Today I woke up with a hankering for true blue Taiwanese food. Specifically, pai goo fan and stinky tofu. And two or three dishes I will never be able to order because a.) I don't know what they're called; b.) I don't know exactly what's in them; and c.) the kinds of restaurants that serve them are the kinds that have two menus, and I don't speak Chinese.

I'm not Chinese or Taiwanese, but my ex was Taiwanese-American. We lived together for nearly six years, and we saw his family nearly every weekend. I have eaten A LOT of Chinese/Taiwanese food, so much so that I regard some dishes as MY comfort food. I still cannot get over the idea that I may never taste them again.

This is the part of the break-up that lingers, isn't it? It's not pain anymore, just a kind of niggling nostalgia. It hits it home: I no longer have a Taiwanese family to feed me steamed fish with soy sauce and ginger and scallions, or Japanese curry, or pork ribs in that black bean sauce. I can no longer go to a real Chinese restaurant in Flushing, NY (the kind in which non-chinese fear to tread), and sit contentendly as a flurry of mandarin is exchanged between the waitstaff and my former M-I-L. I no longer have a guide to that world; I am no longer an honorary member. Their secrets are lost to me now.

And in a strange, quiet, but very real way, that makes me sad.