📓 Field Diary – Entry #1
Title: The Cake and the Panic
Date: 2026-01-27
Subtitle: This is where it worked. This is how I’ll remember.
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This morning, I wanted to bake a cake.
Simple.
Just me and Daniel.
But he didn’t come with me.
He resisted, pulled away.
And I felt that old ache rise—
the one that says, “Make it work. Teach him something. Fix this.”
I tried.
I said, “This is how you teach your nervous system. This is how you build.”
He got mad. He went upstairs.
And I was left in the kitchen with the bowl, the ache, and the ghost of my own childhood.
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I lay down and asked the ache:
Why does this hurt so much?
And the answer came.
I never baked with my mother.
We didn’t even have an oven.
No one taught me how to finish things.
No one taught me how to build something with my hands and feel proud.
So now, I try to do it through him.
Daniel.
The redemption arc.
But he’s not that.
He’s not the unfinished page I get to write myself on.
He’s his own story.
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And then I let it go.
I let go of the cake-as-lesson.
The brommer-as-programming.
The whole plan.
I sat on the stove and held the contact points.
Let the energy move.
Fell asleep, upright.
The body knew what to do.
And when I opened my eyes—
he came back.
“Want to weigh the flour?” I asked.
He did.
He made machine noises.
We baked the cake.
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This is where it worked.
Not because we followed the recipe.
Not because he listened.
But because I stopped reaching through him
to fix something in me.
I mothered the ache instead.
And the boy came back when I stopped needing him to.
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There’s a tightness in my neck now.
A wandering in my body.
Pacing. Fridge opening. Almost-calls.
Because the question that’s haunted me is suddenly… answered.
And I don’t know where to put my hands anymore.
But I’ll rest.
And I’ll remember:
This is the year I live as the field.
This is Entry #1.
And it’s already done something real