One's Real Life

I'm trying to enjoy these last few days off before I return to work in the new year, but I am one of those people who feel guilty about every second of pleasure I experience.  I'm spending time with my cats, drinking lots of tea, reading books and blogs, and it has been glorious and magnificent (although marred by intervals of meals with friends.  The friends part--- good; the meals part -- not so much.)

I could easily stay like this forever...waking at 10:00 every morning (instead of 6:00 a.m.), my only focus and responsibility of the day being the number on the scale, the number of calories I take in, and the number of calories I burn off.

I wish I could take a year off and go live in a very small room by the sea, a room the size of a walk-in closet with nothing but hardwood floors and a high ceiling and a comfy chair and a wall of windows.  I'd take my cats and a trunk of books and tins of tea and read read read read and gaze at my cats luxuriating in the patches of sun on the floor and I would walk on the shore in the mornings and listen to music and I would write and I'd be happy, perfectly, magnificently happy, and it wouldn't matter -- actually, it would be infinitely preferable -- if I didn't have one word spoken to me over the course of that year and if I didn't have to speak to anyone.

My need for solitude is so strong, and so unrealistic, given my life.

Oscar Wilde:  "One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead."

Why

Because I need to know in times of uncertainty and despair that no matter what else is happening in my life, there is at least this one thing.

I have this.  At least there is this.  When everything else is going all to hell all around me, crashing down top of me, crumbling, shattering at my feet, at least there is this.  At least I have a closet full of cute thrifted size zero jeans, and they all fit.  Everything else may be fucked up, but at least there is a thigh gap, and I cling to that knowledge like it's a buoy keeping me afloat in a violent tempest.  I may have money problems, family problems, friend problems, problems in my fucked up head that make me want to escape into books for every second I can spare in the day, but at least there is this, I can wear a little miniskirt and tights in the winter, bundling up in a big warm coat and a scarf and mittens and feeling small under it all and knowing that no matter what, I have this.  I have this.  I have this.

When I am stressed, I run my fingers over my hipbones in the way that some people touch worry stones or rosaries.  My bones become a totem of what is possible with discipline, simplicity, and control.

It can center me, calm me, stop -- for just the briefest of moments -- the voices in my head telling me that I am an imposter, a fraud, a failure at life.  And sometimes it's just enough to see me through.

My Idiocy Knows No Bounds

So today was a gastronomic nightmare of the highest proportions.  Christmasy family angst = emo eating of ridiculous food, the kind of food that is normally an anathema to me, the kind of food that any other day of the year would cause me to recoil in horror and leap up from my chair and flail my arms and run screaming from the room and into a second room, say, a bathroom, behind the closed door of which I would exercise silently and with great fervor until the food in the first room was no more. But:  put me at a table with an assortment of relatives who all secretly harbor fantasies of stabbing their forks into the jugular vein of the person sitting to their immediate left, and suddenly I become the human equivalent of an industrial vacuum cleaner, quickly and efficiently ridding the table of all its contents.  If there'd been cookies and milk left out for Santa, well, screw that, it would have gone down my yawning chasm of a gullet along with the other forty-seven pounds of greasy detrius I inhaled.  It's still sort of hazy at this point, reports are still coming in, but I think I went into some sort of sugar-induced psychotic fugue there for a short period of time and consumed several elves (along with their little felt hats) and the tenderloin portion of a red-nosed reindeer.

Suffice it to say:  fuck.  fuck fuck fuck.

And tomorrow?  That's when the real fun begins.  Having bitched today up beyond all salvaging, I will fast tomorrow.  I must fast tomorrow.  But I'm spending tomorrow with the in-laws.  I can't simply not eat the food they prepare -- that would be rude.  So I'm actually going to bring my own vegetarian food so I can be slightly less rude by not eating my own food instead of not eating someone else's.

Nothing like the holidays to remind me of how completely, irredeemably fucked up I am.  Joy.

Getting Through

I'm sad that the holidays are something to be gotten through, but for me, they are and they always have been.  I am a hermit and the holidays involve waaaaay too much interaction for me.  There's serious infringement on my hermiting and I find myself resentful of the intrusion but unable to do anything about it.  Yes, I am an adult, but certain expectations of others cannot be avoided.

It takes me most of January to get myself back on track.  I'm not a religious person by any means, but I take a few days at the end of the year to visit a monastery (I stay at a retreat house there) and re-center after the stress of the holidays.  It takes everything I have to appear normal on an every day basis, and the holidays just pack a lot of activities and interaction into a period of time that doesn't allow me to breathe in between, and I'm so exhausted from by two weeks of all this trying to be normal and interact with people without frightening or offending them.  The best part of the monastery retreat is the fact that it is totally silent -- the only time anyone speaks is during prayer.  I can't explain the solace that comes from this place of quiet and peace, taking these simple meals in a small dining room with a group of people I don't have to talk to, at all.  I meditate and reflect on my past year and plan for the year to come, and when I leave, I've built some of my reserves back.  I don't know if I could make it through the holidays without knowing this awaited me at the end of the year.

Self-Discipline

"'Discipline' is a difficult word for most of us.  It conjures up images of somebody standing over you with a stick, telling you that you're wrong.  But self-discipline is different.  It's the skill of seeing through the hollow shouting of your own impulses and piercing their secret.  They have no power over you.  It's all a show, a deception.  Your urges scream and bluster at you; they cajole; they coax; they threaten; but they really carry no stick at all.  You give in out of habit.  You give in because you never really bother to look beyond the threat.  It is all empty back there.  There is only one way to learn this lesson, though.  The words on this page won't do it.  But look within and watch the stuff coming up -- restlessness, anxiety, impatience, pain -- just watch it come up and don't get involved.  Much to your surprise, it will simply go away.  It rises, it passes away.  As simple as that.  There is another word for self-discipline.  It is patience."

--Henepola Gunaratna, Mindfulness in Plain English

In the Kitchen

Made my own black bean burgers tonight (vegan).  They were most nom (and this is amazing.  I very rarely cook, and when I do, it's usually quite horrid.)

Went back through some old journals tonight.  It's something I have to be in the right frame of mind to do.  Things don't remain static, and a reminder of the past is sometimes a good thing by comparison and sometimes not so good.  I keep meticulous records of my days (I don't have hypergraphia, but I think I could probably get an honorable mention in the category) and it's amazing how reading an entry, even one written five years ago, can put me back into that day like it just happened.  Amazing.

 I saw things in the past that were bad, and I don't really want to be reminded of them.  I saw things in the past that were good, like a weight safely in the double-digits, and I don't really want to be reminded of that, either, as I am not there right now.

There's a lot to be said for living in the present.

TMI on PMS

It's that happy time of month (oh, joy).  I have no use for a uterus and would happily have mine removed if I could find a surgeon willing to undertake such a task (and if it were covered by insurance, of course.)  I wonder:  how much do uteruses (uteri?) weigh?

(On that note, I was reading an article recently about live organ donations and the Very First Thing I thought was:  "I wonder how much a kidney weighs?" Some of us are sicker than others.)

Periods tend to reduce my appetite but they also cause great discomfort, and I am one of the few people in the planet who want to eat when I am in pain, particularly any pain in or near my belleh.  (I know...weird.)  So for a few days each month, I eat without appetite in a misguided effort to appease my physical pain (as opposed to the other 27 days in the month, when I eat in a misguided effort to appease my mental pain.)

There is a lot of drama going on in boy's family right now.  These goings-on are very, very strange indeed. For most of us, there is nothing strange about family drama  -- my family, for example, is full of self-destructing, misanthropic mentals (myself included).  But boy's family has always represented normality --  the Cleavers, the Brady Bunch, the poster family for Good Mental Health.  Alas, there are some chips appearing in the carefully constructed and maintained veneer, and if you will allow the mixed metaphors, I think there are storms ahead.  Big storms indeed.  After all the time I've spent with them, I am just now discovering that boy's family is as weird as anyone else's, and has simply done a better job of hiding it.

I've always held boy's family in my mind as the bedrock of normality.  Watching this image crumble in such a spectacular way has convinced me, once and for all, that Normal doesn't exist.  We are, all of us, simply points plotted on a huge psychic scale of Weird.  There isn't a quadrant for Normal.  Normal is the stuff of folklore, of fantasy, as real as unicorns and elves.  (My sincere apologies to any of you who may agree with my assessment of normality but believe in the existence of unicorns and elves.)

The Close of the Year

2468 Was a huge fail.  I have a blood sugar problem and 2468 went out the window yesterday afternoon when I didn't plan out the day's food very well and got too shaky and nauseated to drive.  The best-laid plans of mice, etc.

I'm too discouraged (and disgusted with myself) to even contemplate a Plan B right now -- my urge to eat is so strong, it's all I can do to try to eat mindfully and, if (and when) I binge, do it with healthy food.  I am still at 103, God knows how -- unless it's because I've stepped up my exercise and cut out sugar.  (Except for pumpkin ice cream.  And can I just say there is a special place in hell for whoever came up with pumpkin ice cream?  A pox upon you, and all your descendants.  You are an evil, evil person, whoever you are, and I will never forgive you.)

Went to the gym today (after too long an absence.)  While I was running on the treadmill, I was thinking about my goals for the coming year.  I make resolutions every year (and only hold out a few hours on most, if not all of them) but I also make overall goals for improvement.  Most of these are things you can't check off once you've completed, because they are never complete.  Things like being more mindful.

In 2010 I accomplished two things that I've been struggling to do for many years.  I hope I can build on the momentum and keep going.

Unfortunately, my weight is *exactly* where it was one year ago.

I don't want to be destined to go through my entire life five to ten pounds heavier than my ideal weight.  There is so little standing between me and where I want to be in terms of weight.  But sometimes it feels like it might as well be 100 pounds.  In fact, there are people, lots of people, who've lost 100 pounds over the course of this year.  They have done what I have been unable to do and they have done it ten times over.  Pardon the play on words, but that is certainly food for thought.

There was a time in my life when I welcomed hunger.  It was synonymous with strength, with discipline, with will.
When did I come to fear hunger, to hate it, to not be able to live with it even for a few minutes?  When did I become so weak?  Where is my will -- I was once so strong, with discipline to spare.  What happened to that person?  I am pathetic, sitting around waiting for my strength to return.  I long for it like a lost lover.

Christmas is Upon Us

Shopping with a close friend today.  The times when I can just get out of my own head for a few hours and think about something other than food...it's such a welcome change.

I get so sick of myself sometimes.  Years of this.  Years and years.  Why couldn't I have been this interested in molecular biology, or astrophysics, or carpentry, or any one of a thousand million other things that other people fall in love with?  

Well, I guess it doesn't matter why.  This is the way I am.  No use crying over spilled (soy) milk.  

Today:

I ate a soysage, egg, and cheese sandwich for breakfast and an Amy's burrito for dinner.

I love Amy's with the fiery heat of a billion large suns. 

That is all.  

Ephemeral

The arms on this ethereal creature!!  <3

It's almost 1:00; so far today I've had a salad of butter lettuce (20) with lo-cal salad dressing (30).  That leaves me 150 calories for the rest of the day.  The interesting thing about 2468 is that it really makes anything over 200 look like a positively huge amount of food.  :)

I hope I can stay where I am in my head right now.  The control is here, for the nonce; but it is so very, very fleeting, as ephemeral as the blink of a lightning bug.

After three days of less than 1000 calorie days and moderate exercise, I have lost a pound -- so yay on that :)

103 is still huge on my frame.  And it's still within that 100-105 range where I've been stuck for THREE YEARS OF MY LIFE.

I want something in the mid-nineties.  Something that makes me look as insubstantial as I feel.

It's winter (well, close enough); I want to curl up in an overstuffed chair with books, journals, and hot tea.

I want to feel my bones, even in my sleep.

Another Promise. Again.

I'm 104 pounds and I have been for quite some time.  Too long.  So long that the things I promise myself I no longer believe, even as I am saying them.

The only way I'm not going to be 104 pounds anymore is to get some accountability.  This is the way I plan to get that accountability.  I'm short -- 5 feet 1.5 inches; but I'm not yet small.

I will be.  And soon.

My plan:  2468 until further notice.