Oy! My Brain Hurts!

A friend of mine finished a reading on handling stress the other day with the saying "Some days you're the pigeon, other days you're the statue..."

I still cannot believe the way my brain works. I started today with the best of intentions for dinner this evening. I would make some tasty and fairly quick curries (chickpea with spinach and butter chicken, with most of the seasonings coming from jars of Pataks...) for an impromptu potluck with the family of best friend/next door neighbour and the family of her partner's best friend. Got that? Sort of a chosen family dinner. But it quickly got complicated: suddenly, they were hauling cute as a button hors doeuvres out of freezers and putting them into ovens: escargots, brioche, fancy cheeses, shrimp with garlic butter, salmon pate... it was like being mugged by Ina Garten, aka the Barefoot Contessa, Friend of Martha, etc.... Mrs. Stewart, I blame you for this!

So a simple supper got way bigger than I wanted. Food, food, more rich food. Stir in a soupcon of my ever present social anxiety because I don't know the other family all that well, and my hunger rises up to roar "moooooooorrrrrre!" The one thing we didn't make was dessert. Well, the grownups other than me were drinking wine. And we made coffee. But I realized that my insides really were expecting, nay, demanding a rich fancy dessert to go with the rich fancy dinner. Never mind that I probably ate enough extra calories just in butter between starters and main course for an extra meal! That gaping hole in my psyche was demanding more.

I ate a couple of marshmallows that the kids were eating, and had some of my usual dark chocolate and three silky Iranian dates with tea after we went home. Which was fine. Again, the episode was another reminder that my stomach does not work like that of others. So what else is new, huh? Once again, I feel like the statue, but I'm not quite as surprised finding myself in that position as I used to be. It's my reality, and while that craving is pretty darn irritating, after a while it lessens, kind of like a mosquito bite. Like a bite, I know that if I scratch it, it will only become more inflamed. I acknowledge I'm having an adverse food reaction and try to live well anyway.

BF's father, a recovering alcoholic, told her that for him, the first drink is always the easiest one to turn down. When I have those keep-eating cravings, I have to remember that stopping will not be easier after the next bite, but now, before the next bite happens.