one of my biggest concerns growing up was that due to my depression, there was a high possibility of resorting to substance abuse to relieve my stress and tension. i lasted college without ever smoking anything and drank literally only 7 times in 4 years (including sips, all due to the ... requirements of being "social"); i think i had a pretty decent grasp on how to handle the "stress" and pressure of school and finding a job - i kept myself occupied by studying and found a way to escape into another world through asian dramas (13-20 episode tv shows covering a variety of topics and genres, basically developed movies that have closure after 2-3 months). this worked, and continues to work now that i'm almost 3 years out of school and working in the real world. it still gets me through my two-hour commute, through the night before i shut off my lights at 10:30pm every night and on weekends when i really need to be away from...people. however, as i get older, i find more unique ways to relieve my ever-increasing stress. what drove me to write about this was the hilarity and realization that i do something every week, that's usually grueling and should be obnoxious; it's a part of almost every indian child's life growing up, and turned from a chore i hated, to a stress reliever i actually looked forward to doing every sunday afternoon. chopping copious amounts of onions into tiny squares and stir-frying them til they're sweet smelling and brown, with a few spices mixed in. it's a known fact that all indian food is made up of two major bases: onions and tomatoes. it can be either or, or even a mixture of both (in most cases). so growing up in an indian-american household, where we don't have helpers to make this happen, the task often falls responsibility to the children. every week we spend an hour of our time chopping and frying and mashing and stiring onions and spices and pastes so our mothers can spend the week making incredibly delicious dinners, with ease. we would do it no matter how much the onions made us cry or our palms ached from chopping up fresh, crunchy onions because it meant we'd get to eat something new literally everyday. it was worth the pain. somewhere down the road, i had mastered this this weekly chore. i knew the tricks of the trade on how to avoid tearing up, how to get rid of the smell on my clothes and fingers, how to heat the oil up just enough so the onions would fry the quickest and most efficiently. i was proud of this, it made me feel good that i could help my mom out this way, and possibly learn how to make food as good as her's. but as i get older, my workload in thebreal world increased. and instead of being an "onion chopping master" (i need this on a shirt!) i turned into a chopping robot. chopping vegetables left and right...buying things from the farmers' market simply to prep things. and all of this was just to get my mind off of work. this became my method of relaxation. the thought of drinking away my stress crosses my mind more often now, but i found myself controlling it by just going home instead to help out my family. my depression got worse in the past 2 years, and i realized staying with my parents is really the only solution to keep things at bay, so i might as well make myself productive and useful while i'm here. i guess i'm killing 2 birds with 1 stone here - relieve my stress while getting to eat the best home-cooked food...and i have absolutely no problem with that! who knows...this could lead to something else? maybe not...either way, i'm proud of myself for finding an alternative and i hope someone reads this and finds my solution helpful to combatting their own stress or depression.
kaledo-art
turnnoffyourmind
blakekathryn
