It's Kind of a Long Story... about MERINGUE

The desserts were not just desserts.

Hey Drama Goblins,

I am exhausted. In every way.

Life has been relentless for the last week.

It started on Monday with John’s yahrzeit. Then Facebook memories of my trip to Barcelona with Cris that was so amazing and so awful. And jury duty on an assault trial (I was eventually dismissed)

Writing and posting the last of the Sister Ex saga on Wednesday took a lot out of me. I’m still working out all of the reasons why.

I woke up on Thursday to a message letting me know someone I barely think twice about believes I “hate” her.

Later Thursday morning, I learned a woman I used to volunteer with, who had been to my home to write postcards to voters, was murdered by her troubled daughter.

And work was intense. I’ve become an accidental one-woman PR agency and learning to manage clients’ needs has been a trial by fire. At the end of the day on Thursday, I was told a client I’d just inked a deal with was “unprofessional and unscrupulous” (I backed out)

Over the weekend I went on a fantastic trip to LA to hang out with my Sister Ex Monika. We not only had a blast, but Cris only came up casually once or twice as a joke.

And we not only went to Luna Luna, but we went from there to a fantastic restaurant a hip downtown gallery opening, and from to a total scene of a nightclub on Sunset where we were whisked through the VIP line to a lounge area with bottle service.

Basically, Monika took me out on the best date ever.

And then on Sunday, I taught a resin charm workshop and tested a concept for a side hustle and it was even more successful and empowering than I thought it would be. I’m onto something with this.

Monday was all day driving back from LA. No traffic, but still.

Yesterday a podcast interview I did about Sister Exes went live and I’m very proud of it. It’s exciting and also vulnerable. I’m still learning to navigate how to put things out there and not get a lot of feedback or acknowledgment. I’m not there yet.

And today I got on the scale for the first time in 2.5 years as part of a 10-day cleanse I’m doing with a group of friends. The number was about what I thought it would be, and nowhere near where I wanted it to be. I don’t feel good in my body. I miss my clothes.

And then tonight it poured when I was finally able to venture out to buy the ingredients I needed for the soup I’m “allowed” on the cleanse program. But by the time I got home with my soggy bags and I really had to go to the bathroom and I had phone calls to return and another one came in for me and I just couldn't bring myself to figure out how to make gazpacho without a food processor. I ate a can of Progresso soup, and I will tackle the cleanse tomorrow.

And through all of this, I am sleeping poorly again. It’s a miracle I’m as functional as I am.

And in between all of that, there’s been some family stuff that I have been doing a lot of hard emotional labor to work on.

This week has felt like it felt the entire time I was in “tree exile.” A constant assault on my nervous system. I’ve thought more than once, “Oh no. It’s happening again. I can’t live like that again.”

I’m hopeful it’s not. And grateful I’ve had a few months of relative calm to shore up my strength if it is.

So, the Kind of a Long Story… that follows is one from my archives. When I went on my FMLA leave last summer, I wrote and wrote and wrote with no real thoughts about what it might become, if anything.

This story is from that time. I wrote it in August 2023, about two weeks after I took my FMLA mental health leave. It’s hard to revisit, and I’m so glad I documented it. I don’t want to ever feel like I did that night again, and I don’t want to forget I did. It’s a testament to how far I’ve come.

I’m so glad you’re here,

-Lara

Relentless

Short story: 

I made meringues for a party. They didn’t turn out like I thought they would. Neither did the party.

Long story:

This is what I posted on Facebook:

“I’m going to a gathering tonight with a great group of gals and offered to bring dessert. 

I decided to make lemon meringue tarts because I have eggs in my fridge I only use for baking, and this recipe will use five of them.

I’ve made these many times before and they are always a hit. It’s a crunchy little meringue nest filled with very tart lemon curd. They’re naturally dairy and gluten-free and a nice light ending to a summer meal. I even had some organic blueberries I could pop on top. 

As it always does, it killed me to buy lemons. I grew up in Southern California where lemons came from trees, not the grocery store. My G’ma and G-G’ma were always giving away backyard lemons, a tradition I carry on now that I have my own tree which has a ton of little green not-yet-ripe lemons.

But buy them I did and I had all morning to leisurely bake the treats. I used the recipe from Meringue Girls which calls for heating up the sugar first and adding it to the fluffy egg whites and it is as foolproof as meringue recipes can be, which isn’t very. Anyone who bakes will tell you meringues are tricky. Temperamental. They’re impacted by weather and temperature and moisture in the air. 

Everything was going well until I decided I had to be extra and include some extract - almond and vanilla - and ground almonds. And… whoosh. The meringue deflated and lost its fluff. If I would have turned the bowl upside down - the classic method for testing a meringue's readiness - it would have dripped and plopped and made a mess.

Previous versions of Lara would have spiraled into a deep hole of negative self-talk. 

“Some baker you are. You just had to add that extra stuff and you didn’t even measure the extracts so you probably added too much and the almonds may have been too cold from the freezer or you whipped the whites too much and now you have a big mess on your hands. You had so counted on your friends ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the tarts and you saying, ‘oh they’re so easy’ and being so damn pleased with yourself.”

She would have put the soupy stuff down the drain and made another batch. She would have worried about the extra egg yolks and what to do with them. She would have only had four eggs left in the carton and rushed to get dressed and felt yucky because she hasn’t showered and her hair looks weird and should I also wash my face and put makeup on before I go because who knows who I’ll run into and dammit I ripped my good jeans the other day and I can’t just slip into something comfortable because the only jeans you have are tight on you and you could wear those lounge pants like a slob because you are so fat now and nothing else fits and this fun, pleasurable, relaxing baking project would have risen to become a souffle of self-criticism and stress.  

Today’s Lara pipped the mixture into little rounds anyway and devised a plan for serving them

‘Hey, ladies! I’d planned to make cute little lemon blueberry meringue tarts, but the meringue deflated so we’re doing a deconstructed version. Take a cookie, spread on some lemon curd, top it with a couple of blueberries and pop it in your mouth.’

It will be fun. And delicious.A story to tell. More interesting than a plate of pretty, perfect tarts.

My friends will like and love me if my tarts aren’t pretty and perfect. 

They may even like and love me more.”

That did not go like I thought it would.

The party was on the glamorous roof deck of my friend’s amazing home in the Oakland Hills. 

It’s easy to be intimidated by her and the house. She looks like Urusla Andress and is well educated and well traveled and successful and European and sophisticated and tall and blond and stylish with truly effortless elegance. She simply doesn’t know how to be any other way. 

The house is a beautiful 100+ year-old home that is just one step below a mansion. The only thing keeping it from mansion status is the owner’s claim that she acquired a lot of the furnishing and accessories from yard sales and flea markets, the one nice-but-not-luxurious bathroom on the 2nd floor, and my friend’s truly warm, welcoming, and unpretentious manner. 

I’ve been to parties there before with a group of friends who call ourselves The Dames. We’re a local offshoot of an online group for women over 40 called “What Would Virginia Woolf Do? (she’d put rocks in her pockets and throw herself in the river, let’s not do that) that has gathered dozens of times at various homes, restaurants, museums and other events. A bunch of us went on a trip to Mexico. They threw me a surprise birthday party. They are open, vulnerable, welcoming, and truly celebrate each other. I’m very, very lucky and grateful for them.

And because nothing is everything, I’m also often intimidated by them and feel like an outsider and the poor kid and fat kid and awkward kid and they are all so accomplished and smart and have achieved so much and I do not belong at this table. This table where we are eating and I look like I belong, but I know inside that I don’t.

This time? I didn’t feel that. I felt so present and welcome and comfortable and at ease. The two weeks I’ve been on mental health leave of absence are really working. No intrusive thoughts. 

I hugged and greeted my friends and started telling them about my leave and they were so understanding and curious and supportive. I wasn’t fitting in, I was belonging. I thought about what I wanted to tell them when I served the dessert. How I wanted to tell them about how the meringue had deflated and I let it go and brought it anyway and how grateful I was to be with people who made me feel safe enough not only to do that but to tell them about it. 

When it was time for dessert, the host started bringing out the other platters and plates and I jumped up to get mine. I didn’t realize it was dessert time and I had to take off the plastic wrap and set out the cookies and I was rushed and it wasn’t how I wanted to bring it to the table.

I waited for an appropriate break in the conversation and said, “I’d like to say something about the dessert, it’s a story… “

They laughed and listened and I told the first part, about messing up the meringue mixture, and they started to jump in and protest, “It’s beautiful! It looks delicious!” and then people were cross-talking and serving and only one or two people were looking at me and I was standing there feeling foolish and how ironic that I wanted to tell them how safe they made me feel, and there I was feeling vulnerable and exposed and like I was right all along. I don’t belong here.

I smiled and sat down and served the cookies and lemon curd and everyone genuinely liked it  (of course, the components are objectively delicious) but I felt as deflated as the meringue mix and began to spiral. I wasn’t present. I was out of my body and looking down and my head was foggy. I was quiet and not participating in the conversation. I didn’t want any of the other desserts. Not to be bratty, but because I truly didn’t want them. And it’s a good thing, because my dessert plate was gone. I swear there was one for me right there, and now it wasn’t.

This was someones else’s plate

I sat there and took in the conversation and was spiraling deeper and kind of abruptly got up to go to the bathroom. At least I felt like it was abrupt, it might have just looked to anyone else like I was going to the bathroom like a normal person, not escaping from the table like a very, very not normal person who needed a moment.

In the bathroom I spiraled further. I briefly and very seriously considered grabbing my purse and leaving without anyone seeing. 

My chest was tight. My breathing was quick and shallow. I shed a tear or two, but didn’t come undone.

And as scary as it was in there, I was also secretly glad. “See? See! I really am anxious. I really am not mentally healthy! This isn’t a fake. This isn’t a joke. This isn’t me just trying to shirk and have fun and get out of work.” I wanted to lean into my anxiety to prove it was real.

I thought better of leaving and relaxed enough to go back to the table. I ran into one of my friends in the hallway and she asked if I was alright. Damn. They did notice how I had reacted and left the table and god knows how long I was in the bathroom. 

“Fine” I said shortly. “I’m fine.” I heard my own voice and thought, “No. You are not fine.”

Back at the table several people made an effort to tell me how delicious the dessert was. They asked for seconds. I was both very grateful and so embarrassed. I know the dessert is delicious. That wasn’t it. 

I sat back and smiled and it took a few minutes, but I was able to get back into the swing of the party at about a seventy-five percent level. The critical voice that wasn’t there when I arrived was whispering in my ear, but not yelling. Progress?

One of my favorite parts of parties is the “after party.” When most of the guests have left and there are a few people left and it goes from convivial to cozy. It was how we ended parties at my Aunt Ruthy’s house. After the crowds left the big backyard, the immediate family would gather on the plush couches in the living room and really connect. 

I love being part of that intimate, inner circle. The ones who help clean up and take home leftovers and go from guest to family. 

We created that circle around my friend’s fire pit. Nine then seven then five of us, the talk getting more intimate as the group did. We were under blankets and the warmth of the fire and covering and friendship filled me and I left feeling much better than I had an hour ago.

As soon as I got in the car, the voice started in again. Not quite yelling, but raised. The intrusive thoughts came flooding back. I gripped the steering wheel and clenched my teeth and turned off the podcast (Faker! You should be listening to silence or jazz like you are so damn proud to tell everyone you’ve been doing) and both wanted to get home as soon as possible and also dreaded it, because it was late and I’d have to go right to bed and sleep doesn’t come easily and the thought of going to bed isn’t comforting. 

Also? My Chromebook wasn’t charging right, and on the way to the party I stopped by Best Buy to have them look at it and they told me to buy and try another charger cable. I had a feeling that wasn’t it, that it was the internal battery. I was hopeful the forty-dollar solution would work, but didn’t think it would and I knew when I got home I’d have to plug it in and be prepared to be disappointed.

Which is exactly what happened. I plugged the new charger into the Chromebook and the little light didn’t go on. My dreamy-bordering-on-delusional Pisces self thought, “I’ll leave it overnight - maybe it will be charged in the morning.”

And even though I had just had a huge dinner, I stress-ate six mini spinach tarts from the night before like a robot so I could feel the judgemental comfort of an over-full stomach.

I woke up anxious. Like I had been through something. Tight chest. Shallow breathing. I made it through brushing my teeth and pushed myself to do the full two minutes. I dropped the lids to the pill bottles several times while I was refilling my Zoloft and iron supplements in the pill organizer for the week. I dropped the floss (but at least I’m flossing. Progress?) I made a beeline for the Chromebook which was… dead.

That triggered yet another spiral. Writing has been my release valve. My lifeline. Like Hamilton, I’ve been writing “day and night like you need to to survive.” Writing is my work right now. It’s how I’m justifying this time off. I haven’t written enough in the last two days. There’s not much time to write today. The thought of being without my Chromebook even for a few hours was daunting. How would I make it to eleven o’clock when Best Buy opens? 

It also means I have to go out when I hadn’t planned to. Which means looking in the mirror at my hair and figuring out if I can fix it without a shower. At its current length, it does weird things and is not easily coaxed into behaving. I realized that’s why some women have very long hair. It’s the security not only of that big blanket of hair, it’s that it always looks the same. No guessing. No bad hair days.

It means I have to get dressed and these days, every time I get dressed it’s a reminder of my failure. My clothes don’t fit well. My body is big and flabby. It used to be a joy to get dressed and pick an outfit. Now, it hurts.

To get me over the hump until I could figure out the Chromebook situation, I wrote longhand in a journal and it’s both very helpful and healing and also terrifying. My handwriting looks like the scrawling of a mad woman. Looking back just a few hours later, it’s hard to make out what I wrote.

I started to catalog all the things that had gone wrong in the last 24 hours:

• My shower curtain pole fell and revealed the tub was full of sludge. This means I’ll have to call my landlord which means he’ll come over and then another time a plumber will come over which means I’ll have to be gone when they are because I don’t want my landlords to know I’m on leave.

• On the way to the party, I decided on a whim and because I was running early to go to the car wash. I struggled with the decision to spend the ten dollars when I had plenty of time to wash the car myself and the driveway and warm weather to do it. But I remembered how good the car looked the last time, so I went for it. When I came out of the car wash the car was still covered in a layer of crud. I had let it get so dirty and sticky, that the ten-dollar cheapest wash didn’t do the trick. Shame upon shame.

• I went to the vacuum area and after just a minute or two the vacuum stopped working right. Dammit! Why can’t anything just work? Serves me right for spending the money when I could have done this at home for free. Then I looked at the nozzle and the reason the vacuum wasn’t working was that I had sucked up a chapstick and I had to fight the forces of suction to get it out. 

• I swung by Dollar Tree and struggled for way too long over buying a few Halloween decorations that I do not need but are very cute and only a few dollars but it’s stupid Lara, you’re a grown woman and you already have Halloween stuff and you got rid of a bunch of it you don’t need more and I settled on a pair of solar lanterns and a pair of light-up lack-o-lanterns and felt both happy and foolish. I had a similar argument with myself over a $1.25 plastic basket to hold supplies for the collage project I’ll probably never do and why do I need a special basket for them? You have a basket that you can use but you like how that basket looks on the bookcase and you don’t want to use it for collage supplies what are you doing making collages anyway? You’re not a kindergartener. (I bought the basket) 

• I forgot to get gas at the cheap gas station so I had to go to a regular gas station and I debated getting half a tank and filling up at the cheap station lately but said, "Fuck it!" and filled up and justified it by telling myself I'm not driving myself during my leave and still felt stupid.

• One of the tiered hangers that hold my scarves broke so now that means another car outing to interrupt my day. And I bought it at Bed Bath and Beyond which doesn’t exist anymore so I’ll have to go to Target and either buy one that won’t quite match or buy three to replace them because I can’t have the scarf hangers that no one else sees but me not match and even if someone opened the closet by accident for a sec they wouldn’t notice the mismatched hangers but I’d be mortified because I am the trashy girl with mismatched hangers.

• The decorative letter plaques that read “Dream” and “Relax” in my bedroom blew over and were on the floor.

• I thought I’d gotten my new passport, but no, I got my passport application returned. Again. This time because I hadn’t paid the fees. The first time was because I hadn’t put postage on it. What is wrong with me?

• The kitchen floor is just getting dirtier and dirtier and there are dirty dishes from yesterday left out and other things not put away and the house feels out of control. 

• I haven’t put away the laundry and it’s sitting on the bed and I used to hate putting laundry away because my closets were usually crammed full and it was hard to do. Now it’s because I’m ashamed of my clothes that don’t fit.

• I went back to Best Buy and no, we can’t replace the battery, you have to get a new Chromebook and Larry the Best Buy guy was surly and unhelpful and they have a really disorganized way of storing the Chromebooks but he eventually found the one I wanted. I thought I might offset the expense with my $150 gift card I got from Comcast for setting up my internet but when I took it out I saw I hadn’t been activated so I just put it on my regular card rather than ask Larry to wait a sec while I activated it.

Now I’m home. With my new Chromebook and writing it feels so good to get it up and out of me, and it’s also made me late for getting ready for my mom’s birthday party tonight - which is a whole side story in and of itself -  and I’m starting to get worked up again. Which is good, because it means the anxiety is real. 

---

EPILOGUE: A few weeks later, I made meringues again and they came out perfectly.

Know someone who would get something out of that story? Please share.

Lara sez…

I don’t have it in my to make recommendations this week. They will resume!

Before I let you go…

I still have a few Drama Goblin notebooks to give away!

This time there are two ways to win!

1. Comment below or reply to the email with a thought, suggestion, or words of encouragement.

2. Share this post with someone you think would like it. Either hit the green button or forward the email and “cc” me: lara@larastarr.com