Do people get married, in part, so that they don't have to fret out the weekends quite so alone? Is that why they go on to have children?
I'm sure I've written about the challenges of weekend nights before but I have to take another swing at it, I'm afraid.
I am writing a book. It is a painful book. I have "finished" plumbing my story of the triggers of relapse & it sent me into relapse. It's time to start the new chapter, the focus of which will not be me.
For once.
The problem is, I don't wanna. I don't want to live any more in this pain of food, eating, weight, belly flab, self-esteem & lack thereof. I don't care if it's my pain or yours, I want out.
But I can't go out until I make more solid progress on the book. In fact, when offered ballet tickets for Friday evening, I had to turn them down because a) the three people I'd have liked to see it with were unavailable, & b) I couldn't think of anyone else I wanted to make conversation with during the intermission.
I went to my 12-step meeting yesterday after some weeks' absence, an absence I'm not proud of & which helped trip me up in reliving parts of my life. The only excuse I can offer for my snottiness at the meeting is that I had a lot to ponder from the reading & the guest speaker's story. Other than that, there is no excuse for why I sat in my chair during the break, brushing off the one or two people who approached me. I told myself I didn't want to be disturbed by people I frankly don't like very much. Some of the truth is that the people I like were talking to other people -- & I was afraid to approach them & too snotty to try. A couple of people are in that Room because of my book, & that gives me pause as well. Everybody knows me as much as I know myself, or more because they have the objectivity to interpret what I can only report &/or feel.
I left the meeting full of shame & was met by a glorious day. I took my camera, Daisy & her currycomb out & ran into acquaintances from the dog world on our way to the Promenade. They had just returned from buying cocoa mulch & plants for their garden & chatted about their low-key birthday plans of only two dinners. That tete-a-tete broke up & Daisy permitted me to feathers a bird's nest with her shedding coat a bit before we went home & had lunch.
At which time it was time to write.
Only I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn'tcouldn'tcouldn't. So I crawled into bed & finished an ancient NYer & napped the afternoon away. At 6.30 I took Daisy out for some fetch & then it was time to think about winding up the day.
The day?
What day?
I had zip for shit to say of having accomplished anything, & my attitude had, unwittingly, turned to envy & snottiness & envy & then hiding in sleep & a magazine & the book I'm reading. Hiding = food. I ate too much of the wrong stuff for dinner & got to wake up yet more ashamed this morning.
I'm coming here this cool windy morning that reminds me of Montana simply to prove to myself that I can string some sentences together. I'm laying it out here that I've GOT to get a life & for whatever reason, I don't have the energy to do so right now. When I finish this post, in not very many minutes, I'm going to have some coffee & a cigarette, then put on The Doors for the sake of "Break on Through," which is what I must do today if I'm going to get to tomorrow morning with any self-respect.
On Saturday nights, I just don't like myself at all.
Saturday Night Heifer by Rob Scotten, available at http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.poster.net/scotten-rob/scotten-rob-saturday-night-heifer-2108207.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.postershop.co.uk/Scotten-Rob/Scotten-Rob-Saturday-Night-Heifer-2108207.html&h=361&w=450&sz=21&hl=en&start=55&tbnid=Y8izvQnyYlm43M:&tbnh=102&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsaturday%2Bnight%26start%3D40%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN
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9 comments:
You know from reading my blog how I hated Friday nights after I left and there was no J in my life. I felt everyone got released from work at 5pm on Friday to go home with their spouses and/or their kids and that's when their real life began. I'd come home and cry, cry, cry because I had no life. It took me a long time, but I got over the severe reactions I used to have.
Saturday nights were okay for me; when I was eating badly, that was prime time to be overeating. You're right about that. I made sure I had plenty of cheese, salsa and chips on hand for Sat night.
I can tell you that the times I had with my spouse on Sat. night were not as much fun as you might imagine. In fact, my best Sat nights were with my best girlfriends or when J carved out some time for us in amongst his life.
There are times when I get absolutely sick and tired of struggling. That's about most of the time; it's rarer for me not to struggle. Some days it's candy, other days it's salty or carbs and there's always the spectre of cheese looming over my head. (Now that would be a funny picture to try with Adobe, I must admit.)
I don't write. I wish I could so I have no solutions for you to break through except to just maybe sit down and right about anything, including the nail clipper on the right side. (Hey, it worked for Nicholson Baker, "The Mezzadine.") I get bored with my life quite often and I wish you had gone to the ballet even by yourself. It's something you adore and it's not staying home to watch "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" on TV.
I hope things are better for you. I thought about this some more. When doesn't weight affect our every day life? Our clothes, how we walk, who we date, what we eat, how we eat it; the things that don't involve food or weight are very small isn't it? Anyway, I'm rambling.
Yes, that is in fact why I got married. ;) My husband better keep up his end of the deal or I'll want to have a couple of kids.
Just kidding. Hope that today is a better day. Aren't The Rooms supposed to be a place where you can Be Your Bad Self if you need to be?
Daisy K, If you were happily married with children would you be writing soul grinding books? Just a smart ass thought.
Friend Kim is 47, successful and has lost 100 pounds, and spends some of her saturday nights taliking to me. She would like to have a soulmate, playmate and helpmeet. She just had another disasterous internet "meet and greet." The guy took one look at her and said he had to leave. And left. She finished her low fat latte, collected her dignity, and went home to her penthouse and dog. She has a good happy life, but she is lonesome for a mate. I got no answers, but you are not alone, and neither is Kim.
What a heartfelt, painful post - and the pain of Saturday loneliness is familiar to so many of us.
I, too, have no partner to spend my evenings with. If someone gave me ballet tickets, I couldn't think of people to ask to go with me. Maybe I could go on my own but I'd worry about fitting comfortably into the seats, which distracts me a lot.
The attitude issues would seem to come from guilt and fear. Guilt that you weren't doing the steps you know in your heart you should be, and reacting to it. But you're not doing them out of fear. At least that would be true if we were writing my story.
The Rooms should be a safe place to be yourself whether you are abstinent or having problems. I'm really glad that you went, even if it was so hard.
Did The Doors help? I usually put on Queen when I need to jolt out of a stuck place.
When I was going through a particularly horrible time, I read this quote: "The only way out is through." I think it helped me cope with that particular time, and maybe it will help you focus on getting your book finished. Hard work, but you're the only one who can do it. (And I will be there to buy it!)
PJ
touche my friend. we talked about this i believe on the actual day it happened. i talked about this very thing in my class tonight as well. i start living in the darkness more on the weekends than i do during the week, although lately i've been like a boat that is about to go over the niagara.
and meetings are meetings. i hate breaks at meetings. i tried to get the meeting i go to drop the break, but people love the break. what gives! i hate the damn break. i don't want to talk to anyone. then i leave the meeting and feel lonely. this disease sucks.
love you-
I hate the meeting breaks, too. I used to be real social, and now I am not. Sometimes I can go to a meeting and leave feeling more pain than when I went in, the lonliness part, the lack of connection, when I isolate myself in a room full of people or when I want to speak but feel paralyzed and simply can't. Then people tell me I am aloof, but what they don't know is I am just plain scared. It is not always like that, but it gets that way from time to time.
I hope the Doors helped. And I look forward to the book.
Get over yourself, Frances.
Get over your rampant narcissism.
Get over self-pity. Get over self-centeredness. Get over the load of anger and resentment you are carrying (and) feeding. Get over diets, expectations and secret grandiosity display, get over whining, get over your wounds and your boss, get over your pounds, get over the fatty in you that you mercilessly mock in others. GET OVER ALL OF IT and GET A LIFE, for Heaven's sake.
You are SO boring.
Paz is such a coward that "he/she" can't give her/his real name nor access to their blog which presumably talks about mundane topics and network tv.
paz has a disease. we need to have compassion. paz has head up ass disease...i bet it smells awful.
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