This morning, after shuffling through the kitchen like a 90 year-old, I wrote this down in my diary.
I’ve had “bad” knees since I was a child, and lately, I’ve found myself angry about it—angry about not being able to run, squat, or sit cross-legged without discomfort.
The other night, I was in so much pain that I swung my legs over the side of my bed and just cried. There was no fix in sight, and the frustration overwhelmed me. In that moment of deep exasperation, I asked my knees: Why is this happening? What is the root of this pain? It felt so much greater than what had physically caused it.
A few years ago, I discovered a strange talent for psychic automatism. I close my eyes, and with my non-dominant hand, I let it move across the paper. When I open my eyes, the lines reveal messages from my subconscious and beyond. There are many ways to divine the self, but this is the one I trust most. I call it "self-divination," because both the imagery and the interpretation come from inside me.
That night, after getting out of bed, hobbling to my desk, and drawing the blinds to let in the night, I lit a few candles and began to draw. When I opened my eyes, an image appeared: the Madonna and child. And I knew what it meant.
It meant that my knees had been carrying the weight of a deep maternal neglect—an unspoken belief that to feel safe in the world, I had to be self-sufficient at all costs. The child in me had no other solution, and the adult in me had accepted it. It was a way to avoid the guilt of needing someone by believing I could do everything on my own. I never realized how being fatherless and mostly motherless made me feel so unworthy of love, how receiving anything freely felt impossible—almost like a trap, a way for people to control me. I’ve always thought that to receive kindness and goodness, I had to earn it.
And now, this pain—it’s my body telling me that it’s time to stop the self-imposed Sisyphean struggle. That pride in being independent and strong, in facing the world’s hardships with grace—it’s really just a defense. It’s a shield to keep me from facing disappointment and the idea that I am undeserving.
I wouldn’t have understood any of this if I hadn’t stopped cursing my body, wishing it to recover quickly so I could push it past its limits again. Instead, I’ve learned to listen—really listen—to what it’s been trying to express.
So today, I’ve been experimenting with listening, giving my body exactly what it asks for when it asks for it. It needed rest, so I took a nap. It needed a massage, so I gave my knees the care they’ve long been denied. And though I argued with it, saying it wasn’t good for me, it wanted cake. So I flipped through Thalia Ho’s Wild Sweetness, and when I landed on The Fallen Chocolate Cake, I knew it was what needed to be made.
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There’s a strength in breaking apart, and nothing could be truer for this cake. It fractures as it cools, the weight proving too much to bear. The result is a ganache-like interior that’s dense, dark, and smudged with coffee. Its appearance is far from perfect, but that’s what makes it special. It’s resilient.
— Photo and quote from "Wild Sweetness" by Thalia Ho
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