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I. The Kitchen [ series of clumsy reflections on grief & loss ]

I often like to say that “I grew up in the kitchen”. Whenever someone asks me how I got to do what I do, I just laugh it off and modestly throw the kitchen in the conversation in an attempt to cover my shame of not actually knowing what I’m doing. It’s a very light hearted-dignifide way of infact saing: “I’ve been doing this all my life”, or “I was born doing this”, “born with the (wooden) spoon in my hand” as we say, instead of admitting or allowing my impostor syndrome to get the best of me and just say: “I have no idea what I’m doing”…but I’m doing it anyway. I’m being more and more of a socially adjusted animal lately. Performing normalcy. But what’s really happening is that I’m becoming more and more of a coward. Although I did grow up in the kitchen, which was probably the only safe place I was allowed to exist outside the painful loudness of my grandmother’s house. There, surrounded by sheets of soon-to-be-noodles, cacke doughs and rolling pins, there were fewer chances of something bad happening. Of course, what I’m avoiding saying is that I’m by far not a chef (nor would I aspire to be one really), I’m at best a semi-professional cook, and that alone sounds like such a mouthful that doesn’t really cut it for me because it lacks mystery or mystique, so I resort to the kitchen. And for good reason, because the kitchen has, every so often, saved my life in some symbolic permanence. That’s where most of my acts of care happen, where we meet, fight, hide in plain sight or occupy territory. Friendships were forged there, through weeping and theorising, and witnessing each other go through every up and down in the book. I’m always in some sort of physical or metaphysical kitchen, if I think about it. And of course, friendships were lost there. With a scared, imprecise-delicate-umperceptible gesture that clumbsily tumbled the fragile balance of it all. I often find myself crying in the kitchen nowadays. It’s maybe because I spend so much time there that I’m completely integrated, or by now the burden of it all has become so difficult to sustain that I every so often find myself just collecting my tears before someone catches them or me, splattering the internal melodrama all over the already soiled kitchen floor.

I think I’ve always tried to keep my mess my own and not let it seep into my “other lives”. It’s some sort of dignity or shame of having made mistakes that makes me try to keep it neat. And there’s probably some cultural or religious component to this, but that’s besides the point. The mess can no longer be contained. There’s not enough eggplant curries, stoff peren, or custom-tailored layerd cakes to make up for it. There’s no hellos nor goodbyes, shy compliments or small despicable gestures of care that don’t cut like a blade. Truth is that for several months now, the kitchen has become a battlefield. It has become a scary place where it’s open season on my clumsiness, where mistakes are evaluated and punishment is dispensed. A place where I’m no longer welcomed, in a house that I no longer want to be in, part of a life that I seemed to be trying on like a coat for the season. Not mine to keep. The kitchen has in fact, become completely unsafe. This jungle of pots and pans that I had tamed and known and took refuge in, this magnonimous place where I was welcomed and celebrated, where I could show you, all of you that I loved you, how I loved you and that I was vulnerable, the only way I knew how to, the best way I knew how to, this place had become the most dreaded place in the house.

And I’m starting to count my losses. The way you should practice positivity and count your blessings. With intention. I count my losses. With intention. Over the past year, I lost my mother, my hopeful expectations for a future that isn’t coming, a big chunk of the joy of all things big and small, the kitchen and you (whoever “you” might be). And of course, every one of those losses hit different; some could have been predicted, even prevented! but the most unexpected loss, I confess, was the kitchen. I never would have guessed that it would become an operating theatre for my unravelling mental struggles. A courtroom for my faults paraded around like ingredients of a tasteless recipe put together by an adamantly blind and deaf cook, determined to punish me. And I was guilty. I had been guilty of various faults for a while now. For my entire life, if you had asked my mother. I was always the bad guy in some story, and for good reason. I’m loud, at times inappropriate and mask most of my fears with over-the-top funny remarks passed off for humour. And my “humour” cuts like a blade if you challenge me; it becomes bitter and resentful. I don’t use many weapons when fighting back except for irony. At some point, I stopped being that scared little girl hiding in her grandmother’s pantry and started using my best asset to date – my mouth. There’s a lot of harm you can do with words. Crack the foundation or destroy the entire thing. Blow it open. Expose people’s weaknesses, ridicule them. It’s a cruel road to take, but at times it happens. Based on some personally subjective justice system, I do tend to punish those who, in some way, wrong me. I like to think that I never act unprovoked, but then again, the provocations come from an abstract understanding of things. And there’s probably some cultural or religious component to this, but that’s besides the point.
One could say that “I am too much”. I suffer from this “too muchness” that hurt women often tend to suffer from. And I normally pour all of that into carefully concocted recipes, thoughtfully wrapped gifts, little notes that I hide around the house, kind of the same way that a cat would bring you little dead things as treats and put them out for you in unexpected places. I pour that “too muchness” into the people I love, and ultimately my work. My work in the kitchen. It’s a vicious circle, you see. Because I need to be in the kitchen. In order to manage myself, in order to be able to be vulnerable. And it becoming a place of ultimate censorship cripples me in unexpected ways. And I am guilty. Of mismanaging a fragile situation. Exercising some sort of clumsy catastrophe management meant to soften the blow. Using my mouth to deliver the ultimate comparison. To break things. I deserved most of the silences, even the total annihilation. It’s nothing I haven’t done myself, without realising how it felt, so there’s at least some poetic justice in receiving the taste of my own medicine. Even by my own abstract justice system, acceptable. I was raised to own up to the consequences. But I raised myself to constantly look to fixing things. And there’s a fine line between the two. That’s the space where you risk falling into the “too muchness”. I guess we can call it at this point overcompensating. If we were baking, it’s a crucial mistake that will ruin your recipe. Too much flour and it becomes tough and dry. Too much water and it’s runny and elusive. Cooking is all about keeping the delicate balance. But also about contradictions. I heard a saying once that stays with me to date: The same water that softens the potato, hardens the egg. And it kind of applies here. There were a lot of contradictions, minor and major inconsistencies and blind spots that led up to this boiling point. And ultimately had me battling for my place in the kitchen.

Problem is I’m not good at giving up on people or things. So my struggles to fix, repair and keep it in check often lead me on murky, contorted roads. Sometimes closer to or further from myself and occasionally back to the kitchen. I tell myself I needed to break open, and this was the instrument that ultimately broke me. An unexpected instrument, too familiar to be feared, too soft to hurt, but stubborn enough to pick at me with precise little hits, overlapping incessantly until tearing through. Like being stabbed repeatedly with a teaspoon. Any instrument can become a weapon if used with the right intention. So I let the tea spoon break me because I deserved breaking, needed breaking. And walked around with a hole bigger than I could have ever imagined. I gave up my place in the kitchen. It made no sense to be there anyway. The whole thing was just too painful to keep feeling it with every exposure. I guess I never realised how important the kitchen was to me. And I had definitely forgotten how breaking open felt like. How feeling all my feelings felt like. I had solidified so much into this block of logistics and problem-solving and surviving to clear the mess, just barely holding on to existence, that I had completely forgotten how to feel. It was too hard to feel at this point. So breaking open was not the worst thing that could have happened to me. And I inevitably started spilling. At first, just a little. Like a boiling pot forgotten too long on the stove. Just bubbling up and overflowing dramatically before we remember to turn the heat lower. We turned the heat lower. I tried to clear the mess. Some more catastrophe management. Some more overcompensating. Glossing over the size of the spillage with small unrequired gestures, which just turned the heat back up. It’s handier to try to control things the way you taught yourself to, in order to survive. But the spilling was inevitable nonetheless. There were not enough management strategies, logistics or teaspoons in the world to prevent this, or my mouth from uttering those words. Harm had been done, tattered versions of the truth started flying imprecisely in the air, all things buried deep and carefully underneath rational explanations, and heaps of internet-psychology started unravelling appologetically on the kitchen floor, and all of my feelings came out one by one. Shameful, Angry, Hurt, Grieving, Abandoned, not chosen, not seen, not deserving to be here, not good enough. heartbroken.
At this point, I would normally hide. The idea of being vulnerable in public utterly disgusted me. But there was no place like the kitchen to handle a mess. After all, it witnesses daily dozens of small breakages and little disasters. The mess, chaos and waste that precedes every one of our good meals, so why not witness mine. It felt so deliciously counterintuitive to start bleeding in public that I just couldn’t stop myself from doing it. I had to learn how to carry my pain without being ashamed of it. I just had too much of it to keep trying to drown it in some sort of distraction, or push it under the mat of my own cowardness. That also meant I had to force myself to be present, to stop hiding and face the size of what I had done, to start asking for help and actually accept it, to just be there through the mess and discomfort, feel it, and genuinely own up to it. I started carving a place for myself there. Walking barefoot, stepping in all sorts of things, soft and sharp, getting dirty with less worries of coming clean. Acknowledging that I’m hurt, scared. I just sat there, offered coffees asked and answered hard questions, convivial questions and imparted my usual hospitallities that makes me feel useful. I heard a lot of worries, saw some tears and insecurities that were not only my own, a lot of tenderness that was both mine and not. And I had to swallow the constant back and forward and the looming distance. Through the occasional slammed cabinet doors, and the piercing sound of plates being smashed into order. I made all the little steps I knew how to make. All the wrong ones in a state of suspense where every breath was wrong and simple things like mushroom mayo could start an improbable war where only supermarket brands could win. I tried to soften my voice, speak only when I’m spoken to. Stop myself from getting angry, petty, mean, tired, hurt, too much or never enough. Never just right. And I failed. I failed every day in a new way. My presence became your absence(whoever “you” might be). It’s particularly hard to give up on someone who is always there.

And in this internal process, I somehow found my way back to the kitchen. I fought this invisible battle mainly with myself. I forced myself to be there. To break open. To absorb. Observe. Try again. And again. To be vulnerable in a different way. A new way. To be comfortable in the middle of the discomfort. After all, I had put myself at the centre of it every time I opened my mouth and stabbed at people and things willingly or unwillingly. In spite or because of the absence (or the hole that I was at this point shamelessly carrying around), I found a lot of care and tenderness there. A lot of encouragement and validation. And kindness. Mirrors of my own fears and worries, and the realisation that I had made a home for myself here. Even in the middle of my unsavoury spillings, my stupid grief or my misplaced anger, there was so much of me poured into this place and these people, and so much of them to help me slowly get up. And I’m far from there. The climb up to some kind of surface is not within reach. At the same time not impossible. I remember once writing to say, “you stopped me from sliding from the face of the earth”. What a wonderful feeling that must have been. That’s all very distant now. I can barely remember as I’m trying to hold on to places and people to slow my descent.

I come down every day to make my morning tea and my coffee. I don’t always know if I will be able to go through with it. If this time, I will manage to stop myself from crying first thing in the morning over something I overheard or had to witness or over the plain and thick nothingness that by now carefully fills all the possible points of entry. I am much more fragile than people take me for. But I stay there as long as it takes for me to go through the motions, sometimes even longer than I can stand being there, because this is my life now. I tell myself quite often that these days in situations that defy every one of my notions of common sense, logic, even sense of humour. It’s mostly because it’s so hard to sit with it. The nothingness. So I fill the hole by observing all of this fertile growth that’s happening in the absence.
This was my favourite meme last year, and it still holds up: “Are you in love? No, I’m in the kitchen.” And I am. Every day, longer than I should be. I’m in the kitchen working, waiting, watching, crying (quite often, really, but quietly). It’s my way of being here. Of refusing to be erased. Of holding on to a home that is not really mine. Or to a distant memory when everything was light and funny and I could pretend I wasn’t feeling all of these feelings that I can no longer contain gracefully. And the kitchen obliges with all its imperfections. It’s the perfect place to be broken, to crack and to spill. I belong with the pots and pans and the people who wipe some of the mess away. And I can pretend that I’m just cooking or just cleaning, or just hanging out and not breaking a little bit more with every hello or goodbye that I’m not supposed to utter.

The kitchen has become this island of disconnect where I can be reminded constantly and thoroughly, whether through presence or absence, that there is just not the right amount of me. Always too much or too little. And this, too, probably has to do with some cultural or religious component, but that’s besides the point.

June 2025, Rotterdam