Just ordered her from Totally Scooters in Toronto! Yes, she looks suspiciously like a Vespa but half the price (come on, we're talking scooters here, not Ducatis!), and I really dig that color, which is actually rather close to my hair color, I think. Somebody asked me if I had a name for her, but I don't yet. Naranja?
Of course, I'm not vain or anything... but I was madly scanning the web for accessories, wanting to be the perfect scooter girl. But then it hit me. I was sittting in a 12 step meeting having just whipped there on my bike, and I realized that what I was wearing on my bike would be just fine on a scooter. It's not as if I'm cruising the highway on a big beefy cruiser, I will be just scooting around town! I already own three old leather jackets and some sturdy boots, and I even have my old motorcycle gauntlets kicking around from when I owned my Kawasaki 440 ----gulp--- 25 years ago. Oh my lord, it actually has been a quarter century since "diverted" a year's tuition into buying a bike, completely without telling my parents (I always was a sneaky rebel). I kept the helmet but I need a new one, definitely, but the gauntlets have come in handy when it was time to prune those extra thorny old fashioned roses.
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.
Ok, so I'm going for a run. It's a beautiful Sunday morning, Fuzz is out of town, and I phone my running buddy to try and bludgeon her into running with me. She can't. Or she won't. What I suspect, no, what my stubborn brain believes in every inch of it's little codependent soul, is that she is too busy doing for others to do for herself. Running with me today might mean she wouldn't be so damn exhausted when we meet again on Tuesday for our engraved in stone running date. I am totally convinced she is self sabotaging. And I resent her for it.
Well, ya know, what my brain is doing to me is just as bad if not worse than what I imagine she is doing to herself. Here I am over in her yard, perceiving that she has more and uglier crabgrass than in my yard. And what do I really know about her, anyway? She may indeed have better things to do than heavy breathing with me. I get so pissed off and exhausted by the rage generated by my mental gymnastics, no wonder that most evenings it seems that the only answer to all this misery is collapsing on the couch under an afghan armed with a bag of Miss Vickies and back to back episodes of House, another real sane example for me!
Truth be told, I wish I had the company to run. But if I really really wanted her company, I could wait until this evening. But I want to run now when it's cool and fresh and then have the slightly achy but oh-so-superior feeling for the rest of the day when it's done and can happily collapse at a local Starbuck's patio with my 2nd iced americano of the season. But I ain't going nowhere unless I get myself out of my friends back yard and just mind my own business. I ain't the boss of her, and when I really truly learn that, maybe I'll feel better.
What a beautiful day! Sun! Finally, it's stopped snowing and the dregs of that late few inches we had Monday have disappeared. I walked downtown with a light jacket for my final post-op check with the plastic surgeon who did my panniuclectomy. This guy does not have the greatest bedside manner, perhaps he has a touch of asperger spectrum disorder because you get the feeling he's talking to himself and you just happen to be in the room too.... It's a bit like having Eeyore for a doctor. He looks at my incision scar and said, ehhh, not bad, a little puckery here and there, a little uneven here...and I realized he wasn't critiquing me, but his handiwork! Then he told me that he could fix the unevenness in the scar in office with a local, but my tummy wouldn't be completely flat unless--- and then he grabs the skin on either side of my abdomen and pulls it back!--- we did a bigger operation with incisions that basically go almost all the way around my trunk!
No thanks. I'm quite happy with what's happened to my tummy, it's flatter than on most women my age, and the scar will fade, even on my white white rehead's skin. And the only one who sees the scar line is Fuzz or maybe the other chicks in the locker room at the Y. Geez Louise, I'm going on 46 this year and I'm very happy that I'm not 300 pounds any more. I'm not going for a bikini tummy, I feel rich having a whole rack of size 8 0ne pieces or tankinis to choose from. I'm just happy to have the flap gone along with the constant rash. Another benefit was a numb area of skin that never recovered from my hysterectomy was removed, and sensation in the new "landscape"seems to be pretty good. And I look pretty damn good in a pair of jeans!
That being said, I'm feeling strangely down. Is it the after effects of dealing with Dr. Eeyore? A feeling that life should feel more perfect than it is? Tax season? Studio anxiety? Just a bad case of life? What do I do? Maybe go to the studio any way. I've got over 3 hours before I meet my running group, I guess I could give it a go. I'm getting sick of the painting (a copy, just to get my chops up again) I'm working on so I should keep going on that, finish it up and get on with work that actually means something to me.
Sometimes ya just gotta keep going, even if it feels sucky. Oh yeah, I have to call my shrink...
Bless Oprah. A few days after I was complaining that the Appetite Awareness Workbook author didn't seem to understand my binge eating, I turned on Miz O (during lunch, of course) and she was having one of her semi-regular programs about addiction. After another one of the heartbreaking stories of one of her guests whose drug habit won out over their family, Oprah commented that the guest was obviously not stupid, to which the guest replied that intelligence didn't have any relevance to her cravings for the drugs--- they were beyond intelligence, beyond logic.
And then I had another one of those lightbulb moments when I thought, yup, that's how it is with me and food: my three university degrees and all the learning about nutrition, exercise and mental health got me close to nowhere. My cravings are not assuaged by my knowing that they aren't related to actual physical hunger. Fat people are not stupid! Knowing that the gnawing desire for cookies in the evening soon after a good meal is emotional in origin knocks the craving down by about, oh, .5%.... I learned I was an emotional eater around 1975 when I first joined Weight Watchers. It didn't really help with the diet and weight rollercoaster I rode for the next 30 years.
It wasn't until I started using the addiction model to describe my pattern of eating that I actually got anywhere with changing it. In the beginning I had trouble describing myself as a compulsive overeater. Yeah, I'm an overeater, but compulsive? Sounds too much like a form of mental illness. But then I realized that my behaviour did seem compulsive: my reaction to almost any life event or feeling was to eat. Celebration? Eat. Mourn? Eat. Bored? Eat. Feeling creative but going into the studio and painting too scary? I could create an elaborate chocolate dessert, earn praise of family and friends, and then eat 4 helpings of it in one evening. Repeat ad infinitum all the way above 300 pounds...
Paradoxically, it wasn't until I admitted that my eating issues seemed to be best described by using the model of an uncontrollable disease, was I able to get some help for them.
I bought a new book the other day. Sometimes I think I need a twelve step programme for those addicted to self-help books, and I'm having particularly severe buyer's remorse about this one. It's called the Appetite Awareness Workbook and I'm steamed, because after 4 chapters of this I'm gettting that creepy feeling that the author doesn't know what, or rather, who she is writing about, despite the claim touted on the cover that it has been clinically proven... on what? Rats eating junk food? Nah. Actually, the author does have some experience at an eating disorders facility in Colorado. However, for a book aimed at people with binge eating disorder (which I think I am), it is striking a rather hollow note with me. Hollow. That's how my stomach always feels...
The homework in this early stage of the book is to write down after every meal and snack how hungry you were and if you stopped when you were full. Well, it's been two days and, naturally for someone with an eating disorder, I have absolutely no clue when I'm "really" hungry. Other than, well, duh, I'm always hungry! The only time I know for sure when I am authentically hungry is when I'm really past a mealtime and I'm so ravenous I get nervous and cranky. I tried to "feel" my hunger before I started my oatmeal this morning. Nothing. No rumbling, no discomfort. I even, as suggested, and feeling like a dork, placed my hand on my tummy (you remember, the part that's still numb from surgery... making it feel like even more of a futile gesture) and thought... does this abdomen feel empty? No response. Not even a teensy growl. But I polished off my usual hearty portion.
The other question is, did I stop eating when I was moderately full. This one is also a real headshaker. The only way I know for sure I'm full, is of course when I'm really full, or stuffed. And that doesn't kick in easily. Maybe after a large bag of chips and a pint of ice cream, and a hamburger with gravy on the fries, but oh boy, there's chocolate...
For crissake, IF I COULD FEEL WHEN I WAS FULL, WOULD I BE BUYING this STUPID BOOK?!? So, I'm disconnected from my stomach feelings. I'm just not feeling too confident these people understand the nature of my beast. I'm feeling like some new species of animal just discovered by science, being observed in a lab by people with clipboards quizzing me in gibberish. I think this is a classic case of failure to communicate. I'll bet these "experts" even have cookies in their cupboard at home that go stale before they polish off the box! Mars and Venus, baby, Mars and Venus.
On the other hand, I went to my usual OA meeting on Saturday morning. Now they are talking my language. They know my disease, better than they want to, because their demon is my demon.
It's funny that as recently as a year ago I thought I was fine with my stomach. Let me clarify: that part of my stomach that, due to gaining and losing weight many times over 40 plus years, had lost most elasticity and hung like an apron over my pubic area. Doctors call it a pannus, but people with it commonly refer to it as their apron. I thought I would just live with it, but when I found out that I had to have a hernia repaired in that area, I also did some research with a plastic surgeon and discovered that because of the nearly constant rash and skin irritation I had under the pannus, our provincial health insurance would cover the surgery. If I wanted it.
Did I want it? Well, surprisingly, the answer wasn't initially "Hell, yes!" I really had resigned myself to living with it. I looked at my apron as one of my battle scars, along with the stretch marks, and flappy or saggy bits on other areas of my body that showed the war I had been through. I was not a twenty something twig, I was a middle aged woman who had lived and fought and kept going. But the rash was not going away and I would arguably not likely be in any better shape to recover from a surgery than now. And of course there was that part of me that wondered what it would be like to have a flat tummy. Why not enjoy it now? In fact, while I was waiting for word back about whether the province would cover the surgery, I decided that I would be willing to find the money to pay for it myself if they didn't. Better now than years from now when I could be old and weaker with and the rash compromising my health more.
Does it sound like I'm equivocating here, just justifying a vanity choice? Perhaps, but really there is no black and white answer to this. Vanity entered into it, but also my health was a concern. And, as the surgeon said, having the two procedures done at once is less risky than having than having another surgery later and another 6 weeks of recovery time. Drat, I hate grey! So much of life falls in that grey area. One of my big problems in life, dealing with those dratted greys.
So, it's been about 8 weeks since I had the surgery. Healing pretty well, but the scar is very long, like someone drew a rather uneven happy face from one hip bone to the other. It will fade. I got a brand new navel in the process, a teeny little cute one because the other one had sagged so low the surgeon removed it with the skin and gave me a new one, except I can't feel it. I'm still pretty numb all across my abdomen in that area, but sensation is coming back slowly. My gp, who herself has had a cesarian and hysterecomy cautioned me that some sensation could take a year to come back, and some may never. To which I responded, oh well, guess I can't cook in the nude any more! All together now: "EEEEEEEEUUUUUUUUU!!!"
Sometimes the area tingles, like when your foot is falling asleep. And the wierdest feeling, which I've only started experiencing this last week with the return of some sensation, is the one of "feeling" the missing pannus. It might be a little like phantom limb sydrome. Not painful, but occasionally it feels as if I still have the pannus. I'll roll over and bed and almost feel the skin that isn't there any more shifting.
As Count Floyd used to say "Spooky stuff, eh kids?" Wierd. But neat too.
Yup. I feel like crap. I've got this non-food related issue I'm not dealing with and I'm feeling like a total schmuck. Hopefully, I'll soon get so sick and tired of feeling, well, sick and tired over this that I'll do something about it. Right now, I'm living in this twilight limbo of hating myself. I say it's not food related, but really, when you're a compulsive overeater, emotional eater, whatever, it always relates back to food. I had some cravings last night for comfort food: saltines with peanut butter... you know, the stuff your mother would give you (or you wish she had) when you were feeling low.
Of course, in my family, at some point it felt as if my mother went from being my comforter to my jailer. I know she was only doing what she felt best, but I did feel as if she started monitoring my food. I remember when I was a kid, around 10 or 12, and they had bought some kind of canned chocolate milkshakes. It was Friday night, and I was watching TV with my parents, and I thought the milkshake tasted like heaven. My mother said I could have only one can that night. Well, I snuck out to the kitchen at some point, sat in the dark hallway outside the livingroom and watched tv through the door while drinking the second milkshake. If my mother knew what I was doing, she never gave any indication. I can't remember if I tried to hide the "evidence", the can, that time. That was for later years when I was in high school, at a "healthy" weight, dieting and bingeing in secret or with my friends who didn't care what I was eating. In most other respects, I was a pretty squeaky clean kid. Until I got a boyfriend and discovered the joy of making out at the ripe old age of 18, food was my big rebellion tool. Mind you, cigarettes and booze didn't have a big appeal because my father always sounded as if he was going to hack up a lung every morning, and my best friend and I both had to cope with alcoholic dads. Food was our comfort, our outlet, plus it was socially sanctioned. Except around my Mom.
So, last night, how did I deal with this? Well, I ate the snacks I usually eat in the evening, a fruit, some yogurt, decaf coffee and an ounce of 76% chocolate... ok, and a little extra: I split the 1/3 of an ounce left of the bar with Fuzz... and then I went to bed early , at 11 pm. Which is early for me. Safe in bed. Away from the fridge.
I was meeting with an OA sponsee yesterday, but I don't think we don't have the "classic" sponsor/sponsee relationship... whatever that is. Everybody does it differently, just like everybody works all aspects of their 12 step programme differently. In fact, one of the only universals in 12 step programmes that I've found is the belief that there is one right way to work the programme and we likely aren't the ones doing it "the right way"!
My sponsee has stuck with me through my recent relapses, just as I stayed with mine as she had hers. When you find someone whom you have so much in common with, you tend to stay with them even if they don't have "perfect" abstinence from compulsive overeating. I meet with my sponsee once a week and we just chat about stuff. Not all OA issues, but our lives. Actually, most life issues are OA issues. For those of us who call ourselves compulsive eaters (overeaters, undereaters, and those who eat too much and then purge or starve) we see that our eating is affected by our moods and coping mechanisms with those moods.
The depths we go to with this disease can be truly humiliating. A lot of sneakiness happens. When I was a child, I used to steal change from my mother's purse to buy candy. When house sitting for a family member, I plowed through tons of bread and cheese. A member who is a retired supermarket clerk talks about how she used to steal food and money from her till to buy food. Amazingly, she has actually had the courage to approach former employers to apologize and reimburse them for what she stole.
But with the exception of shoplifting, overeaters rarely are charged with serious crimes directly related to stealing for their food "habit", unlike alcoholics or drug addicts. Yesterday, my sponsee and I were practically rolling on the floor with the mental image the two of us wearing masks to hold up our favorite bakery. She'd go for the scones, I'd take the butter tarts. Thank god for large mercies.
My friend M offered to drag me to her Monday morning yoga class. I don't like yoga much, but I figured it was a better way to start the week than huddled in bed hating myself, so it was ok. Some good stretching, some opportunity to meditate a bit, and the woman instructing gave me this great lower leg massage while my legs were propped up in the air. Since we're all friends, we sat around and chatted over coffee afterwards. I don't think yoga will replace other forms of exercise, but there are much worse ways for me to spend time, like: worrying, watching useless tv, or eating. So, this week is turning out to be much nicer than last.
Fuzz is off school, on March break. He's really had his head buried in work (teaching and taking courses) since Christmas, so he needs some down time. We have no travel plans, but it's nice to have him around. We decided we would try to get out for a good long walk every day, but it's hard for me to fit that in even though I'm still off sick. I'm not even back to work yet, but there's always stuff to do. Today I meet with my OA sponsee, and then I'm going to babysit while Fuzz and my BF bottle a batch of wine they made.
Sometime this week I'm going to get back into the studio. It's been 4 1/2 weeks since my surgery --- a femoral hernia repair and a panniculectomy --- and the recovery has been fairly uneventful, but my mood has stunk. But it's generally been a difficult 6 months emotionally. Regular writing helps, but I think my old coping mechanism of stuffing the feelings down came back. One of the other artists in my studio building seems to have had some sort of breakdown. Part of me really feels sorry for him, but another part of me is hopping up and down and going "YES! Another artist is having problems!"
Since the black mood retreated last week I've been to 3 meetings of 3 different 12 step fellowships, OA and two others. Compulsive overeating is still the bugaboo that feels the most dangerous to me, but I have issues with alcohol and money, so I also go to the odd AA and Debtors Anonymous meeting, and since they are all from the same AA routes, they have the same message and the same techniques to try and live a healthier, saner life. Basically, they give me opportunities to reflect, share, and write about the problems bedevilling me. Trying to follow a 12 step way of life is about putting habits into place that make my life easier, not harder. But the change takes work and regular recommitment because I'm trying to change the self-sabotaging habits of a lifetime, some of which started before I even learned how to talk.
This week has been awful. And it's all been in my stewy brain. Nothing bad happened except I fell into the black pit on Monday and gave myself over completely to the binge rottweiller. I've been struggling with a big fear of dealing with some investments left to me by my mother years ago and because of some changes in them I have to deal with them this tax time.
Monday morning I felt incapable of dealing with these and I'm so horribly furious with myself for not dealing with this and feeling as if I mismanaged my money and all is horrible. I know it seems drastic. That's my drama diva brain. I abandoned all hope and retreated to bed except for regular trips to the refrigerator. There are 8 messages on my answering machine from friends that I couldn't bear to talk to. The fact I am writing right now means I have clawed myself back to the lip of the pit, and I'm sitting on the edge, swinging my legs over the abyss, contemplating the pit versus getting back into the world of the living again. I don't truly know if I clawed my way out or what happened last night when I popped out of the top.
I just know that last night in the wee hours (ok, it was after 4 am) I was lying in bed hating myself and that awful stuffed feeling in my stomach and suddenly I had this rush of gratitude. It seemed very profound then, but then, don't 4 am thoughts always feel profound? Profound Thought went something like this: "Here I am, in a cute little house that needs a little work, with a loving wonderful man, and I have good friends and some interesting things to do and two great cats and enough money. The only thing really wrong in my life is how much I hate myself. The rest of the stuff is minor. "
Click. Life seems worth living suddenly. Two things I am considering: Today I need to go to a meeting. Any 12 step meeting will do. Number two, I think I may benefit from some a residential treatment programme. I need to give this default self hatred switch a good scrub, and maybe look into turning it into a dimmer switch... It's so fucking drastic.
I believe that there are possibly many fat and happy people out there. I just know I was never one of them. My experiences with food have led me to believe that for every 50 pounds of excess weight most people carry, they have that much emotional pain that they are carrying around inside them. Or, on them, as it were. Some day we may have such sophisticated imaging equipment that we will be able to see the pain inside that inch of fat, and say, "oh, look, there on the left lateral abdomen, there is that incident from 1983 when your father slapped you and called you a lazy slut!"
Of course it's more complicated than that, because even when you dig down and see the suspected source of the pain, it doesn't mean you will immediately feel better. I believe then you have to try to counteract all the little distortions in thinking that followed that. Self knowledge then has to be followed by a massive change in mental habits of thinking, and behaviour. It's not enough for me to distract myself with a crossword puzzle when I feel hungry. I need to challenge the black dog of the soul and affirm that all is not lost, and I do not need comfort and oblivion in food.
I could become the fairy queen of the beautiful cupcake, but all the admiration of my fans will not help my pain. It's too hard wired. I cannot earn my own self love.
This may seem oblique to many, but if you've suffered from the black rottweiler of the binge, you'll probably understand.
Things happen. I sunk into a funk. The toxic thoughts got the best of me. I stopped going to OA meetings because even they seemed toxic to me. I got too deeply enmeshed with some people without even trying, but by being unable to say "no". Tried a new antidepressant which initially REALLY knocked the stuffing out of me. The depression itself didn't get worse, but I slept a LOT. And I had the cold that would never end, so I wasn't able to exercise much, which was the loss of a major mood elevator. But after a month I finally started to feel better.
The most amazing thing then happened: In early January I got back into the studio. Recovery sometimes is so subtle, you don't even notice it's happening, and in this case it was nothing dramatic. A couple of days after New Years', I got Fuzz to help me put up some blinds in the studio and I unpacked a few boxes that had been sitting in the basement. Then it was just a few hours a day, working on a Van Dyck copy I had started years ago when I was studying in New York. Before I knew it, I had spent more time in the studio in January than I had during the whole fall!
Unfortunately, some old habits resurfaced: The toxic thinking, the isolation, and last to come, I had a food issue. Aka, a binge. It happened in the first week of the New Year, and my eating had gotten kind of sloppy over Christmas, you know, the usual, a little bit of this and that, a bite of that and the other thing, more dessert more often, and it got harder and harder to stop with a healthy portion. Then there was one night when I just didn't want to stop eating. So, I didn't. I ate until my stomach felt like I had swallowed a bowling ball.
Luckily, it only lasted one day, and I was back to sane eating again, but I have some emotional work to do.
Maybe I'm too quick to dismiss this whole Seasonal Affective Disorder thing. The weekend was sunny and I felt better. I've also cranked the light box up to x-tra high, and leave it on for an hour or so. I don't feel so bad. I think I'm at about 65%. And then there was a news item on the national news about how doctors are seeing a big increase in people with low moods this fall, when the east coast has had one of the most overcast fall seasons in almost 60 years.
I'm tired of the guilt, of the shame of feeling like I'm doing something wrong. To HELL with it. Now I have to try and live that out, and stop slinking around with my tail shoved under my butt. I wish humans did still have tails. But only involuntary ones that wagged or sagged in true response to one's feelings. I keep up a good front when I'm not so low I have to take to my bed. Unfortunately, it's mostly a front.
Thank god the food is ok. I've not been going to any meetings, I've just felt too low, too vulnerable, yet I fear that this is going to catch up with me. But my support group doesn't feel like a support group any more. My disease is using it against me. I can't go to them for support, I feel like as an "old-timer" I think I have to be the support, and I don't feel up to it. I've got to change something here.
I've been depressed for the last couple of months. The weather here has been horrible and grey. Oh for a nice white snowfall! I gave in to the opinions of my therapist and GP and finally bought one of those light boxes, and I've been taking my vitamin D faithfully, along with an antidepressant, but it doesn't seem to be taking. It's not just the weather, this has been a problem off and on for me since early adulthood. I believe that my long and torturous history with the food is also linked to this mental turmoil. Researchers have long theorized that substance abuse may be an attempt to self medicate mental illness.
Mental illness. The term just sends a chill up my spine. It sounds so final, so damning. But actually, if I can look at mental illness as something chronic but treatable, like, say, diabetes, it can remove that whole layer of shame and guilt.
I've been looking at my manifestations of depression. Often it consists of staying in bed for long periods because I feel so overwhelmed by the everyday world. But I am starting to wonder if it isn't so much a depressive mood as a reaction to extreme anxiety. When I wake up in the morning, I have a thousand thoughts coursing through my brain, and if there are too many, I just hit a threshold where I feel I have to shut down. It's almost as if a fuse blows. My tortured brain decides it's hopeless, I give up, and retreat from the world.
My father suffered from terrible anxiety. It was obvious in his case: He trembled, he would talk in his sleep, if you happened to touch him (ours was not a physically demonstrative family) he would practically jump out of his skin. And, oh yes, he was also an alcoholic.
Of course, I grew up vowing never to be like him. But I now see that what he did with booze, I did with food. And although I try to come across as a relaxed, fun, funky chick, I am really quite tense inside. Social situations are tough. I come home from choir rehearsals fantasizing about mowing my way through a big bag of kettle cooked chips. But I hide it well. Joking and laughing and trying to be Ms. Social butterfly. And I'm an artist.
But it's a ruse. I'm full of anxiety, I need long periods away from people, and I haven't been in the studio for ages. I worry, I worry, I worry. The social anxiety is the worst. I worry about what people think of me, and I get into these toxic situations where I throw my own mind out the window and get overwhelmingly occupied with what the other person wants or needs. Most of this happens automatically, without me being conscious of it. Habit? Probably at least partly. Growing up in a fucked-up family, a kid gets pretty good at sussing out what they need to do to appease the family members who are acting out. Unfortunately, I grew up with a warped idea of how relationships work.
So, on with the therapy, but I think it's time to talk to the doc again, maybe get a referral to a psychiatrist. I want to investigate some different medication options.
For years, food has been my life. Love food, love cooking, love expressing my love for others through food. I've even worked as a sous-chef and volunteered in a soup kitchen. Then I realized that if I didn't change things I was going to die sooner rather than later, and likely not in a pleasant manner, developing hypertension and diabetes at age 36.
Fast forward nine years. Right now the food feels manageable. I've got so many good support systems in place, it is working: a plan of eating that is sane, nutritious and not punitive. A support group of people who I meet regularly at OA meetings and socially. A regular routine of exercise. A small group I run with twice weekly. A weekly therapy session. Support of family and friends. So the food is good. For the first time in my life it feels fairly sane.
But I'm at a new stage in my battle with the food. I've been a stable weight right now for a little over two years, and that initial euphoria of losing all that weight has faded. I've struggled with depression since I was in my late teens. And right now, it's the rest of my life that feels unmanageable. Last week I was very depressed, and it felt like it was impossible for me to get my life together, to do for that part of my life what has happened with my food.
This week I have a little more perspective: The other parts of my life are not as out of whack as my eating was. So I may be struggling with handling money, interpersonal relationships, and my career, but face it, who doesn't??? I've got to take it slowly, not keep heaping coals upon my head. It's not as if the rest of it fell apart when I got the food under control, it was always this way.
So, this is what life is when the food sits in its proper place.
Is anyone like me and a big fan of the comic strip Pearls Before Swine? I just love those pidgin english speaking crocodiles who just can't help it, their nature is to eat zebras, and their fraternity (Zeeba Zeeba Eeta) is located in a nice suburban neighbourhood in a bungalow right next to a zebra. Maybe they need a 12 step programme... "Hi, me name Larry and me lika eating deelishus zeebas"... Needless to say I feel a certain affinity for them...
Anyway, on the roasted vegetable front, I was next store at BF's house last night and we were doing one of those very informal potluck things where we go, ok, I've got a bit of this and that in the fridge and if you have some of this, so we ended up with 2 different frozen pizzas, some soy-mushroom burgers, and carmelized cauliflower and turnip fries.
Yes. Turnip Fries (ok, rutabega actually, but in my end of Canada we rarely see white turnip and so the yellow fleshed purple skinned rutabega is called turnip here). I know, it sounds gross, but they were really tasty. BF hates turnip and A while back, when I discovered carmelized cauliflower via Orangette's blog (see my links list I'm too lazy to do it) I realized that if you sliced almost any vegetable fairly thinly, tossed it with some coarse or sea salt and olive oil and roasted it in a hot oven (400 to 450 F) until it had some brown and crispy bits it would taste great. Watch it closely after 10 minutes if it's the first time you've tried this with a particular veg, and some vegetables, like sweet potatoes have a lot of sugar, and thus quicker browning.
So...BF had this turnip literally rolling around her kitchen after a very, very, long visit from her mother. And the damn thing was starting to sprout and it was bugging her. She peeled it, and cut it up into french fry size, sprayed it very generously with her nonstick spray (in my books it's the same as tossing with a little oil if you spray for more than 10 seconds!) and sprinkled on some of that Herbemare seasoned sea salt. Then baked it on cookie sheet until it was tender and had lots of browned parts like a dark fry. Amazing. In fact, I'm going to try it tonight when I roast a duck I bought on Saturday, as the duck takes a high heat too. Yum.
Ok, in contrast to the last very serious post, here's something light and fun.
Earlier this week I realized I needed to do something with all the root vegetables and squash heaped in a corner of my kitchen and in my fridge crisper. Sometimes I get overambitious in the organic vegetable aisle, probably because this time of year a lot of the winter vegetables look really good. And I am sick of salads, too cold for salad, I want good, sturdy cooked vegetables. But then you get them home and get busy with something else and you suddenly realize that many of these lovely vegetables are starting to look a little funky and if you don't move soon, all that will benefit from your good intentions will be the compost pile.
So three nights ago, I rummaged around and gathered up these errant veg: a butternut squash that was developing a soft spot, a rutabega, half a celeriac (celery root, tastes like celery minus the strings), a purple kohlrabi (taste a lot like broccoli stems), some really big old carrots, and an onion. I took the whole lot and peeled (and peeled and peeled) and chopped them into half inch cubes or sticks. I heated the oven to 400 degrees F, oiled two large cookie sheets with about a Tb of olive oil each and a tsp of kosher salt sprinkled over each and rolled the vegetables around in the oil and salt and then stuck them in the oven. Now, these vegetables don't all cook the same. The sweet squash became pretty mashingly soft very quickly, but it took a good part of 40 minutes for the rutabega and kohlrabi to be tender crisp. I stirred and flipped the veg around with a big spatula a couple of times and kept my eye on it to make sure the browning didn't go overboard. I purposely wanted a few browned bits that added some interesting carmelization to the taste. Some of it's very sweet, some not so sweet. When cool, I dumped the leftovers into a big plastic container to store in the fridge. We've been living off them for the last few days --- I had a couple of poached eggs on toast for lunch today with a side dish of those roasted vegetables on the side, and they tasted so good just cold straight from the fridge I had to force myself to heat a bowlful up in the microwave. Last night was a salmon and broccoli stir fry served over noodles and some of those roasted vegetables added in near the end for interest.
If we don't eat them all up in the next day or two, I think they will make a great pureed soup after some more cooking in chicken stock, maybe with some curry paste added or grated cheese on top.
I love it when I can do stuff with food that's good for you. Having tasty, ready to eat veg in the fridge is like having giftcard burning a hole in my wallet!
I was lying in bed early this morning feeling ambushed and overwhelmed by all the "had to do"'s for today, feeling utterly ashamed of how paralysed I felt. So I went back to sleep because I didn't feel able to cope. Blessed unconsciousness.
But then I remembered that I was expecting the UPS guy. So I got up, and I've been sitting around the house for the past 4 hours waiting for him. Mind you, if the UPS guy wasn't coming (I didn't actually expect the order to come this soon) I might just be sitting around anyway, but feeling worse about it. I'm really struggling with a depressed mood the last few weeks. This way, at least I'm doing something useful when I sit around. Actually, I'm doing some other stuff too. I'm writing something for a talk I'm supposed to be giving tomorrow. I've had a healthy breakfast and lunch. Somedays the blessings seem small, but I have to try to count them.
Having to stick around the house lowered the bar for me today. I'm not feeling totally paralysed and useless.
Do one thing at a time. Don't overplan. I keep telling myself, but somehow it just gets added to the coals that I heap upon my head. Life in my head is tough right now; all those coals aren't that easy to bear. Sometimes I'm ok, sometimes I'm not. But I'm still here.
Didja notice that yesterday I mentioned I was making cookies for a community meeting? I was asked, and instead of saying, can I wash coffee cups or set out chairs, I said, oh sure I'll make cookies! Did anyone find that strange? I should have! I should have at least considered whether that was a good idea to have several dozen cookies cooling in my kitchen, or what's almost worse, several dozen cookies worth of cookie dough, of which I nibbled on so much yesterday that I realized I had to go without my usual evening snack of chocolate. Also, bad idea to run with cookie dough in the tummy. Holy brick in the stomach Batman...
So, I'm a compulsive overeater and I offered to do the foodie equivalent of a drunk offering to make the holiday punch for a party. I'm wondering if I should do that again. I'm still in the midst of it, so it's good I'm writing. I'm trying to be honest, not gloss the struggle over. I ran out of time yesterday so I threw the dough in the fridge and I'm baking them this morning. 7 or 8 dozen cookies are spread over the kitchen, cooling. At this point in the day (it's almost noon)I've had 2 cookies. Samples, right? Yeah. So, it's early in the day and I've already had most of my allotted dessert for the day. How am I with that? Not terribly happy about it really. I usually save a dessert for the evening.
The irony increases, I'm supposed to meet my OA sponsee for our weekly chat in an hour. Do I tell her I was baking cookies? Yes. I have to be honest, and this has been a challenge to my sanity. I wonder if this is a safe thing for me to do. Am I tempting fate, am I thriving on the thrill of baking? It's true, I love cooking and baking as an anxiety release. It feels so homey, all those good smells. Maybe I'm trying to recover, or remake my childhood where so much of the good things were around food. Intersperse that with a constant diet. I don't know where all of this leads, it's just interesting to look at at this point. Will it take a binge to change me? Do I have to change? Am I wasting my time on this earth with comfort food rather than directing my phantom but considerable when occasionally tapped energies into more sane yet more risky avenues? No answers here.
