually transpired, excels in all types of Italian food, but her desserts? From sweet pavlova with whipped cream and tart raspberries, to white chocolate and ginger cheesecake, to birthday cakes of all concoctions and indulgent brownies, they really were to die for.

I’m now married into the family and have learned the art of pacing myself so I can enjoy every element.

I’ve Learned to Slow Down and Savor Every Bite of Dinner

Fifteen years later and I’m now married into the family and have learned the art of pacing myself so I can enjoy every element. I’ve also garnered a newfound appreciation for dinner where frayed tempers are left at the door, the TV is turned off and all plans are abandoned for the evening. Meals this good should not be rushed or seen as something to just get out of the way as I had believed they were for years. While I can’t say that I’ll continue the tradition of four-course dinners in my own home, I know that food will always be important in our house. Meatballs and red sauce have become a family favorite, and my husband has just about nailed his mom’s famous sky-high lasagna. I’m sure my young sons will also come to appreciate their extended family’s amazing dinnertimes and recognize them for what they are: the ultimate gesture of love.

One summer, while working at a farm a few miles from my house in Ester, Alaska, I learned three gardening and farming tips that couldn’t be ignored. One: Compost! Good compost is the key to all success. Two: diversity, diversity, diversity. Three: Build tall fencing. Preferably tall electric fencing. Everything is bigger in Alaska—the state itself, the mountains, the wildlife—therefore, the fencing must be too.That year was the first of several where I stayed put for a summer, with a home to call my own, and therefore a place to call my garden. I had big, bountiful dreams for that summer. The preparation began in March, indoors, when the days were still bitterly cold, well below freezing, but the sun was at least beginning to show its warm face again.

Gardening From Seed in Alaska Starts Inside

Growing and eating food—from seed to belly, completing the cycle—brings much satisfaction. Only, I had never grown anything from a seed in my life. Like many novice gardeners, I had purchased plants someone else had started. Determined to make it work, I read all of my seed packets, dove into internet holes about starting seeds and gardening in interior Alaska and carefully followed instructions.Starting certain seeds can be difficult, regardless of conditions, but starting seeds indoors with only minimal true daylight takes effort, babying and attention. Each weekend, I planted a different round of seeds—dill, bell pepper, lavender, cabbage, tomato, calendula, comfrey, squash, zucchini, cucumber, the list continued—depending on how much time each needed for germination and when it should be planted. Each week, I rearranged all the small, compostable pots on the window sills to make room for the new. Come April, it may have still been winter outside, but inside our household, green was sprouting up all around us. Each and every tiny little leggy and delicate sprout deserved praise. And I showered them all. “Dale!” I exclaimed to my husband each day. “Another calendula has sprouted!” Or, “Dale—my last tomato finally sprouted! Look, come look!” He didn’t quite care enough to look at every single sprout, but I forced it upon him. My babies needed to know they were loved.

I needed to provide protection to my offspring, now at the whim of the external world.

Container Gardening in Alaska: Soil, Diversity and Companion Planting

By mid-May, all surfaces near windows were overflowing with young plant life. I was running out of room, and they were beginning to crowd one another. But the ground was still frozen outside, and snow still covered some areas. I had nowhere to put my seedlings. “Don’t worry,” I whispered to all of them, “you’ll grow big soon. The world’s not yet ready for you.” I prepared my seedlings for their life to come by placing them outside during the day and bringing them in each evening.Toward the end of May, it was time. Dale built slightly raised beds, and I concocted a beautiful mixture of soil. “Good luck!” I told my little vegetables, “But don’t worry, I’ll watch over you!” I had all of my ducks in line, except for one. Compost—check. Diversity, diversity, diversity—check, check and check. I had my veggies and herbs checkerboarded and intermixed, complementing one another with grace. No fence yet. I told myself once they got bigger, I’d put up a fence. To provide nourishment for their journey of growth, I mixed some blood meal in the soil surrounding each seedling, more for the brassica family plants like cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli, which are heavy feeders.

Dealing With Furry, Four-Legged Alaska Garden Pests

The next morning, there were fox tracks in all of my raised beds, and one of my dogs had dug up a small area where I planted some flower seeds. Damn the blood meal. I told Dale we needed to build some fencing. I’ve never really been one for fences, artificial boundaries humans create to separate what shouldn’t be. But I needed to provide protection to my offspring, now at the whim of the external world.We were proud of the scrap wood, chicken wire, chest-high fencing we built. At each corner of every raised bed, a wooden stake was pounded into the soil. The chicken wire, stapled to each post, was wrapped around the square, and the last flap was left un-stapled to act as a floppy door that could be opened and closed. It wasn’t electric. And it wasn’t very tall either—I needed to be able to bend over the fence and reach each plant for watering and harvesting.

The Joy of Eating From My Alaska Vegetable Garden

For a one-summer-only, non-permanent garden, we thought we did pretty well. The plants thought so too. The garden gave us salad for days, the pepper plants started to flower, the squash blossomed abundantly, the broccoli grew nearly as tall as me, the tomatoes taller and the cabbage—the first seeds I started indoors and a plant that is difficult to transplant—began to grow round and full. I had a green thumb, and I was proud of it.Each morning, I walked to all of my various raised beds (they were spread around our cabin in different spots, wherever there was enough sunlight), checking on my veggies, herbs and flowers, greeting them good morning. Each evening, I did the same, walking through and harvesting what was ready for dinner, thanking the plant for all that it provided.

I screamed up at the sky, into the world, profanities shooting out of my mouth like a shotgun round, hands clutching at the roots of my hair.

My Number One Gardening in Alaska Tip

One morning, I walked toward my favorite raised bed. This one was special. It had already given so much, and come this weekend, I would be able to harvest multiple cabbages—the ones I’d started in March—to make sauerkraut. I noticed the bed looked a bit different than the day before, more barren, and I wondered whether Dale had maybe harvested a few items.I walked closer. I dropped to my knees. My jaw dropped too. My eyes swelled with tears. I screamed up at the sky, into the world, profanities shooting out of my mouth like a shotgun round, hands clutching at the roots of my hair. Deep, double-sided hoof prints surrounded the bed. And inside, a war zone. What was left of the broccoli—an inch of stem—lay lifeless and uprooted, clear-cut brussels sprouts sharply severed just above the soil, romanesco cauliflower carelessly consumed, the leaves broken off and trampled—and the cabbage, my poor cabbage, beheaded.My babies, who had grown up so big and strong. My babies, who had graduated and gone to college. My beautiful babies were mauled by a moose. I assume they were tasty.Lesson learned. The fencing should be high—and electric.

I never had a job in a restaurant before, and Peter, the general manager, gave me my first shot at what became a tenure of experience with food and beverage. He dedicated his life to this place, so it alarmed me when they owed him thousands of dollars in bounced checks. He would disappear to the bathroom all the time, and he would come back with a sudden burst of energy and literally save the day in our busiest times. I realized it was his battle with opioids that kept him going until the addiction took his life. I didn’t get to thank him for changing mine.

Peter Taught Me Almost Everything I Know About Working in Restaurants

It was a super hot summer day outside, and sweat pierced through the shirt I’d been wearing four hours straight. All morning, I was heading back and forth to all the different boroughs doing interviews. No luck. All the hiring managers gave me was, “We will call you back,” or “You can leave a resume with us on file,” and for me, that just meant fuck off. At this point, I was in an older part of Brooklyn. Rather than having mostly new businesses, this area had places there for years, and most of these places had staff who committed to them. I handed out at least 30 resumes that day. On average, I did that much a week, but today, I popped into tons of new places. I realized I had one more in my bag. Did I feel like going home? Yes. For some reason on my way to the train, I stumbled upon a really nice, upscale, modern place. The doors were 20 feet tall and made of solid cherry oak wood. It seemed as if there were no lights on and they might still be closed. With a leap of faith, I pulled the door and it opened. I walked inside and it was a quiet, white table cloth, fancy dining room that gave me new American steakhouse vibes. The smell that someone just finished mopping let me know I was not alone. “Maybe it’s too early to see anyone that can help,” I thought to myself. As I turned around and headed toward the door, I heard a voice come from behind the huge bar across the restaurant. This bar sat at least 20 people comfortably. The restaurant's dining room itself could hold about 200 people. As I looked around the bar to see who it was, a middle-aged man popped his head up. His green eyes pierced with concern. His crooked smile greeted me right after. I was nervous because I remembered the last resume I had in my bag was kind of crushed up and folded. Not the best first impression. I asked him if they were hiring. He said no but would like to see my resume anyways. He came from around the bar. He had some ice he was filling at the bar and placed the bucket on the floor. He took my resume. I wondered to myself how bad he must think I am at this just seeing that I had no experience. He looked me in the eyes and asked, “Can I trust you?” I responded with a, “Yes, OF COURSE SIR!” He told me not to call him sir. It made him feel old. “My name is Peter.” He shook my hand and told me to come in tomorrow. My joy was through the roof! I left that place and called my girlfriend with so much energy. Finally, the pain and worry of looking for work were finally over! I went to the store and bought clothes to train in. Training was an experience I would never forget. This man knew so much about food and beverage, especially fancy wine and beer I had never even heard of. I took in all the advice and experience he offered me, and within a week, I was officially a part of the team.

The restaurant industry is literally like being in high school.

I Learned Firsthand About Restaurant Politics

The staff was cool. Everyone was pretty young aside from the few people who worked in the kitchen that were over 45. I got along with everyone. The owners, however, came off a little sketchy. They would show up, check the point-of-sale system for sales that day and then order food and leave with bags of money. The police and fire department would show up after getting complaints about noise or overcrowding, and the owners would make the staff lie and say they had not been there. Friends of the owners would never tip you and never pay for their food. The restaurant industry is literally like being in high school. Nothing but drama and people putting on a show. No one in a service job is completely themselves. You have to put on a certain voice or even maintain a character when dealing with patrons. So it is even worse when it comes to the staff and management. They are all being someone they are not.I did not take seriously the rumors about Peter. I mean, to me he could never do any wrong. He looked out for me and got me this job. So what if people called him a drug addict? I didn’t see what they meant by that. He was hard working and such a great person. One day, I opened the restaurant with Peter. It was a slow weekday, so I got to examine how the restaurant ran more than I usually did when I was busy. I noticed that he took a while to come back from the bathroom. And when he did, he seemed a bit out of it for a few minutes and then he’d get this burst of energy.

The Staff’s Checks Started Bouncing

One day, he was really annoyed and being weird about his check, but I did not know why. I later found out that for weeks, he had not been getting paid. His checks were bouncing. Then I found out that it was common for the owners to hand out checks that would bounce. It was only a few months after I was there that my checks started bouncing too. It was a race to the check-cashing place every week. If you got there too late, the checks bounced and you were broke. A lot of staff quit, but I stayed (I was not going to quit a job that was already hard to find) and so did Peter. I mean, after all, he was the manager, and without him, there would be no restaurant. A few months passed, and I found out the job let him go because he complained about not being paid. I got a promotion to head server, and I could not even share the good news with Peter. He came in one day hobbling on a broken foot. He said that they let him go and then he got drunk one night and fell down some stairs. He had been depressed because they owed him over four months' pay. The owners told him to come in at 2 p.m. because they were going to try and “resolve” the issue by giving him cash or a new check. By 9 p.m., no owners had shown up to help him. This went on for four days straight. I felt so bad during this process. Walking by the private room he waited in while these owners probably watched the cameras laughing at him. He was so broke. I remember buying him dinner and buying him a few drinks while he waited. He told me I didn’t need to do that, but in my heart, I felt it was the right thing.

Two weeks later, I was told that Peter died from an overdose in his apartment.

I Never Got to Tell Peter That He Changed My Life

After that week of him coming in, the owners never kept in touch with him. They showed up at the restaurant after hours to pick money/food up and leave. Two weeks later, I was told that Peter died from an overdose in his apartment. He had no family here, and they were shipping his body to Ireland. Even as I write this, tears fall from my eyes because Peter and I gave energy and time to a place we could never get back. This industry is only here for you when you are making them money. When you die, they do not care about funeral expenses. He gave his life to this job, and the owners didn’t even have anything nice to say about him. They still owe him a lot of money. I stayed at this job as long as I could, but after a while of my checks bouncing, I felt like it was volunteer work, and I left too. Peter was misunderstood, and that goes for many people in this world. The drugs he was taking could have been to help his mental health. Maybe they were prescribed to him, or maybe he self-medicated. All I know is the world lost a good man that day. I was able to learn a lot from him that even to this day serves purpose, like wine pairing and how to perform well under pressure. I will always remember the night we had karaoke in the basement of the restaurant, and I surprised him with my renditions of Nirvana and Coldplay. He never knew I could sing, and that made us closer because he sang that night too. That was the first time I saw him with his guard down having fun.I’m going to miss you, Peter. I want to thank you for taking a chance on me. For letting me into your world. Thank you for showing me that when you think there is no hope, help is around the corner. I wish I could tell you about all the success I got after our encounter. I also wish you were still here so I could let you know life was going to get better. I wish you could see that the shitty restaurant we once loved is now closed because the shady owners had to get rid of it. I hope wherever you are, your spirit is at rest knowing you made that place everything it was and without you, it was a disaster. Rock on, Peter.

When the coronavirus stopped the world and we went into lockdown, I was almost done with college. My college years had been tough, and I was caught in a wild storm of depression and anxiety. I was also starting to grow up to be a workaholic, and having free time was one of my most illogical fears. Now, with no stress about studies, exams and university applications, I had this huge chunk of free time, and with nothing to keep me busy, my anxiety became uncontrollable. I had too much time to think, and my thoughts were a continuous nightmare. I tried doing stuff to keep me engaged throughout the day—painting, reading, watching shows—but I quickly got over all of them. They’d help me shut down my mind for a little while, but once I wrapped up, it would switch on again. I was trying to ignore the fact that my mental health was sliding down a slope, and when things got more turbulent, I couldn’t manage myself. Even worse, I was trying to deal with this in silence, all by myself. I was very distant from my family, whom I was living with uncomfortably, and had cut off most of my friends because of how difficult communication was for me. It was suffocating. I was a 19-year-old flight risk with no one to talk to and nothing to do to help myself.

I was constantly in contact with my thoughts.

Baking Was My Accidental Salvation

I started baking as a hobby without really intending to. I had always been fascinated with it growing up, watching my mother bake cakes and brownies. I had already aced my chocolate cake, which my friends absolutely adored. But when I had the inspiration to expand my repertoire, I didn’t know it was going to be the one thing that would pull me out of the ocean I’d been drowning in.It was a simple process, really. Almost every week, I gave myself a challenge, like trying out a new banana bread recipe or experimenting with lemon cakes. I looked up different recipes on YouTube or other sites and figured out the best one for me. I’d jot it down in a little notepad and then head to my kitchen, ready to brave the oven amidst the July heat. I didn’t like having anyone else around when I was baking. I always went to the kitchen when it was empty, and soon enough, my family understood that they had to steer clear of the kitchen while I was in there. It was just me and my notebook and a mind that became surprisingly calm once I started. It was a cathartic process: gathering the baking soda and powder in their small bottles, the flour and cocoa in their large bags, cracking an egg, adding the sugar and beating them together with a hand whisk until they became a frothy, soft, pale yellow mixture. I always knew intuitively when to stop. What I loved about baking was that I couldn’t afford to shut down my mind and work robotically as I did with other things. I didn’t turn on my music because this silence was more soothing than it was alarming. Most of the time when I was alone, the silence was too overwhelming for me, so I resorted to listening to music. But in the kitchen, I fidgeted with excitement, going back and forth from my recipe to measuring just the right amount of ingredients. I was constantly in contact with my thoughts, and because I couldn’t let them go into self-destruct mode, I was forced to arrange them. My mind played tiny episodes of my life, like an argument I recently had or a family discussion that made me really nervous, and I went over them calmly, gently reassuring myself that I was going to be okay. My “flight-risk” thoughts alternated with comfortingly mundane thoughts like, “OK, what goes into the bowl next?”

I Got Way More Out of Baking Than Just the Cakes

I found a comfort zone where I wasn’t terrified of thinking about the things that made me anxious or scared or worried. I could sort my feelings out and address them one by one. And pretty soon, I realized I could think about them without having it completely wreck me. In the peaceful atmosphere of my quiet kitchen, I could finally listen to myself without creating a mess of things. Dealing with my emotions began to seem less impossible.After the wet ingredients, I would whisk in my flour and forget to whisk my cocoa, so the batter would end up having lumps of it. I learned why we add salt to our cakes. I also learned why we always use granulated sugar. That was obviously after a few cakes turned out not-so-perfect.Prepping the pan was my least favorite part, and still is. But it was an important step to get to a perfect cake. So even though I absolutely hated putting parchment in pans with removable bottoms, I made sure I did the job perfectly because my goal needed me to do every step as well as I could.When it was time for the pan to go in the oven, it was a proper test of my self-control. When you’ve done your part and you have to trust the final stage to something else, it’s very difficult to not lose yourself to stress. Sure it was just a cake, but for me, it was a lot of other things too. It was something I was creating, something that I would own and be responsible for. I needed to know that I was in control because if I wasn’t, it meant that things could go in ways I could do nothing about. But frankly, that was already the state of my life: I wasn’t in control, but I was too uncomfortable to acknowledge it.

Sure it was just a cake, but for me, it was a lot of other things too.

I Learned a Lot About Myself in the Kitchen

When my cake was in the oven, I knew I had to wait a certain time before I could open it and check on the progress. I couldn’t worry about it because that would literally do nothing except get me anxious over something out of my control. I had to trust the process, having done my part, and just hope that everything turned out great. And for the most part, it did. And when it didn’t—like the first five times I tried baking chocolate chip cookies—I never felt disheartened, and I never decided to give up on it. This was something new for me, just knowing, without ever thinking about it, that I had to try again. I’d go onto the internet, watch a few more tutorials, figure out where I might have done something wrong and then get back at it again. I cemented it in my head that I would not give up.When I’d create something new, I’d share it with my family, and that eased my transition back into communication with people. Spending that much time in proper contact with myself was probably the best thing that I gained from baking because it helped me see that I was the only one who could help myself when things got rough. When I think about that time now, I can see how many of my personal life rules came from my experience with baking. It’s amazing how a cookie can teach you to bet on yourself, trust your gut and not give up.

Since a young age, I have loved eating at restaurants, but my outlook changed as soon as I began working in tourism at a luxury resort with multiple eateries on-site. I never had the experience to dine in a luxury resort until I started working at one. In my humble opinion, the price should at least guarantee the most basic sanitary conditions. But it is hard to control what is blind to the eye. Clients cannot complain about the gross things that happen behind closed kitchen doors. The average customer at our resort comes from a privileged background. The majority come from the United States with some sort of self-made millionaire story. Among the resort’s many attractions is a taco bar that has become a favorite of our guests. I don’t work there, but my office is right next door, giving me a firsthand look at how our famous tacos are prepared.

Rats and other animals lounge by the counter.

Our Luxury Restaurant Is as Delicious as It Is Unsanitary

The organic guacamole is served by a waiter who has long, dirty nails. To prepare the guacamole, he mashes the avocados with a fork, displaying the icky bacteria trapped underneath his fingernails. I am not a millionaire, but I do not tolerate dirty nails in the kitchen. How can a restaurant charge over $20 for tacos and not demand its staff to keep their nails trimmed and clean? Presentation matters not only for the dishes but also for the employees who make them. The pandemic has been a great challenge for the tourism industry. We are all required to wear face masks outdoors and indoors to minimize the spread of the virus. However, the chef is not a big fan of keeping his mask on while he works. This is not gross except when his nose gets itchy and he decides to scratch at it, then continue cooking. In addition, I have seen how the chefs and bartenders go to the toilet with their phones. When they take their phones, I know they will take their time. When they’re done in the restroom, they don’t disinfect their phones. They just put it in their back pockets. When there are not a lot of clients, they pull out their phones again to send texts and then continue cooking or serving without washing their hands.There is only one toilet available for all the kitchen staff and the administrative staff. Once, I had to wait over 40 minutes to use it. I was shocked to see the cook exit the restroom without washing his hands. When I went in to check, the sink was completely dry, and the soap container was full.The taco kitchen is outdoors. At night, rats and other animals lounge by the counter. The morning after, the chef and staff come and make the tortilla dough on the same surface. When the dough is rising, they lay it on the counter, leaving it exposed to sea flies. Despite this, the burritos and tacos still taste amazing. I have indulged in ordering tacos myself because I could not resist the smell of beer-battered fish on the stove. How can parasites and germs taste and smell so good? Once, after swallowing the last bite, I had to rush to the toilet because my bowels were giving a loud and unsolicited concert. It was not surprising that I had diarrhea the whole day after.

Even I Can’t Resist Our Tainted Food

I wish that was the last time I indulged in our tacos, but in fact, I went on to make the same mistake three weeks after the first incident. I thought changing my order would make digestion easier. The second time, my order was a big burrito. The result was the same as before. The number of clients complaining about food poisoning has increased recently. Angry guests have left bad reviews on Tripadvisor narrating how their vacations were ruined due to powerful food poisoning. As a result, the company hired an auditor to analyze the issue for four months. A week after finishing, they created a permanent position that would become what the kitchen staff calls “the food police.” Clients still pay to get intoxicated on filet mignon and tacos. Waiters and chefs continue to serve with a smile on their face, knowing they make less in a day than the average cost of a dish. Poor hygiene habits are unlikely to change before the end of the month, despite the new food police guy who now roams the kitchens. A while back, someone really close to one of the most famous celebrities of a U.S. reality show stayed at the hotel for a couple of weeks. He would often visit the taco restaurant but never mentioned negative nor positive feedback from the food. At my office, everyone has gotten food poisoning from eating tacos, nachos and burritos. Perhaps some stomachs are stronger than others.

It was not surprising that I had diarrhea the whole day after.

Our Restaurant Has Made Me Sick, but I Don’t Blame the Staff

I am confident the hotel can get past its reputation for food poisoning over time. On the other hand, it is highly unlikely the kitchen staff will get fair wages and normal working hours. In my personal experience, the process of cooking the food and the unfair politics at the company are equally gross. The kitchen staff are the most hard-working people on site. They work over ten hours per day in a country where hourly wages do not exist. On the other hand, I still believe the third time's a charm. Despite all I know, I will give the tacos one last chance.

Some people are wine connoisseurs. Some people are connoisseurs of fine food. I’m a connoisseur of sugared cereal, if such a thing exists. Which it doesn’t really, because even people addicted to sugary cereal will tell you that sugary cereal is, objectively, fairly disgusting. But for those of us who have spent a lifetime spooning gobs of multicolored glucose delivery systems towards vulnerable enamel, the disgustingness is not a disincentive. On the contrary, it’s part of the appeal. The way that Fruity Pebbles turn into a multicolored paste in milk, giving off a scent of chemical sweetness, like a slush of cancerous bees; the sensation of Apple Jacks serrating the roof of your mouth so the sugar enters through a thousand sandpaper incisions rather than through the digestive system; the bland, inedible, cardboard taste of Lucky Charms, which makes each marshmallow a blissful relief; the gaseous aftereffects of Honey Smacks bubbling up for hours, to be swallowed and re-swallowed, so you can linger over the aftertaste of flavored methane. People boast of the decadent pleasures of various controlled substances; they regale you about altered states and acrobatic sexual encounters. But if you really want to feel the dead-end of 21st-century modernity roiling through your bowels, try eating an entire box of Frosted Flakes in one sitting while staring into Tony the Tiger’s giant, unblinking eyes. It’s…great!Or something other than great, maybe. But either way, this extremity of consumerism and self-abuse is mostly closed to me now. I look back on it with the wistful nostalgia and involuntary spasms of a nicotine addict.

I look back on it with the wistful nostalgia and involuntary spasms of a nicotine addict.

My Diabetes Feels Like Retribution for Eating Too Much Cereal

I was diagnosed with diabetes about a year ago. I’ve been responsive to medication—I haven’t needed insulin—and my doctor doesn’t seem to think that I need to make huge changes to my diet as of yet. But still. When you have blood sugar problems, eating three to six bowls of sugar-coated honey bombs with extra frosting is not such a great idea. You don’t have to have a medical degree, or even much functioning gray matter, to know that if you have an earache, you probably shouldn’t stab an icepick in there.I’m sure some of you are already judging me with your judgy Tony Tiger stare of judgy judgeness. And I judge myself too, though I know I shouldn’t. Poor diet and lack of exercise can increase the risk of diabetes, but my doctor doesn’t think my diet is that poor, and while my exercise has lagged over the years, I’ve never become completely inert. I walk the dog. I ride the exercise bike. I could kick your cardboard cartoon tiger ass, damn it.Even if the cardboard tiger gets more cardio than me being lifted in and out of the cardboard, blaming someone for their own illness is wrong. People aren’t morally compromised if they get sick, or if they’re overweight, or if they get diabetes. There is no reasonable moral system that assigns you to an afterlife based on blood sugar levels.But when it’s you, and your body is slowly decaying beneath your softening flesh, it’s hard not to feel like it’s retribution come upon you for iniquity and an egregious sweet tooth. Wouldn’t a virtuous person somewhere along the line have developed the ability to eat only one Vienna Finger, or only two, or only 12, or only enough to make him slightly sick rather than really and truly ready to upchuck wafer bits and cream? Isn’t it a reflection on your character when you eat more than one Jelly Belly at a time so the fabled flavors are overwhelmed in an indistinguishable gelatin sugar belch?

When you have blood sugar problems, eating three to six bowls of sugar-coated honey bombs with extra frosting is not such a great idea.

I Want a Future With Healthier Junk Food

If we’re not talking medical cause and effect, maybe we’re at least talking karma. I’ve tied myself to the wheel with ropes of licorice and sharpened nails of self-indulgence. A more balanced diet, a more balanced life, a few thousand fewer bowls of Crunch Berries, maybe I wouldn’t be looking at two giant Metformin tablets every day, plus the cholesterol pills. The judge at the gate is Toucan Sam, farting rainbows as he dips his bloody beak in your heart. Sam sees me backsliding I’m sure; I have managed to cut out cereal, but there are still more than occasional candies and cookies. Even as I type, I may be sucking up the last dregs of whipped cream from an overpriced vanilla bean Frappuccino. I try to do it quietly so as not to alert the diabetes, but I can’t help but slurp, and my guess is that it isn’t fooled. Someday in the not too distant future, that vigilant diabetes will cease to compromise with the Metformin, and I’ll have a choice of a life without Frappuccino or a life without—well, life. Hopefully, I’ll pick the life without Frappuccino, though it does seem like a dry and dreary existence. In the meantime, I could gorge on regrets, if my palette craved bitterness, which, as we’ve established, it mostly doesn’t. Sometimes, I wish for a history of greater continence or at least for more interesting vices. I dream of an obsession with more upscale—more socially acceptable, and maybe even vaguely healthier—junk food. Apple pie has apples in it, at least, unlike Apple Jacks. The strawberries in strawberry pancakes are vaguely recognizable as actual fruit, unlike the strawberry substitute in strawberry Skittles.

I Enjoyed My Time Consuming the Sugary Treats My Body Rejects Now

Unfortunately, I have a phalanx of food allergies which have confined me to the lumpenproletariat of sweets. When eating eggs makes you vomit and get hives on your head, most breakfasts and most baked goodies are less appealing than all of those formulated sugar products, which cannot trigger food allergies because no food is involved. In theory, I guess I could have responded to my dessert deprivation by embracing healthier options like bananas or walnuts, if I weren’t also allergic to those. In practice, when I couldn’t have cake, I had Krispies. Is it wrong? I’m of two minds there, like the fabled Crispix made of contrasting sides of corn and rice. Compulsively downing flavored gluten bits while various advertising mascots look on may not be a youthful indiscretion worthy of song and story. But I did enjoy it at the time. If this somewhat disgusting bowl is now to pass from my lips, the least I can do is to admit that I wish it wouldn’t. Age, bodies, will and virtue fail everyone eventually. Shovel in immoderate sweetness while you can. And also milk.

Cooking was a huge part of my childhood. My mother was an accomplished cook, and despite having a very busy career as a doctor, she loved to wind down by creating elaborate meals on the weekend. I was raised on a steady diet of Indian food, which she learned to cook during her college days, along with a range of other dishes rarely seen in most Irish kitchens at the time. My love of cooking stemmed from these experiences, and as I grew into a young adult, my sister and I spent more and more time in the kitchen perfecting our own skills. But cooking was not something I ever considered as a career. As I waded through my final year of high school and considered my college choice options, I was disgusted when my father suggested that I consider a career as a chef. I thought it was beneath me. To my mind, cooking was a hobby, not a career. I did it for pleasure. I had no intention of turning something I loved into an actual job.

It suddenly dawned on me that I had no idea what I was doing.

Cooking Was a Pleasure for Me, Not a Career

As I grew older, still struggling to find the right career path, I began to reconsider. I knew I didn’t want to be a chef, but the idea of running my own small cafe held immense appeal. I visualized myself spending hours designing menus and researching niche suppliers to create something unique. Eventually, in 2015, the opportunity to open my own cafe with a financial investment from my partner presented itself. Despite my misgivings, I hastily jumped on the bandwagon, caught up in the momentum and excitement around the project. The cafe was located in a college town just outside Dublin. With 10,000 students living in the town and a wealthy population, everything looked good on paper. The previous owners had put a lot of time and money into it, creating a business that was both profitable and successful. The cafe was the place to go for the wealthy ladies who lunch, and the day I received the keys to the business, it was packed to capacity. It was also the day that the head chef quit with no notice, leaving me with junior staff trying to hold it together. I froze. It suddenly dawned on me that I had no idea what I was doing, and my fear was palpable. The staff viewed me with suspicion, and I knew that they sensed my inexperience like blood in the water. My first day in charge was a blur, and at my tiny desk in the makeshift office above the cafe, panic flooded through me as I realized there was no going back.

I Was in Over My Head, and Everyone Knew

Things fell apart very quickly. I had no confidence in my ability, and it was obvious to all around me. I struggled through the first year with a rotation of staff who never stayed long enough to learn the necessary skills. Those who had worked there prior to my taking over resented me and any changes I tried to make within the business. They knew better than me. The customers, too, were resistant to change, and when I eventually revamped the menu, it was met with disdain. They didn’t want a new menu and, time and time again, I was reminded of this. Through all this mayhem and confusion, the crowds started to dwindle, and the profits began to fall. Stress became my constant companion. I began to hate the cafe and all that was related to it. The bills began to mount up, and it wasn’t long before my taxes became overdue. I had taken on the cooking duties, churning out a seemingly endless stream of bread, cakes, scones, soups and salads, all the while hiding from the world in the steamy confines of the kitchen. I took solace in cooking, but my lack of confidence and business acumen was taking a deadly toll on the business. Every day was a struggle to make ends meet. My responsibilities weighed on me heavily, while the staff viewed me with growing contempt and suspicion. I began to hate going to work. My dream had become the ultimate nightmare.

Things fell apart very quickly.

My Cafe Quickly Reached Its Messy End

Through all of this, my partner looked on aghast at how I was handling things, yet offered little or no support. Anytime I tried to bring up the subject of how I was struggling, he told me he didn’t want to know—“Just sort it out.” I stopped trying to talk to him and retreated into myself more and more. The bills were becoming unmanageable, and I knew I was on a path of complete destruction, yet I felt powerless to stop it. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, powerless to avoid the inevitable collision. And when it finally came, it was spectacular. My landlord had become increasingly frustrated with rent being late, and our relationship had soured, to say the least. When I arrived to work one fateful day, I plodded up the stairs to the kitchen, weary already, although the day had barely begun. Turning my key, I was baffled for a moment when the door refused to give way. Suddenly, it dawned on me. I had been locked out. The landlord had come overnight and changed the locks on the premises with no warning whatsoever. My mind went numb, and my body followed as a panic attack consumed me. I also felt awash with a strange sense of relief. The worst had happened. I had hit rock bottom, and the only way was up—or at least that’s what I hoped. It was finally over. Of course, I was wrong about that, as I had been about so much. What followed was a long, drawn-out legal battle with the landlord. We tried to recoup some of the money that my partner had invested in it. He could barely look at me, and I couldn’t blame him. His life savings had been obliterated in a matter of weeks, and I was the only one to blame. For a time, I was convinced we wouldn’t make it through, such was his disdain for me, but eventually, the wounds began to heal, and we found our way back to each other. We were scarred for sure, but we lived to tell the tale—although he won’t be investing in any business with me anytime soon. And that’s just fine by me.

I tested positive for COVID-19 back in June 2020. I was lucky enough to experience relatively milder symptoms. My fever oscillated between 99 and 101 degrees, and I had all the trappings of a normal flu—cold, blocked nose and sore throat. However, what was supposedly the most benign symptom had the most long-lasting impact on me: losing my sense of taste and smell. Surprisingly, despite having sinusitis issues since my childhood, I had never once experienced this particular sensory loss. As a foodie, this symptom was the most stress-inducing for me and permanently changed my view on the significance of food in my life.

This symptom was the most stress-inducing for me and permanently changed my view on the significance of food in my life.

My Anosmia Eventually Morphed Into Something Worse

I had never realized before how flavor is actually a combination of taste and smell. Imagine having your tea without its heavenly aroma. For an avid tea drinker like me, it was torture having my favorite beverage of the day without tasting it. Similarly, for all I knew, I could be eating sand instead of my pasta. Since this symptom was still quite novel and not many people realized what it truly meant to experience it, most of my family made fun of me, saying that it would make me crave food less. However, I quickly realized how my lack of taste was making me prone to binge-eating behavior. I started eating more despite tasting nothing just to put my taste buds to the test. Thankfully, as a psychology student, my professional training helped me quickly recognize this problematic behavior and nip it in the bud before it got maladaptive.Still, it led me to explore the fascinating world of taste and smell. Upon further research, I found that the complete loss of smell I was experiencing was called anosmia, a common indicator of the COVID-19 virus. This phenomenon is usually caused by a sinus infection, nasal congestion, allergies or old age. Most of the time, anosmia is a temporary condition that is resolved as soon as the root cause is treated. My anosmia, preceded by my COVID-19 diagnosis, persisted for a good three months. Then, one day, I started to smell something smoky, like burnt rubber, while washing my face. I dismissed it as the water smelling funny, but when I went outside, that smell followed me. Pretty soon, I realized my absence of smell had been replaced by the general presence of just one smell—that of burnt tires. Interestingly, I was still able to faintly detect a nice scent, like of perfume or a flower, but any bad odors were replaced by this consistent burnt rubber smell, which varied in intensity. If I walked past a dumpster, the odor of burnt rubber became overwhelming, and then eventually receded. Depending on the intensity, it could at times be a nauseating experience.

My Life Became Distorted With Toxic Smells

This peculiar phenomenon of distortion in the taste of smell is called parosmia. It causes common things you encounter every day to seem like they have a disagreeable odor. I experienced that when vehicle fumes, which previously never bothered me, smelled overwhelmingly like burnt rubber or at times, sewage. Parosmia has also been identified as a commonly reported symptom amongst people suffering from long COVID-19. Before, my tea would smell like nothing; now it smelled nauseatingly like rotten garbage. They say hindsight is 20/20, and I realized that after most things started smelling revolting when they’d previously smelled like nothing.The entire experience was extremely disconcerting because the distorted smell was entirely novel. It took me a while to figure out that my olfactory sense was now different from others. Similarly, when it came to taste, it felt like everything I ate for the first two months was a plate of sand. Eventually, I started tasting spicy things, which meant that I began dousing my food in Tabasco and sriracha sauce just to experience some flavor. Soon, I could taste sweet things as well, a nice respite for my massive sweet tooth. What was irksome was how most people around me dismissed my concerns about lacking taste and smell, casually remarking that I was “imagining” it or that I was being ungrateful, because I had admittedly gotten off easy compared to the more severe positive cases.

It felt like everything I ate for the first two months was a plate of sand.

Losing My Sense of Smell Has Affected My Social Life and Relationships

This experience has definitely changed my relationship with food. I distinctly remember my lowest point was when my birthday came as I was experiencing acute anosmia. I excitedly ordered my favorite cake, but while it looked delectable, I couldn’t taste any of it. It left me depressed for days. I was gutted, realizing how I was deprived of the joy that food brought into my life on a daily basis. I used to love having eggs in any shape and form—be it poached, scrambled or fried—but now it has been almost a year since I have had them. While cooking, all I’ve been able to smell is the nauseating odor of rotten eggs. My appetite has fluctuated, and my mood followed its trajectory. The worst part has been not knowing when this would end. How I socialized also changed while I was going through these long-COVID symptoms. Most social interactions involve the act of eating, and an impaired sense of smell or taste adversely impacted my ability to enjoy these interactions. It’s been 18 months since I tested negative for COVID-19, and to some extent, I still have a distorted sense of taste and smell.I’m still happy and grateful to have recovered more than 70 percent of it. Slowly, the flavor is coming back to my life. I can’t wait for the day when I regain it completely.

I grew up in a house without health insurance for most of my life. My dad was self-employed and my mom worked part-time at a local hardware store, so no one had access to employee health benefits. We didn’t have a lot of money, so paying for insurance out of pocket was out of the question. We never went to doctors unless we were basically dying. It wasn’t until my junior year of college that I had health insurance because of the Affordable Care Act. I finally could see doctors and therapists for my physical and mental health issues and not have to pay completely out of pocket. If I needed medical care for anything, I wasn’t afraid to seek help. At least, until my first year of grad school. When I moved 1,000 miles from home to get my master’s, I began to come into my own and to spend time figuring out who I was and who I wanted to be. It was during my first year of grad school that I realized that I am transgender. I no longer wanted to be perceived as a woman; I wanted the world to see me as I saw me: as a man. This meant changing things like my haircut, as well as taking testosterone and having top surgery. I would quickly realize this was not so straightforward.

It’s not uncommon for transgender people to start GoFundMe pages to raise money for these life-saving surgeries.

There Are Many Obstacles to Endure Before Getting Top Surgery

Because I went to grad school outside my home state, advisors recommended that I become a resident of the state where my school was located to have all of my tuition covered by my stipend (I had to pay the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition during that first year). In doing so, I was no longer a dependent under my parents and had to get my own health insurance. This was right at the point of figuring out that I am transgender. As I was looking through every company’s statement of benefits, it became clear how little was covered. Let’s take a journey through my process of “becoming a man.” I knew from the beginning that I wanted to be on hormones and that I at least wanted top surgery (the removal of my breasts). Any form of bottom surgery (hysterectomy, phalloplasty, metoidioplasty, etc.) wasn’t a big concern for me. To get to the point of hormones, I had to see both a psychiatrist and a psychologist and get letters of recommendation stating that I was of sound mind and body and capable of making this medical decision for myself. Thankfully, I was in a large college town with more than one option for a provider. However, finding one that took my insurance—and wasn’t more than $150 per session for a copay—was a challenge. I was able to use one of my school’s psychiatrists to get one of the letters; the other came from a therapist I had seen while on my parents’ insurance but quit seeing when I got my own. So great, we’ve got the letters and a referral for an endocrinologist (hormone doctor) in hand. This should be easier now, right? Dear reader, it was not easier. This was about to only get more complicated and more expensive. I went to my initial appointment and got my first prescription for testosterone. Yay! Then came every required follow-up blood test, since taking testosterone can cause increases in cholesterol, blood sugar and kidney enzymes. Most insurance companies will cover one blood test per year as part of a regular physical. Anything after that can cost anywhere from $25–$150 per test.In my first year of taking testosterone, I had to get bloodwork done six times, including specialty testing done that specifically identified how much testosterone I had in my blood. This specialty testing was another $25–$150 per test because it’s mostly uncovered by insurance companies unless you’re getting it as a cisgender man and are having fertility issues. All this to just make sure I can still take a prescription.

I would quickly realize this was not so straightforward.

I’m Not Sure How I’m Going to Pay for My Own Surgery

Surgeries are in a league of their own. An insurance company covering any or all of a gender confirmation surgery is virtually unheard of. Even getting to the point of surgery can be a struggle. Most surgeons will require their patients to have been on hormones for at least two years to allow any physiological changes to happen and then plateau. So, imagine doubling the cost of all the above bloodwork. Then we get to the actual surgeries. Top surgery can cost anywhere from $8,000 to upwards of $12,000. Bottom surgeries vary greatly in price. The two main options for transgender men—metoidioplasty and phalloplasty—can cost $6,000–$30,000 and $20,000–$50,000, respectively. It’s not uncommon for transgender people to start GoFundMe pages to raise money for these life-saving surgeries. I haven’t had any surgeries yet due to the high cost. I don’t plan on having any form of bottom surgery done; I’m thankful only the top half of my body sends me into dysphoric spins. I want to have top surgery in the future, but how am I going to pay for that? Maybe I’ll take out a loan; maybe it will happen through a GoFundMe. What I’m hoping for is that my shitty genetics can get me through a loophole. My paternal grandmother had Ashkenazi Jewish heritage and died from breast cancer, so I may be a carrier for the BRCA gene. Maybe I can have top surgery written off as a preventative measure. How twisted is that?Why bear this financial burden? Why cause so much stress to your bank account? Because being the truest version of yourself is priceless. Studies from the Human Rights Campaign, the Trevor Project and GLAAD all confirm that transgender people who have access to means of gender confirmation are less likely to commit suicide. If insurance companies will pay for my Wellbutrin to treat my major depression every month, they should cover the other life-saving medical care that I need.

It was approximately 9:30 p.m. on September 1, 2021. I had just finished having dinner with my partner, Alex, and we sat in our bedroom playing chess online. It was raining quite heavily and had been doing so for about two or three hours. I had been going out to the front of our New York City building every 45 minutes or so to get some fresh air, fascinated by how hard it was raining.Eventually, my basement neighbor knocked on my door. I thought this was strange, as I rarely received a knock. He warned me that a bit of water was beginning to come in underneath the building's front door and into the hallway. He was very calm, and the water by the door didn’t seem like much at this point, almost as if someone had spilled a bucket of water. I realized my neighbor’s concern; he's in a basement and some of his property could be damaged, so I offered to help him move some of his belongings to higher ground. As I left my bedroom and headed into my apartment hallway, two or three centimeters of water had trickled inside."OK, we'll put some towels down at the front door and that should help out,” Alex and I thought. Soon, a significant amount of water had accumulated in the building’s hallway and began rushing into my unit. The water was now at my ankles—much worse than I thought. But at this point, I didn’t think the water would go any higher. I called my mom just to check up on her and let her know the situation. By then, our third-floor neighbor had invited us to store some belongings in her apartment and to possibly spend the night. We gratefully accepted. Alex had grabbed a few things, and I brought my laptop. On our way upstairs, one of the neighbors suggested we go back down to move our stuff to higher ground. Alex insisted this was something we should do. Again, I didn't think the water would get any higher than my ankles, so I thought it was unnecessary, but I agreed, mostly because I didn't want Alex to be down there alone. We spent a couple of minutes on the third floor before returning to the first floor, where the water had risen to my knees.

I was locked in, and the water was just below my waist.

Water Cascaded Through the Window, and We Began Saving Valuables

At this point, I began to understand this was a potentially life-threatening situation—I began to understand the stakes. The water was rising so quickly that I knew any previous estimation I made was going to be useless. We swiftly ran into the apartment with the idea of grabbing our documents (passports, wallets, IDs, etc.) and any other valuable belongings we wished to save. Alex managed to secure them while I grabbed an empty backpack. Suddenly, the water began pouring through the windows, forming a cascade. "My car is outside and probably submerged in water,” I thought. It was all quite difficult to process—especially with a waterfall in my living room.Nothing made any sense except knowing that the only thing worth saving in the apartment was our lives. I ran into the bedroom where Alex was packing a bag with clothes. I grabbed her by the wrist and forcefully pulled her toward me and headed out to the front door, which was now closed shut. I attempted to turn and pull the doorknob to no effect. The pressure applied on the door was too great. I was locked in, and the water was just below my waist. This being a first-floor apartment, all the windows had metal rails to deter any would-be thief. There was no way in or out besides the steel-reinforced front door, which was now shut and too heavy for any human to open. I had only one thought: "I have to get through this door, but I have to destroy it to get through.” Alex tried calling 911 but calls weren’t answered. I began to have that sensation of water creeping up higher and higher on my body, not unlike slowly walking into a shallow pool or wading into the ocean.To bust down the door, I would need my toolbox underneath the kitchen sink. The problem was that the cabinet underneath was hidden under murky water, and visibility was practically zero. But as any desperate man in such a desperate situation would do, I reached down into the cabinet, and by the grace of God, or whatever manifestation of a higher power or supreme being that you may believe in, the toolbox—that small, orange, $10 toolbox from IKEA—was the first item that grazed my hand. I pulled out the hammer and knew I needed to get through the locking mechanism on the door. That meant open season on the door handle.

Your personal items and belongings can be replaced or recovered over time. Your life cannot.

Take My Advice in a Flood: Get to Higher Ground

After a few good smashes, I wrecked the knob, but the door still wouldn’t open. My next thought was to strike the doorframe right by the lock and attempt to bend the doorframe, releasing the tension on the lock and causing it to swing open. I made some progress but still couldn’t get all the way through. At this point, the water was at my belly button.My neighbor then rushed downstairs with a hammer of their own and began striking the frame from the opposite side of the door. One, two, three good, coordinated strikes and the door swung open with massive force. Needless to say, Alex and I ran all the way up to the third-floor apartment to spend the night, safe from the flooded floors below.My hands were completely beat up. In striking the door, every hammer miss meant that my hand made contact with the door, taking chunks out of my flesh. Importantly, I survived, and I’m grateful for that. I wasn’t able to save anything of significance from my apartment, but I’m alive, which is more than enough to be thankful for. In hindsight, adrenaline saved me and my lack of exit strategy. Many others were not as fortunate.If my firsthand experience with a flash flood is worth anything, remember the following: In a flash flood, the paramount thing to do is get to higher ground. Your personal items and belongings can be replaced or recovered over time. Your life cannot.

Between a graduate degree in molecular and cell biology and nearly 20 years’ experience in the research field, I hate to admit that it took no more than a few texts from my friend with a medical degree and a quick Google search for me to start popping vitamin D daily. I started doing this in 2021, not long after vaccines became available but before I was eligible to receive one, and I’ve continued to take one ever since. The link between vitamin D deficiency—highly prevalent in my fellow dark-complexioned people—and higher incidence and severity of COVID-19 when compared to our white counterparts in the U.S. was hard to brush off. Even harder were the numerous scientific papers showing a correlation between vitamin D deficiency and the increase in COVID-19 infections, especially across races. The scientist in me scrutinized the data and understood that these patterns didn’t prove causation, but the exhausted working mother of two toddlers just needed some sense that I could control my own fate. I told myself that it was for my own benefit to get myself out of the deficiency range, a goal everyone should have independent of a raging pandemic outside your doorstep. It’s not like I was about to down a bottle of Clorox or take a horse dewormer.

It’s not like I was about to down a bottle of Clorox or take a horse dewormer.

The Pandemic Changed My Entire Lifestyle

The coronavirus tipped the world off its axis in 2020, and I got whiplash hearing about all the do’s and don’ts about the virus. The message went from “masks are ineffective” to “strap on two” and, then, the unforgettable suggestion to ingest bleach by then-President Trump. Ordering grocery delivery along with wiping down anything that entered the house became routine until I learned that surface contamination was no longer a worry. But I still worried.For the first few months of the pandemic, I was trapped in my white-carpeted, two-bedroom rental apartment with my Energizer bunnies: a one- and three-year-old. Technically, I was employed as a full-time scientist, but the constant background of kids yelling during my Zoom meetings led to an unspoken understanding that I had little bandwidth to work, which was nearly impossible to do without a lab anyway. My husband attended meetings from the dining room table, which also sat in our open-space living area. Depending on the ever-changing restrictions, sometimes my only time spent out of the apartment was on our balcony—and later to retrieve the assortment of toys tossed off the same balcony. I never wanted to be a stay-at-home mother, and this dark period solidified those feelings. I felt my identity as a functional, competent working mother slip away and be replaced with an exhausted, short-tempered, daily drinking blob. My mental health plummeted like so many, but it twisted with the news that lab personnel were returning to work in June 2020. I yearned for a taste of normalcy but felt conflicted about increasing my family’s potential exposure by going onsite and letting someone else care for my children. I needed someone to tell me what to do, but no one did. I couldn’t imagine that all measures of control that I exhibited—from the masks to groceries—would be completely unknown and that missteps by others could exponentially compound once I reentered the world. The chaos and uncertainty confined within my apartment’s four walls were about to spew out, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

But I still worried.

Taking Vitamin D Pills Gave Me Some Agency in the Chaos

After those hellish three months, I was back in the lab anywhere from three to five days a week, pipetting my solutions and spinning my plates in a machine with a centrifugal force capable of moving plates at 6,000 miles per hour in the name of science. Masks became part of my daily work attire, and I learned how to read my colleagues’ expressions from the way creases formed around their eyes or forehead in response to a comment. I embraced my assortment of masks—it felt like armor—but I knew it could be pierced. It was during that time that my circle of predominantly Black and brown friends started talking about the sunshine vitamin. They discussed how much vitamin D they were taking and which form was the best for boosting immunity. Practicing medical professionals in a WhatsApp group shared stories that made the statistics of the Black and brown communities hit harder by COVID-19 no longer feel like numbers. We could be those numbers and those stories. Being at risk for vitamin D deficiency was a lifelong curse due to sunscreen and spending more time indoors. However, the melanin in our skin not only provided our rich color but blocked vitamin D from forming. So, after a flurry of messages, I headed into Target to scan the vitamin aisle and pick up another bit of armor I could wear on the inside. During a time where the world was spinning out of control, the only thing I could do to make it stop was to take control of my own health, even if it was in the shape of a pill. While I may never know if that little pill changed the trajectory of my physical health, I know for certain it set me on the right path for my mental health.

A little over two years ago, my father lost his ability to perform physical activities at high levels of endurance. He'd get tired on a favorite hike in the Rocky Mountains, or he’d find that he could bike fewer miles than he was used to. He’s been active his entire life, competing in triathlons and marathons since I was in elementary school, and has remained in exemplary physical shape despite his newfound, mysterious fatigue.Normally an early riser to work in the morning, he spent weeks unable to fall asleep, suffering from severe bouts of insomnia. He also began to wake up with sharp pains in his back during the night. When asked where they were, he said they'd move around, almost floating around his back and his ribs. After a few irregular blood tests, he went to a hematologist, who diagnosed him with a rare form of cancer called multiple myeloma. In this form of cancer, the bone marrow becomes cancerous and subsequently affects a person's blood, along with the entire vascular and circulatory networks. He was relatively young for the diagnosis, which came a day after his 61st birthday. The current survival rate for his condition is five to ten years.

The current survival rate for his condition is five to ten years.

I Couldn’t Believe How Much My Dad’s Medication Cost

My father has worked as a civil engineer his entire adult life, performing a combination of office and on-site work, inspecting roads, bridges and sewers. He also regularly attends city council meetings, as he is frequently contracted for work in the public sector and spent many years working for city governments. He continues to work and says he has no immediate plans to retire. He wouldn't be able to afford his cancer treatment otherwise.I work as a teacher and writer and admit that I am relatively naive when it comes to breaking down the costs of various kinds of medical treatment. I rely on public New York City health insurance and am fortunate that most of my costs are medication copays and the occasional urgent care visit, which usually results in an antibiotic prescription. In a country that relies extensively on privatized health insurance, those with high-paying jobs or family money have a broader number of options to pay a deductible, help reduce wait times or pay other expensive bills out of pocket.But I was still shocked when I found out how much my father's chemotherapy medication would cost him without the private health insurance he owns. He is required to take 21 capsules of the medication Revlimid a month—every day for three weeks in a row—with one "rest" week. Revlimid is basically a form of at-home chemotherapy taken by mouth. I researched the price on various public websites that break down pharmaceutical costs for patients, and without insurance, the medication is consistently between $21,000 and $26,000 for 28 pills.I want to emphasize that this is also considered baseline treatment, the go-to in terms of multiple myeloma medication. On the lower end, this would cost my father $252,000 a year without insurance and $312,000 a year on the higher end. In addition to the cost of chemotherapy pills, he goes to a hospital every other month to have a bone marrow biopsy, blood tests and doctor visits. This biopsy indicates whether or not the percentage of harmful plasma cells in his bone marrow is low enough to determine the need for another transplant. The cost of a transplant is at least $350,000. He’s already had one.

I was still shocked when I found out how much my father's chemotherapy medication would cost him.

Lifespans With Deadly Diseases Have a Lot to Do With Wealth

In many ways, my father is in a privileged position, primarily because he has healthcare through his job. He also has a $5,000 deductible health insurance plan. This is a tiny amount in comparison to what he'd pay otherwise, but for millions of working-class Americans, even this deductible amount would be out of the question.Poor people in the U.S. are far more likely to die from cancer because of privatized health insurance. They are also less likely to catch potential cancer in an early stage because of the additional costs of early screenings. Wealth also ensures shorter waiting periods for medical help, especially if you can afford to travel. When you look up life expectancies for many of these rare cancers, what you’re actually seeing is the average number of years between varying levels of income, not the medicine’s actual capabilities.It's no wonder that those with six-figure salaries can afford to stay alive longer. And yet it still blows my mind that we live in a country where my father continues to work more than 40 hours a week with an aggressive form of terminal cancer that leaves him exhausted. Shouldn't the last days or years of anyone's life—especially when handed what is essentially an expiration date—be devoted to a number of other activities that they love? A baseball game? A walk outside? A dinner with friends? I wish this for anyone in this position, not just members of my own family.

I spent two-thirds of my life able-bodied. When I became disabled and chronically ill, I was enraged and really upset at the lack of consciousness surrounding these things in our society. For a few years, I was in a really intense state of shock, trying to go to school and do all the normal things. I couldn't live in my parents' houses because they were inaccessible. And I was faced with the reality of the built environment of austerity laws that cover government benefits, which severely limit how much money you can make and still receive assistance. I didn't have food stamps because, at the time, if you were on SSI, you didn't qualify for food stamps, so I was stealing food to eat. I just basically thrust myself into the void of living independently with a very painful autoimmune disease and living in a wheelchair, and I just didn't find that any of the conversations around our economic system or our political system or our infrastructure or our social structure were being talked about. I've experienced immense ableism and harm from people of all sorts of political backgrounds and marginalized identities. No one is safe from being cruel to a cripple. I think there's a huge amount of fear of someone's own mortality wrapped up in seeing the fragility of the reality of our bodies, and I think people don't recognize how much they've absorbed the eugenic idea that if you're physically disabled, you should just kill yourself. I had a roommate tell me that he could never live the way that I did and that he would just commit suicide instead of having to endure it. And he's a leftist, a member of the DSA and he does all these things for people who are marginalized. He didn't even understand how hurtful that was to hear.

No one is safe from being cruel to a cripple.

Anti-Disability Discrimination Is Everywhere

We live in a world that I know will burn up before disabled people have equal rights or don’t have to live in a segregated society. Disabled people aren't even considered by most people to be a marginalized identity. We're on the back burner, not even on the front-end consciousness of what people think of when they think of an oppressed group. There's this really bizarre sort of propaganda that disabled people live off the state and are cared for and have what they need to exist. Even in the disability community, there’s this idea that if you're visibly disabled and use a wheelchair, people are just at your beck and call and are there to help you and take care of you and that all of your needs are met, which is not true at all. A lot of people think disability has been solved with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and nothing could be further from the truth. The ADA didn't do anything to change the situation. It's all so performative. Every time I go into a restaurant and I can't use the bathroom, they're like, “Oh, we were built in the 1960s, so we’re grandfathered in and we don't have to be accessible.” I wanted to go to grad school, but upon further research and visiting some of these campuses, I realized that none of them are accessible. I can't get to certain buildings or rooms on campus. Some don’t even have accessible bathrooms. If you have a mobility disability, you are barred from being able to access education in a way that people who can walk are able to, whether they’re disabled or not. Disabled people are still discriminated against in hiring too. They make rules where someone in an office job has to be able to lift 20 pounds in order to work there, and people don't recognize that those tiny little things are purposefully put in hiring requirements so that disabled people can't work there. And in the U.S., we can't even legally work if we need caregiving because if we work, we lose our HHS and our SSI and our health insurance all at the same time. People don't even understand the ways that disabled people are forced into poverty. Their income is capped at half the poverty level in order to receive the caregiving that they need and the health insurance that they need to exist.

The ADA didn't do anything to change the situation.

The System Is Stacked Against Disabled People

The reality is that we’re being systematically killed off through insurance denials or care denials or being kicked off harsh and cruel austerity programs for getting more than $85 a month in aid from friends or family for things that we need. When you start to experience disability and start paying attention, you come to realize that physically disabled people, chronically ill people and mentally ill people, when interacting with any sort of system of power, are going to be the most harmed by that time and time again. It’s a system that disables people as well.By putting the blame on the individual, the government gets to basically not have to take accountability for the ways that they're causing harm. And they've done such a good job, to the point where even people most implicated in these systems of harm still hold out hope or belief in the systems that govern them or police systems or economic systems that have been the cause of their suffering. Anyone who can walk and doesn't need a caregiver or SSI to exist doesn’t understand the struggles of my daily life or what it's like to not be able to get married or have children because you’ll lose the benefits you need to survive. They don’t understand what it's like to not be able receive what you need to existNo one wants to talk about SSI or reformation. Even the biggest disability advocates skim over the largest material problems in favor of talking about Britney Spears’ conservatorship or COVID, which is fine, but we all know that those issues are a huge reflection of the ableism in our society. No one wants to actually solve the real issues: accessibility and austerity. No one wants to actually solve the real issues of accessibility and austerity; even the disabled politicians in our government right now who haven't had to live off of SSI or haven’t experienced needing a caregiver or using a wheelchair. It's frustrating.All of this stuff stems from the ugly laws that existed from the 1870s to the 1970s, where visibly disabled people and mentally ill people were thrown in jail and fined or were told that they couldn’t be seen on the streets. No one knows about disability history, which is why everyone's so confused as to where ableism stems from. If I was born in the ’40s, I would be in a mental institution with a bunch of other people who had various disabilities. Even now, people are visibly shocked to see me at the supermarket. It's wild that I didn't really know a person in a wheelchair before my accident at all. There’s just a lack of any sort of consciousness in our society around these things, and there needs to be a complete overhaul.

My Life Is Challenging, but I Still Love It

The idea that disabled people don't have lives worth living is utter bullshit. I'm very proud to be a disabled person. Everyone should be proud to exist and to live, and I think being proud as a disabled person is a is kind of a big “fuck you” to able-bodied people who think our lives are so pathetic. My life is really fun. I'm consistently dedicated to making each day as good as I can, despite being in the worst amount of pain humanly possible on some of them. I definitely have more sex than all of my friends.And that’s why I feel driven to change things, even though I'm very literally sick and tired and I'm very busy doing other things and having a career that doesn't have to do really with my disability. How do you organize people who don’t have places to live? Who are unable to physically protest? You can do a lot, obviously from the internet, but it's just not as effective as what they were doing in the ’60s and ’70s, like the 504 Sit-in that got the first federal protections for handicapped people passed. We haven't had any major policy changes to benefit disabled people since the ADA passed in 1990. It’s not that advocacy can't be done from social media in some regard, but show me the advocacy that's gotten me any sort of human rights in the past ten years. I wish that we would stop focusing on creating more problems that don't exist and on our individual need for admiration and attention. I wish we could actually remake the world. I want things to be solved so that I can experience equality and freedom before I die.

By December 2020, I hadn’t seen my best friend Abbie for five months, since I left our hometown in England to live in another country. It wasn’t unusual for the two of us to spend time apart—since our friendship began when we were 4 years old, we’d always bounced back to normal after long periods of not seeing one another.But this time, both of us found the distance between us harder than we’d anticipated. I was living far away from everyone I loved—and whilst I was caught up in the adventure of exploring my new city, I deeply missed the people who made me feel most at home. Abbie, meanwhile, was going through the hardest challenge of her life: In May, her mum, Mary, had been diagnosed with cancer. Mary’s illness and subsequent treatment were made infinitely worse by the pandemic. With no home visits from nurses allowed, Abbie was her mum’s sole carer, and both of them had to spend months shielding to protect Mary from catching COVID.During my last week abroad before I was due to fly home for Christmas, I absentmindedly checked my phone and saw a message that Abbie had sent to the group chat we shared with our other closest friend, Emily. She was telling us that her mum was finally cancer-free, and of course, she was ecstatic. Emily replied with a celebratory message filled with emoji and exclamation marks. I sent a similarly joyful reply, but it came from my head rather than my heart. As much as I wanted to congratulate Abbie, I felt anything but jubilant.The tears that hovered at the edge of my vision weren’t the product of happiness or relief. I was crying because I was frightened. It went against every instinct I had to believe the doctor’s cancer-free diagnosis, to tempt fate by celebrating. Because in my experience, cancer always comes back.

In my experience, cancer always comes back.

I Experienced a Flurry of Emotions When My Friend’s Mom Was Diagnosed With Cancer

I was 10 when my mum first got ill but 13 when she told me it was cancer. I was 14 when she was in remission for the first time and 16 when the cancer returned. I was 17 when she was given a terminal diagnosis and two months shy of 18 when she died.Abbie was present for every wave of this bitter cycle—although my mum having cancer became such a fact of life that we rarely discussed it. The only time we expressed emotion to one another was the first time I saw her after my mum’s terminal diagnosis. She simply said, “Let me give you a hug,” and we held each other tightly, exchanging unspoken feelings through our grip.In the years that followed, my grief ebbed and flowed. I kept my emotions hidden under the surface, never wanting to let on that I was hurting, but Abbie was steadfastly there whenever I needed her. And then, nearly five years after my mum died, Mary became ill and the roles were reversed. Suddenly, Abbie was the one getting a direct lesson in cancer’s cruelty whilst I stood helplessly on the sidelines.It is testament to Abbie’s caring nature as a friend that she didn’t tell me her mum was ill straight away, not wanting to unnecessarily stir up unwanted memories for me. I was vaguely aware that Mary was going for tests and doctor’s appointments, but the word cancer wasn’t mentioned until her diagnosis was confirmed.When I was finally told the news, a part of me felt terrified. Abbie’s parents had been separated most of her life, and her mum was her whole world. The thought of Abbie without Mary was impossible to comprehend.But simultaneously, I felt like the diagnosis was no big deal. Mary would need six weeks of radiotherapy—but so what? My mum went through years of it. Mary’s treatment wouldn’t make her lose her hair as my mum had. Abbie’s mum had early-stage cancer in one part of her body, whereas my mum’s cancer spread over the years like a vine strangling a tree trunk, fighting with even more ferocity the more you cut it back. The resentful part of me, embittered by years of unexpressed grief, felt like what Abbie was going through—and the sympathy she was receiving for it—was like child’s play compared to what had happened to me.I didn’t consciously process these emotions at the time, instead focussing on what little I could do to help. I brought them the newspaper every day and sat and chatted with Abbie on her doorstep. I made her the most extravagant decorations and cake for her 22nd birthday, which we ate in her garden together with Emily. When I left the country a few weeks later, I sent frequent packages in attempts to cheer her up.

Did she feel like she couldn’t be truly sad because her mum being ill didn’t compare to my mum dying?

I Felt Like I Failed My Friend

When I finally arrived home at Christmas time, Abbie met me on the train platform, and our two families joined together as much as COVID restrictions allowed. Mary and Abbie both talked about their relief that the cancer was gone. I tried to share in their joy, but my congratulations were laced with fear. I was unable to comprehend that cancer could ever truly disappear.I should have been the perfect friend to support Abbie, having directly experienced what she was going through. But I began to realize that my past grief was overshadowing her present-day pain.Did she feel like she couldn’t be truly sad because her mum being ill didn’t compare to my mum dying? Did she ever notice that my reactions to parts of her journey seemed forced, or unnatural, or out of place with what she would have expected from her closest friend? Did she feel as supported as she should have by someone who knows exactly how painful it is to watch your parent become a vulnerable patient in front of your eyes?I wish I had more control over how my mind reacted, but my thoughts in relation to cancer have become twisted by my mum’s years of unsuccessful treatment. I’ll continue to hide my pessimism from Abbie, not letting on that I’m just waiting for the moment when she tells me the whole horrific process for Mary will have to start again. Until that happens, I really hope that I’ll be proved wrong.