signs

Everywhere, everywhere.

I would like to say that I am back to normal, 100%, chugging along as usual. But I'm not. I'm close, but I still deal with VN symptoms on a daily basis. Like yesterday, as I tried to wade through piles of clothes in the basement, sorting the summer garments from the winter ones...lots of folding, bending, lifting...after about two hours I was toast and had to sit down, watch A & E's "Intervention" and smoke a bowl. I love being irreverant like that; I think most addicts do. Besides, "Intervention" is like five train wrecks all at once that you not only can't peel your eyes from but you have to pull up a chair to watch. It's disturbing, sad, insane, human--it's one of those shows, in the same vein as Cops, that makes a person feel normal. I mean, at least I'm not such a bad alcoholic that I sleep with a gallon of mouth wash by my side, right?

Last week I had this moment wherein I thought "I'm just going to weigh myself, see where things stand." I dusted off the scale and placed it on the cold concrete floor. I stepped on. Nothing. I stepped off, then on again. Still nothing. The batteries were dead. I was spared.

I don't know what possessed me to get on that scale. The number was going to wreck me, I was sure of that, but it was like I needed to be wrecked, needed a fire under my ass and the reminder that I was just getting FATTER. Forget that I've been fighting a very real, very debilitating condition for six months. Forget that I couldn't walk for a time, that I could barely work, let alone exercise. Now that things were returning to normal, I had to face the music. I had to see the NUMBER.

But the fates intervened. There was no red number blinking back at me. Honestly, I was glad. I was relieved. After the fact, I told a friend about it and she asked me "why did you feel the need to weigh yourself?" and I don't even remember what I said, but when I thought about it later, I concluded that it all came down to self-flagellation (we're good at that here at CTF) and this idea that if I saw just how fat I was, I would stop putting so much crapola in my damn food hole. The number would scare me into not eating. I would find willpower in the number. ("There's peace and serenity in the light.") Or at the very least I would uncover the everpresent but temporarily cloaked fear that I was only going to get bigger if I didn't walk more and eat less.

In the midst of my worst days with VN, I would feel such despair over my inactivity. I could feel panic sliding in and taking up room in my gut. At some point I was forced to adopt the "take it off the table rule" and just stop worrying about it because there wasn't anything I could do. Exercise was out of the question for a solid three months. I eased up; I let myself just BE. It helped, I think, but now that I'm coming out the other side I have to remember that it's not going to do me one iota of good to start back up with the Nasty Fat Girl routine. I went out and bought new pants this weekend because I was tired of the way my other ones fit--they are snug, and that's okay, they won't be snug forever. One day at a time, one meal at a time, postitive reinforcement. Nevermind that I have to walk the family gauntlet in three weeks which includes my exercise-obsessed brother and sister-in-law--rumor has it that shes's dropped from a size 10 to a size 4. And she's been quoted as saying "I've still got some to lose."

Where's the sign that says CAUTION?