My friends and faithful readers: It isn't everyday you think that a D&D non-player character is sexier than you...and everything you are not. But lately I have been indulging every fear and craving like an infant. Two truths have emerged. I am an emotional purist at the expense of other people and better thoughts, and I eat too much, and too emotionally whenever anyone provides their presence as my excuse. I will conclude this piece with solutions.
As a whining little baby girl, I have been eating chocolate bars this week. Just one a day: Hershey's with almonds, Mounds, Reese's fast break bars, you name it. I have done the swinging of the pendulum like a seasick sailor in the crows nest; where the heart finds itself jammed filled with sugar and confusion one minute and happy and excited the next and all the new tension is packed in the hold until landfall. Now a bland sense of urgent despair fills me. My emotions are out of control. I am buying scratch off tickets. I still buy fresh vegetables at least. What happened to me? What did I allow?
It all started when I went to the grocery store last Thursday, the seventh, to prepare for the great return of my sweet love which had my heart in a pitter-patter of anxious excitement all day. As I see it, when I bought the double stuff oreo cookies for Jackson, I thought that I could give myself permission for the expression of every possible gripe and emotional pitfall that exists. Little did I know this was the string attached. What ended up happening is that I permitted myself to go as crazy and emotionally unbalanced as I could imagine.
Welcome to the week of my undoing as a conscious eater!!!
I couldn't wait to cook the meal that brought me to my knees. And then to secretly put the blame squarely on my significant other so that I might battle him as though he is the understudy for my shadow. What a subtle mechanism of blame! To do something for someone else with the idea that it is a permission for your own strange mess to come out all over their life. No meal is worth that! There is nothing intrinsically wrong with preparing a dish of chicken and basil with tomato sauce and black and green beans to be served over basmati rice. It was the way the rest of the week unfolded after eating it that did me in and I can only say that I put a hefty dose of worry into the meal.
The next day we "woke up" and drank the coffee I had bought. Zeke's Tanzanian pea-berry. We both agreed that it was a weird bean. There goes 9 bucks. Free coffee in Joe's freezer to any takers. So I drank coffee. Happily, sort of. My thoughts were of celebration, of waking with my lover. I rushed off to work early, but happy. Let's face it. I had no sleep. I brought some celery and raw beets and raw green beans with stir fry on the side with me all the way over the Bay Bridge. It was great to eat that at work. I had a bit of disappointment with the chicken. I tasted the blood and felt regret.
But the buzz was still in me. Friday was the same chicken dinner again. We may not have left the house that evening. I can still see the overjoyed smile; you looking down into your thoughts as you collected the next sentence for the string coming out of your mind as you described the trip, This picture is preserved in the moment just before I let selfishness rip the image in one fell burst of me, me, me. I remember walking into the kitchen with stomach filled with tears earlier. Maybe I should have just cried for no reason. It would have made more sense honestly.
I think it was Saturday, the next morning that had me making a smoothie for breakfast,It was a nice attempt, and you drank some, but I was eating blueberry pancakes and bacon too. Again...I just let it pass. I rejected the idea of going to work and instead proceeded to start trouble deep down inside.
We found ourselves on a well lit stage with two arm chairs outside of a parking garage. A woman quietly said, I just want to know you better. The man said, no one can tell me that I shove anything down inside, no one, I am honest about my feelings. The woman believed the man, the man believed the woman. Later they ate gelatto and she bought more coffee. At night he wanted to go out and buy something for dinner. I was high and in the middle of a thought and you wanted to go...another stage was set....Together, gingerly, we prepared a meal of pasta and chicken and garlic and mushrooms and even some radishes. I ate a lot. I ate our meal of the delicate thoughts around food, and fear. Yours this time. Your hunger; a delicate urge that you grabbed like a rope whipping on a sheer cliff saving you from free-fall. Life suddenly extended a tendril and I must mention that I loved your fierceness as you eloquently expressed one potent feeling in many facets like a gem of sharp edges which cut my high and possessive frequency to a timid puttering with a knife on fat white mushrooms. I couldn't tell if I was enjoying the feeling of making a meal from little food; a poor man's talent; not a trade learned by suburban stomachs.
You explained that you were boiling in the pot like a lobster, loosing your appetite and letting yourself eat if you have the slightest urge for pretty much anything was vital. In other words; "failure to thrive" is not just something that happens to infants. Sometimes adults forget to eat, when they....become aliens in their bodies. After dinner, there was a successful roar of emotional duress running through my fear-hungry veins. An addict with a newly copped bag of narcotics, I had already busted through all civility, and availed myself of the next day's happiness, like a fast food store bathroom. I had fed myself difficulty to the point where my stomach ached. Your loving hands from behind my naked back, turned the achy points of stomach and muscle tension into a good night. At least we were delicious.
At this point on the 14th I have just eaten a bowl of raw broccoli, radish, avocado, sweet corn, red pepper with balsamic vinegar and black cracked pepper. Just coming to terms with the week has inspired a healthier meal. As I look back at the intervening days between that night and last night's bratwurst and wine/whine fest over a D&D character, I think to myself. No one should deny themselves a week of being a snot nosed baby who wants chocolate all day while they piss away the bank account of a rich love life if it brings this rewarding growing up feeling. No one should deny themselves the realization that they have only themselves to blame for not eating extremely delicious and nutritious food; so that they might thrive and be overjoyed with coming together once again around a table laden with simple understandings.
An incantation for mealtime.
What I am is here in this meal.
I offer this gift to body and soul
That goodness is taken in
and sweetness of life is returned
to all who share in the food
of being.
