A life for two, protein calorie goo

Something that I have had the misfortune to learn in the last few months is that when your life is set up for two people, and then suddenly you are living that same life, in the same place with the same stuff mostly alone… it’s too much work. Noah and I made a lot of choices in our lives under the assumption that we would be living together and now we are not, because Noah lives in New Jersey, but I still live in our house, with a weird facsimile our life, and our life was not set up to be done alone. It was our life, ours, meaning not mine alone, not his alone. It was a life for two, but now it is mine, sort of.

All around me, every day, is the stuff that comes from living together with another person. Three laundry baskets, 11 mugs, 8 pounds of protein powder, a TV I never use. A cat who wants attention, a dog who might be dying. Noah comes back and says he isn’t sure where anything is, but it’s right where he left it—look at me, I only get to leave red hook once a week.

Every day I feel the crevasse between the life I live now and the life I thought I was living widen. Before all of this I was reading books about baby lead weaning and shit. I was studying korean, making slow progress. I was spending time with Noah, my friends. I lived a life that I loved. Imperfect, I’d have made some changes if I could, but generally, even though I hated my job, I was really happy.

I wonder if sometimes my whole last year seems like an overreaction to being laid off. It’s pretty normal, a layoff. It’s happened to a lot of my friends, both at my old job, and across industries. Does everyone lose their sense of self so utterly? Maybe it would have been different if Noah was still working, because we’d have at least had money. Living nearly six months budgeting 441$ a week for two people was hell. No one should have to live on so little. But it’s only partly the money, the other part was realizing that one of us could die, that our life together will, at some point, really and truly end.

Because, of course, Noah got very close to dying this summer. Not quite close enough for the doctor to okay him saying “I nearly died,” but close enough to feel like it. When Noah almost nearly died, his life changed—and we’ve been together for over a decade, so my life changed too.

I actually spent the summer not thinking that Noah could die. I was the soul of positivity. I was, maybe, annoyingly optimistic. But I refused to consider the alternative. Noah is young and healthy, this thing that is kind of cancer isn’t cancer, it’s something else, that’s not cancer. I experienced Noah’s anxiety about his life—would there be less of it now? How much less? A little less… a lot? Would the treatment kill him later?—while diligently refusing to contemplate my own.

I didn’t think about Noah dying, but I did learn a lot about antioxidants this summer. I learned that when you are on a specific chemo drug some studies suggest that lots of zone 2 running might be a cardioprotective measure. I read all about heart healthy diets. I added in the recommended fats, and proteins and vegetables. I used a variety of different colors in my meals. I eat bell peppers now, turns out they’re good for you. I took on an almost unbearable amount of responsibility. And now Noah is alive, and well, and incredibly shredded, but also… gone. He got the tumor out, and less than two weeks later, he was gone. We still had cases of ensure at home.

Noah left, and I was left alone, with nothing to do except take care of the pets and try and fail again, and again, and again to get work. Hard not to feel like something is wrong with you after that. Of course going to grad school wasn’t a rejection of me, of our life together… unless? What if? It would be easier, in a way, if I could be mad about it. But we both thought that this would be better, an act of extreme hubris I suppose. I thought I would get a job in a library, and need to live in the city. I thought if I was here I could see our friends, that I wouldn’t be lonely. But instead we are paying rent on two apartments, and I never see anyone because I am working in retail hell. Instead we are apart, which was theoretically a fun way to learn to be independent, but actually just sucks shit.

In the fall I tried to learn to cook for one, while budgeting money that was constantly in the negative… my rent is 2,800, I got 441 a week, somehow that doesn’t qualify you for food stamps. I ate a lot of sweet potatoes, single chicken breasts cooked and religiously halved so that I had some for the next day. Beans, rice. Chickpeas. I guess those are basically a bean. I had, for a while, seemingly endless time. I cooked, I cleaned, I applied for work. And then, I got work, and now I am in the candle mines. On my days off I take a car to the vet to drop Miss Noodle off for round after round of expensive testing. Nobody can tell me if she’s dying, all that I know is that she quickly lost control of her bladder, and stopped eating.

The Friday before Valentine’s Day I worked a party until nine (parties never tip), and got home after eight hours of work and the cat ran out the door and my roommate told me “I think the dog peed.” So I catch the cat and then I get on my hands and knees with a soapy paper towel and start scrubbing the floor while my roommate’s friends sit on the couch and watch. What else am I supposed to do? I finish with one spot and then I see another behind the couch. I finish, and am too tired to think, to eat, to do anything. I go sit in silence in my room for an hour, and then go to sleep.

As I struggle to cope with the rolling series of disasters that my day to day life has become my eating habits regress further and further back. I don’t remember the last time I vacuumed, but I have washed large sections of the floor repeatedly, because the dog kept peeing inside. I feel overwhelmed by my responsibilities, not in quite the same way as I was this summer, but working a shit job, and getting home after 8 every day and then being faced with trying to coax the dog to eat, failing, trying to help her walk long enough to poop, and then feeding myself? It’s hell.

As my responsibilities drown me the things that I cook become more and more unhinged and pathetic. A good night, if I get off at six, is weird stir fry made with vegetables I chop before work and a bag of frozen rotisserie chicken, or pizza beans with, again, a bag of frozen rotisserie chicken, A less good night I eat the tragic dinner of granola (with extra almond butter for protein and fat), or the marginally better grilled cheese sandwich with an apple and what I call “protein calorie goo.” Protein calorie goo is better than it sounds, it’s basically just a dip for apples, but eating it for dinner really says that I am eating like a child with the responsibilities of an adult.

Miss Noodle has diabetes now. She’s sick, she doesn’t feel well, every day I wonder if this is going to be our last week together. The other night I got home from work, carried the dog upstairs, and spent 20 minutes trying to prick her ear so that I could do a glucose test. I could tell that I was hurting her, and I wanted to cry. I wanted to die. I felt like a monster, even knowing that it is for her own good. Noah wants to help me, but he can’t, because he isn’t here. He offered to facetime while I tried to prick her ear, but I just gave up. After that it was 9:30 and I ate most of a box of annie’s mac and cheese with a bunch of peas in it. The food of defeat. Eating like a high schooler again, as though that will make it better. At 4AM she woke me up and we went to the emergency vet, and then at noon I was once again the King of Candles for the Valentine’s Day weekend hordes.

I want something for myself. I want to be taken care of, not just emotionally, but materially, physically, but no one else is around to do it. My entire life right now is lived just for maintaining some semblance of what I had before. Even if I wanted to abandon it all—my rent, my responsibilities, I can’t. I don’t even really want to! I love my house! I love my dog! Even if I didn’t love the dog, I have a moral and ethical commitment to her. I made a promise. Even if I wanted to move into someplace smaller, I am too poor to do it. I would try to move to New Jersey if I could, then I wouldn’t be alone with my responsibilities, but who would rent to us at this point? I would be unemployed again, how would we get a lease? Maintenance feels like the only viable option, it’s just not especially viable. But maybe I’ll manage to make the stir fry I bought vegetables for six days ago before work tomorrow. Maybe I’ll be a different person, not afraid of what my own life has become.

The last year has been a nearly complete unravelling of the life that I lived before. The layoff, the cancer, the almost dying, the lingering unemployment, being poor, being forced out of the career that I was supposed to have, that I had studied and worked for. Now my fucking dog is dying. My floor is covered in pee pads, Noah’s mom came out to help me with the dog. It’s better, it’s helpful, but I can’t escape this feeling that I have nothing of my own but responsibilities. Responsibilities, and protein calorie goo.

Protein Calorie Goo (it’s dip for apples)

• 1/4 cup almond butter

• 1 cup whole milk greek yogurt (not low fat, we need the calories)

• 3 medjool dates

• pinch of salt

• 1/4 tsp cinnamon (or more if you like)

• shake of ground ginger

• 1-2 tbs chia seeds

Put this in a blender, except the chia seeds. You may need to add a bit of milk to loosen it up. Blend on high until the dates are broken up. Alternatively if your dates are pretty fresh just chop them really fine until you get a sort of paste. Once you have made goo, add chia seeds. You can add them just before you eat for a bit of crunch, which is nice. I find that this makes enough to serve as dip for three apples, two if you aren’t being cheap, but if you’re eating protein calorie goo I kinda bet you are. Listen, if you aren’t eating it for dinner it is a legitimately great snack.