James' World 2

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PARENTING IS SO fucking hard!! Actually, life and work are hard because I decided to become a chef, and now I am parenting as a newly single dad, in short bursts, every week. And you guys, I have never struggled so hard to be an adult. Even with a therapist, I have to constantly work to maintain the abundant mindset we talk about each week.

My daughter Barbara is seven, and getting easier to manage in a lot of ways. I can explain why her needs are often unreasonable, at least in the moment, but she now has the language to argue with me over every single thing: What we are doing, where we are going, what we will do when we get there, and what we will eat. Actually, that one isn’t really an argument. She wants pizza from Rocco’s, around the corner from where we’re currently staying, and I usually cave because I too want pizza from Rocco’s and also I like to smoke weed and eat her crust after she falls asleep.

Also, I am dealing with a lot of anxiety and depression, and having Barbara with me can be a stark reminder of how drastically my life has changed this year. And the changes keep coming, abrupt and challenging every single time. I work 13 to 14 hours a day, four days a week, running a restaurant kitchen. The three days I have “off” I do ordering, receiving, and I boil out the deep fryer every Tuesday. Any time my staff is in the building I am “on,” keeping everybody’s energy up so that we can get through a long and sometimes grueling, sometimes boring service. I shout a lot about

socialism and abundance and I try to keep my team laughing and on track.

It’s hard, but you know that from everything you’ve ever heard about a restaurant kitchen, and so the last thing I am equipped to deal with in my little down time is an argument with my child. It hurts my soul, but so does caving to her demands. So I try to find my sense of abundance while being realistic about my own capabilities when I am stressed, sad, and hurting, and sometimes I say passive-aggressive things to her. Things like, “Babe, if we can’t figure out how to live together we may not be able to do nights at my apartment anymore.” Or, “If you can’t eat breakfast a little faster my whole body will explode and it will be your fault.” Once I told her that it’s illegal to buy kids candy before school because I couldn’t just tell her no, because I’ve never had boundaries for myself, and I am struggling to create them for my child, and I hate that for both of us, even when I’m being kind to myself.

I get frustrated when Barbara is being argumentative over the walk to school, and I get mad when she brushes off my rules about bedtime, but

I get inwardly furious, with both her and myself, when she won’t eat the food I’ve made for her. Sometimes I work up the energy to cook for her and she understands that it’s not going to be anything elaborate. I’ll make rice and beans or roasted chicken thighs, simple things that make me feel cared for. But every time, unless it’s pasta with butter or instant ramen noodles, she’s not interested and I still end up going to get her pizza from Rocco’s because I don’t want to be a bad parent who puts his child to bed hungry on the few nights I get with her. But I also don’t want her memories from this time to just be of eating pizza while daddy stares deeper and deeper into the void of scarcity, barely holding his shit together.

And that’s not to say she’s a picky eater. She is, but at her mom’s house she eats all kinds of different stuff! Pork chops! Bacon! Sausage! Really any kind of pig parts and I’m realizing now that my next dinner with her will be pork jowls or pig’s ears or whatever and then I’ll dip her pizza crust in the broth. I am the chef of my own popular restaurant! I cook for famous people sometimes and I cook for Barbara’s friends’ parents a lot so I’m like a local celebrity. AND YET, nothing has really changed since she was little. She still gets whatever she wants but instead of pushing what she deems as sketchy food to the floor, now she hides from it under the table.

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Getty Images; Matt Ryan, MH Illustration

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