Inside the Pressure Cooker

The first Christmas gift my future mother-in-law gave to me was a pressure cooker.  Kurt was excited. That's the way his mom cooked her stew.  I was terrified.  I had never used one, and all I saw was an accident waiting to happen.  I saw the lid flying off well before the stew was ready, propelled by the building pressure underneath.  The slow simmering safety of the crock pot was more familiar.  And so Kurt never did get a stew cooked the way his mom made it.  Not from me.  And that first Christmas gift still sits untouched in the back of my cupboards (sorry Mom!)...

But I feel a lot like that pressure cooker these days.  There is so much inside me, bottled up, pent up, and still building.  The day - probably the moment - that Kurt died I shut my lid tight.  I sealed in the pain, the hurt, the sadness, the guilt, along with a host of emotions I'm probably not even aware of to this day.  Closed the rest of the world off from what was hidden deep inside me, and sealed that latch tight.  It made it easier for the people around me.  And easier for me to pretend.  To cope.  Sometimes even forget.  But deep down, where the emotions lived, they were still brewing, still building.  Feeding off one another, and getting stronger.

For over three years now, I have left it like that.  Really, I'm the only one aware that anything is left inside.  But the contents of my cooker have not stopped brewing.  The pressure inside has been constantly building.  And I know I am getting to that crisis point I was so afraid would happen.  I know it is only time before my lid blows, releasing the demons that dwell deep within.  I try daily to contain them.  I don't want the world to see what lies beneath the mask I have so carefully created.  But more and more they are starting to slowly slip out - inopportune emotions, reactions at inopportune times.

Nothing - not even the strongest of devices - can contain an infinite amount of steam, amount of pressure.  Even I know that to get that stew to cook properly, you have to vent the excess to the outside world.  But I have been unable to do that.  Afraid to do that.  Because I am not sure that, once that vent is open, I can control and contain the rate at which the contents will escape.  nAnd I'm head for disaster.

Some day, in the not too distant future, I know that my fears will come true.  I know that my cooker will prove insufficient for the burdens I carry.  I know my lid will blow off, and rather than a controlled vent it will become a dangerous rush of power.  And I feel helpless to stop it.

Watch out, world.  I'm about to open myself up, and you will be able to peer inside the pressure cooker.  And when that day comes, you had better duck, because the force at which the lid explodes will be massive.  And even i have no idea, after three years of simmering, just what will emerge...