8 more lbs GONE!

April Fool's. (damn)

Up earlier than usual on a Saturday, waiting for the coffee to properly steep in the French press.

S. still sleeps, dreams.

Yesterday was officially a tailspin. And to think it all started with a donut and ended with a hella delicious veggie calzone.

I need to get closer to this pissy, foot-stomp-on-floor-in-indignation part of myself who sees no better solution to letting off steam (and comforting nerves and allaying fears) than classic overindulgence.

A friend tried to kill himself this week. Tuesday and Wednesday, to be exact. He started drinking, as we understand it, around 9 am on Tuesday, and by noon he’d ingested 100 pills and who knows how much alcohol. He feel into a deep sleep, and woke many hours later, disoriented but alive, and positively livid that he was still breathing. We don’t know what transpired between the time he woke up and when he decided to go the carbon monoxide route in his garage, but when he didn’t show up for work on Thursday, his coworkers went looking and found him there. He’s now on 72 hour psych watch at a local hospital, and there is talk of detox. No one can visit him save family, so we wait. And wonder if we’d go visit anyway. Would I want a visitor following two botched suicide attempts? Probably not. But then again, we want him to know that he’s not alone in this. We want to say “damn you, we love you, don’t do that again, we know you’re really struggling and we don’t know exactly what to do but we’ll so something, just call us first.”

This difficult news, coupled with a horrendously stressful week at work (during which there were very specific moments when I wanted to bitch slap my spineless boss) and the general malaise of too much to do and never enough time to do it led me straight toward the road of debauchery yesterday. Oh yeah, and it was Friday, and I have discovered recently that my salivary glands start sending messages to my brain around three o’clock every Friday and the message is simple: two hours til happy hour. Damn 9-5 workdays that string together into a work week and come crashing into Friday with a whoop and holler and cocktail in hand. Dare I say it is the way of the (my) world?

My road began Friday morning with a simple donut, old fashioned glazed from the local supermarket, continued into leftover lemongrass shrimp (with brown rice!) for lunch and then roared headlong into chips and guacamole and beer and margaritas as the evening turned to night. By 8 pm I was savoring every bite of a veggie calzone add jalapenos and garlic while watching the extremely weird but incredibly thought-provoking film, Donnie Darko.

Now. There was a time when the guilt I felt from indulging in this manner would be, well, present, but not overwhelming. This time was different. And frankly, as I write this, sitting here as the day comes on and Daisy sighs loudly (which translates to “get thee dressed and take me on a walk”), I feel a tremendous need to try and undo all the “damage” of yesterday and move my body. The guilt, if that IS what this emotion is (I think it’s far too complicated than that) it pretty overwhelming, actually. I’m not sure why I can’t seem to alter my world enough to fit my dream of a healthier me. Patterns, yes. Cultural/social norms, check. Crutches, present. Is it control? Is it wanting to project the idea that I have changed without anyone ever noticing that I tried? Ah, that’s interesting. Projecting effortlessness. See, I am so good at discipline that no one knows how frantically I’m pulling the levers behind this curtain of incredibly thin skin. After all, evidence of trying invites failure potential. And I have failed so much, so many. Better not to let on at all. Better to show up one day, 30 lbs lighter, and have someone say “you look like you’ve lost weight! Have you been doing anything different?” to which I can simply shrug my shoulders and respond “just trying to make some changes.” See? No big deal. No celebratory parade.

And just beneath that insanely transparent response, a thin, reedy whisper: “I’ve been walking through fire. I’m hungry almost all the time. I don’t know how long I can keep this up. Lifetime? Maintenance? Pure drudgery. Counting points is for the weak.”

On that load of shit note, I’m off to take that walk.