(Originally written in July 2025)
You may have heard about my incredible cold shower habit acquired over a mere seven years.
Yes, an elixir of vitality, a panacea to every problem, a miracle drug that wasn’t a drug at all, just water and iron will.
The kids caught nasty, green snot colds. They were taken down one by one and used up all the Kleenex in the house, which was a lot because I shop at Costco. You know who had to take care of these germ sacks with her bare hands? Me. You know who did not get sick?
Well, yeah, Aileen. She rarely gets sick. I think her immune system has a special barrier made completely of cannabinoids and Golden Girls reruns.
But you know who else did NOT get sick?
ME.
And I continued to not get sick even though they sneezed their germs directly into my eyes and mouth. Often. And they’re not even young.
I was invincible.
I was emboldened.
Who can’t eat nightshades? Moi? Well, that was before COLD SHOWERS.
Who succumbs to germs if she gets less than 8 hours of sleep? Angela? Good thing she COLD SHOWERS.
Who once almost fainted during a house dance cypher because she apparently has some sort of cocoa intolerance? This girl? COLD SHOWERS WILL TAKE CARE OF THAT!
When the no-msg vegan kimchi went on sale at Hmart I bought, you know, all of them. Then ate kimchi every day for a month. Then swore I’d stop. Then bought more. Then ate kimchi for another two months.
And since I was eating kimchi, what is the point in avoiding other nightshades, right?
So bring on marinara sauce and salsa! Bring on Sriracha and chili oil! Bring on the party-sized bag of Kettle Air Fried Jalapeño chips I originally bought for Elijah but hid in the cabinet, he can’t mourn what he didn’t know he had! It’s all okay cause I take cold showers!
Am I a person whose impulse control decreases in the later hours proportionately to how much my I-need-to-know-urgency increases? Indeed I am. But when a student introduced me to the $1 clearance section at BookOff I decided I could, for the first time ever, become a reasonable human who could relax by reading for 30m before bed. You know, if anything, it would IMPROVE my sleep.
But history repeated itself (as it tends to do), and the relax-me-for-bed reading I began at 11pm still had me wide awake at 3am. And maybe reading about heroin addiction and benzo dependency and the violent but sexy perils of women’s prison were not the most calming of topics, but I like what I like. Did Aileen notice the light peeking out from under my door during her 3:30am toilet trip and scold me? Why yes she did. But I said “Shhhhh. It’s okay, baby, I take cold showers!”
Then the Lord told me I needed more chocolate in my life.
Drinking chocolate protein became a great idea even though the last time I drank chocolate protein I wound up lying on the concrete during a house dance cypher, trying to comfort all present that I was not dying even though I kinda wondered if I was dying.
In addition to the protein, I also found semisweet chocolate chips with no added sugar that tasted GOOD and not at all like dirt and disappointment. So I baked chocolate chip cookies, ate cookies every day, washed them down with chocolate protein, then made more cookies (you may have noticed moderation is not my forte).
Then Rain discovered that chocolate chips in my banana pancakes are BOMB, and that chocolate chips in my biscuits are BOMB, and everything suddenly had chocolate in it. Have I already realized, at least three times in the past four years, that I have a cocoa intolerance? Yes. But it’s okay because—say it with me—I take cold showers!
Turns out it was NOT okay.
I got sick in the beginning of July. A weird kind of sick where my main symptom was feeling like a vampire had sucked out half my blood. I don’t actually know what blood loss feels like, except for the time I decided to go grocery shopping on my way home from the hospital after giving birth to Elijah. Apparently doing activities soon after giving birth makes your blood fall out of you.
I guess I do kind of know. Anyhow.
Becoming sick was a wake up call, and that’s when I course-corrected, stopped sabotaging myself, and made decisions befitting a 43-year-old mature person.
Except I did not do that at all. I got better and immediately returned to my old ways using this keen logic:
“Other people can drink alcohol and eat Twinkies and nachos and those ice cream monstrosities with Fruit Loops and marshmallows on top and be just fine.”
“Other people can sleep for 5 hours and drink a shit ton of caffeine and party with their hands up in the air like they don’t care and be fine.”
“Thusly and therefore, I should be able to eat nightshades and no-sugar chocolate and stay up really late reading about former addicts and be fine.”
Foolproof.
Then two weeks later I contracted a new—and much nastier—illness (it’s been a month and my vocal cords are yet to fully recover). Then after being sick I fell into a funk where the world was TERRIBLE and everyone around me FILLED ME WITH RAGE and moving my body was SO IMPOSSIBLE and I DESPISED everything and all of it and—worst of all—NOTHING TASTED GOOD.
A mini dark night of the soul, if you will.
So I let go. I let go of my self-destructive “logic,” I let go of kimchi and hot sauce and the delicious things I feel are owed to me because I am Korean. I let go of reading into the wee hours. I let go of chocolate and hope someday I stop craving it.
It seems like a simple trade, right? A few food items and staying up late for wellness and sanity? It certainly seems like something the Universe should not have had to pry from my shaking, raccoon-clenched hands.
We are odd creatures, humans.
I am happy to report that after ten days of recalibrating I am mostly back to my normal mix of joy, worry, gratitude, urgency, love, and food tasting good.
And now that I am feeling alive again, I can say, with absolute certainty, the eating of the nightshades and chocolate and the staying up late was NOT worth it. Zero benefits. Umpteen consequences. Do not recommend 0/10.
And, guess what?
Cold showers are magic again.
Love,
Angela
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