Mouthfuls on the Mend: How Cabbages and a Cutting Board Saved My Mental Health
Content warning: This article contains references to suicide and eating disorders. If you or someone you know needs assistance, please, contact your physician, go to your local ER, or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255), or message the Crisis Text Line at 741741. Both programs provide free, confidential support 24/7.
Unlike most Chinese families, my dad took care of all things in the household.
Every day of my early years began and ended with his cooking. I would come home from school to a rhythmic “chop-chop” on his wooden cutting board and the distinct smell of his meal-prepping: oily, but not unhealthy; generously seasoned, but never with MSG.
I remember picking at my dinner at home in Shanghai — a bowl of untouched rice, topped with neatly chopped cabbages.
“What are you doing all day, locked up in your room?” my dad had asked, in an obviously discontent tone. I dared not look up. Instead, I continued examining the uniform cut of each cabbage stem and counting pepper specks.
“What on earth do you want?” he raised his voice, slamming chopsticks on the dining table.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I gathered the courage to respond.
“I want to kill myself, Dad,” I said. I was 17.
My dad cried with me, a rare scene indeed for an Asian family. His tears immediately dried mine. Ashamed of worrying him, I quickly regained composure, but I kept this a secret from my mom, who was away on a business trip. They were both doing the best they could, I thought; I needed to fix this myself.
I ended up seeking help afterward, but an unprofessional therapist only worsened the struggle. I dreaded every session, where I was forced to unpack my psyche with sandbox toys and watercolor prints. I never knew what to say, but that didn’t stop her from making me.
A few years later, social media inflicted anorexic tendencies. For a while, I prided myself upon disciplining my stomach. I felt powerful, in control. I lied about having a tiny stomach, and my dad, a loving overfeeder, reluctantly shrank his plates to palm size. Not much later, my extreme diet backfired into bulimia. Food became an outlet for my emotional turbulence. I began to relish, more than anything, the feeling of food shimmying down my esophagus. I stuffed bulky mouthfuls down my throat, pleased as the odd sensation diverted my mental distress. Due to their granular texture, my dad’s cauliflower stir fry and lean pork strips became my favorites.
In 2023, I really started to appreciate his cooking in a different light. I was home in Shanghai that summer, fresh off a 14-hour flight from New York, where I was attending undergrad. Mom sat me down to announce my grandfather’s death and my aunt’s seizure, both of which had happened six months prior to my return.
I did not cry at my grandfather’s farewell reception. I watched my no longer verbal aunt cry, and read the catering menu over and over again: matsutake soup, Boston lobster steamed with golden garlic, crab cooked with taro and minced pork… There were 14 luscious courses in total, but I ate none. I vomited in the bathroom, took a cab to Brandy Melville, and bought the tiniest skirt I’d ever seen.
For weeks to come, I could not eat anything besides takeout clay-pot rice, a Cantonese casserole with fatty sausage and heavily oiled crispy rice. It did not help that my parents were away from Shanghai for two weeks. I can’t recall why they left or their whereabouts. Everything was a blur, except for the memory of eating, crying, and eating more, alone in a dimly lit room. I could not fathom my presence with my grandfather no longer present, and my aunt, well, semi-present.
I wondered why everything had to be so volatile, going downhill so fast and unexpectedly: my loved ones, my mental health, even my relationship with food.
Life felt like an unrelenting carousel of change, bad ones, and I was growing sick of the ride. I felt an impulse to break away, to break free, to break something. I had a list of promising breakables in the house, but landed on my dad’s cutting board. It’s about three inches thick, seemingly a raw cross-section of a tree stump and cracked from decades of use.
When I picked the board up, it was lighter than I remembered.
My dad chopped everything on this board. He had diced bok choy into tiny bits for my teething meals. He had sliced ribbonfish into shorter bits so that I could learn how to eat fish. If my early years were a musical piece, this cutting board would be its percussion, chopping a steady beat, forming the first pulses of my life.
Picturing the cutting board in halves, I felt an odd, phantom jab on my tongue. I suddenly longed for my dad’s rhythmic chops and daily cooking, constants that survived every change.
So I made the decision to save us both, the board and me.
When they came back home, I announced to my rather traditional parents my plan to start antidepressants. My dad nodded at my long-winded report of mental struggles. To my pleasant surprise, he showed no sign of pity or disappointment.
“Remember to be specific with the doctor,” he said, firm and composed.
One psychiatrist appointment later, I started going on an SSRI. It wasn’t easy at first: the medications were harsh on my eating-issue-vexed stomach, and subliminal grief infested long nights of dreadful dreams. But I knew I was making progress, learning to love and nourish myself. I felt it. Whenever I visited home, I asked my father to make my favorite dishes, like his special carrots, seasoned with ginger and vinegar to resemble sea salted crabs. I don’t know how he does it; all I know is that this dish is the only exception I make as an unapologetic carrot-hater.
It has now been two years since I last eyed the cutting board.
“Your dad doesn’t use it so often anymore,” said my mom. I had asked her about the board’s recent state. “It’s too heavy. Now he just sits the rice cooker on it.”
I giggled. This worn-down kitchen tool was my way out of mental struggles, but no one knew, not even its faithful user of two decades.
“What is it?” she asked, puzzled and concerned. “Why are you asking this, all of a sudden?”
“Just curious,” I said with a shrug. I liked that it was a secret.
