January 10th & It's New Year's Day

I made it. I made it through Christmas. That was all I asked of the end of 2008.

It's my first day back in Brooklyn & I'm thinking, finally, of MY 2009.

"My" is capitalized because the last six years have been given to self-indulgence in the forms of over-eating & weight gain, financial fear, depressions of which one fraction is my rage at being fired sixfuckingyearsago, developing agoraphobia, dogs, isolation, silence, fear of writing, fear of being a public enough person that you, Dear Reader, are turning to this blog.

& I'm tired of it, & tired in general. So many harsh emotions boomeranging back on myself in physical & psychological ways is exhausting.

I've been thinking what my New Year's Resolution(s) could look like. Here's a random list:

* Lose weight.
* Get back to The Rooms.
* Get back to step work.
* Get back to my sponsor.
* Finish my novel.
* Listen to music & the radio.
* Shower every day.
* Blog more.
* Get out of the house more often, without dogs, without going to the store, bank or CVS.
* Get back to church.
* Answer my huge backlog of email & letters that I'm too scared to answer.
* Look for adjunct teaching.
* Weed through my junk.
* Say goodbye (& hello) to New York.
* Go some place where my parents aren't.
* Study up on how to use my camera & Adobe.
* Get ABT tickets.
* Go to Montana.
* Wear earrings often enough that it's not a struggle to put earrings in.
* Be a better friend.
* Look around for a boyfriend.
* Train my dog.
* Start writing a journal again.
* Listen to meditation CD's & start doing Yoga for the Rest of Us.
* Get a new TV, DVD, VCR that work.
* Learn to say "no".
* Learn to decoupage.
* Get out of debt.

The thought of all of this is, to say the least, both overwhelming & impossible.

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So I want to look back at 2008 first, & not at my failures but at my successes & at my lessons.

The election brought me back to the news. I'm not only deeply interested in several politicians but am exceedingly pissed off at the invasion of the Gaza Strip. I haven't been interested in the news in years.

I finished the first draft of Angry Fat Girls. Oprah regained 40 pounds & Kirsty Ally also obliged me by validating the need for this book. It might be more important than PFT.

I found some old friends &, in doing so, resolved some jagged endings & made some new starts. D., U., C., N., L., M., K., D....that's a considerable number of friendships reclaimed from time, distance &, in some cases, bitterness.

I've begun to make some friends via Facebook. At least I have good feelings toward them.

I wrote one really terrific Lab Lady blog that I will stand by forever.

I've pretty much decided to move to Seattle about six months after AFG pubs.

I cut my hair off in an act of self-mutilation & only got rave reviews of it.

I began a novel that feels Right.

I have become closer to members of my family -- my parents during their health crises & during my depressions; my brother; nieces & nephews I can watch on Facebook; a cousin; my sister-in-law.

I have learned that I don't handle stress well & I learned where several of those stress lines are. I THINK I can learn to handle stress better again & I think I can stretch the boundaries of where too much begins.

I understand some of my weird fears better, or I can at least articulate them.

I continue to see Providence at work in my life.

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Not a bad haul -- & probably not a complete one. I do so much lamenting on this blog that I don't want to go into specifics of boundaries & stress, ruptures of old friendships, my weight gain or how much, the shades of depression, the losses & scares of the year.

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When I look back at 2008, the moments I want to remember include:

* Sobbing through Sunday in the Park with George
* Singing musical comedy tunes with BJ to our dogs on a bleak Promenade
* A long conversation with my oldest friend that was so funny & so dead-on that it's enough to last for months
* Hearing the Ohio poles come in while walking Daisy on the street & the feeling of unity & good will that pervaded my neighborhood the next day
* A series of suppositions BJ & I wove into a story that had us rolling on the sidewalk
* Getting a slightly larger advance for reselling AFG than the original sale
* Conversations with A Boy in which that frisson of wide-eyed wonder at synchronicity buzzed around my head
* Sitting on a stoop one afternoon with the dogs when suddenly I felt Henry rest his head on mine

These are the photographs of 2008 that I want to remember.

#

I'm eschewing as much sadness as I can here. It's my New Year's Day. It's time to look forward & continue building on what is good & scrapping what isn't so good.

In the forefront of mind, of course, is keeping every one of those resolutions. In the middle of my mind I have decided to limit it to one sort of group resolution for the time being: shower every day, wear jewelry more often, brush my teeth at night.

Simple? Ha! I've failed at all of them at least once. But in selecting this cluster of things, I'm opting for some self-respect, some focus on my body. I'm voiding some of my excuses for why I can't go to Starbucks or a meeting or church or to see a friend. I'm making it less likely I'll binge at night.

Come to think of it, I guess every day is the start of a new year. I'll pick up some other resolutions as I go along with 2009. I happen to be abstinent today. It feels energizing in the dead world of January.

I don't know what tomorrow's resolution will be but I think I should print out these lists & remember that resolutions to & resolutions of sometimes simply happen. I'm sniggering a little as I write this, thinking of Awful Rat-Faced Alix quoting Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which she regarded as her Bible. "Ultra-ultra secret," she would say with her rat-smile of some huge book deal she was handling that would entertain a lot of folks but not improve the world beyond that.

The proper quote, I know after finally reading the novel, is "Ultra, ultra sensitive."

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Weight Loss

Stats:

69 degrees with a high of 85; 75% humidity; fair skies
Day 33, with a serious slip
246 pounds, holding; down from 262

I've learned a couple of things this week & thought about a couple of things, & I'm going through a phase of the fuck-its.

One of the things I've learned is that I can't eat at someone else's house yet. There are further conditions to this. I especially can't eat at someone else's house when I'm not at ease with the circumstances and people, and it's very dangerous for me to drink 2 glasses of celebratory champagne.

This is to say that I like to be able to take Daisy with me whenever I can and having to keep her on leash in her best friend's house because the tottering gentleman of the house is afraid she'll jump, and who criticizes her for it while Daisy's best friend leaps and smudges my glasses, puts me so on edge that I want to eat to buff that edge right off.

And a little alcohol, when I take antidepressants and haven't had sugar in a long time or filled my stomach with lots of dense food to absorb it, diminishes my judgment.

I decided, after discussing the matter with two close friends, NOT to go back to Day One. Quelle horreur! my 12-step readers will say but I say, gently, not. There is such a thing, after all, of imperfect abstinence -- and that's a last resort.

The two most important things for me, right now, are not to get yet more demoralized by this awful process, and to LEARN from my mistakes without being further punished by them. It's taken three days so far to arrive at some peace with myself over my night of sin (which was not a binge). I don't need any more of the set backs, like loss of day count, to deepen the fuck-its that currently have me by the short hairs.

I will not, however, consider Friday as part of my abstinence. I did not go pick up a 30-day coin the next morning. I did not reward myself for Day 30. I will not be going to dinner at anyone's home for a long time unless Daisy can run free, be loved, and I can bring my own prodigious amounts of vegetables. Being able to smoke would also be a plus.

So I've lost no pounds in the last five days, or at least I don't think so. I have an old-fashioned scale that is marked in two-pound increments. My eyesight for those lines is rather blurry. Maybe I weigh 145, a weight I intend to honor by dropping a couple of bucks in my savings account, lately emptied by the Air Conditioner Crisis -- but does it matter? Does that one pound make my shorts looser or my face more defined? Does it make the mile-and-a-half walk to Henry's easier?

No.

Only cumulative weight loss does that.

Which is more important -- what one has lost, or what one weighs?

We aren't even going to have the conversations about a) how much one needs still to lose, or b) how much one will either lose or weigh in a month.

I'm pleased to have lost 16 pounds. I'm not pleased to weigh 246 pounds. As far as states of minds go, the answer is simple. But which is more honest?

The fuck-its are part of the territory but they require drastic action. I know that in ten pounds I'll be able to wear other clothes. I'm chomping at the bit for that. I also want to give this weight loss to readers -- in my author photo for Angry Fat Girls, as a simple presence in the world. I do not intend to be an example. That backfired terribly. The only example I'd like to be is how MUCH I want to live -- and live right-sized, emotionally improved, with new and funner challenges than this ridiculous Ferris Wheel of weight and food.

The fuck-its of a plateau or a blah weight mean I need to get out of my head and into the world or a productive mania. They also mean that I have to be grateful for every other good thing in my life -- this computer, the breakfast nectarine I'm finishing as I write, the dogs I walk, the sunny cool morning, Daisy just to my right, the love in my life...

The fuck-its are another diet within a diet, or another abstinence within an abstinence. I have to change the blahs to other progress and other celebration.

That champagne was celebrating some wonderful news. Wonderful news makes me want t0 eat. So, of course, does bad news, no news and the News of the World.

Eating diminished the joy I should be taking in the wonderful news. I don't know how to feel wonderful very well. It's a little like being drunk, from the times I remember feeling that way. It was scary and jittery and completely enveloping, a physical experience. That's why champagne is so fabulous, I guess.

There is a lot I don't know. I wrote in my inventory last night that,

"I had an interesting walk w/ God this morning on my way to the office supply store & Hero's. You know how [12-step people] say that you should pray for everything you want for yourself be given to the person you hold a grudge against? I've been doing this for Alix, but this morning after my usual list of things I prayed she would receive, I compared what I wished for her vs. what I wish for myself. They aren't at all the same. Do I pray for contentment, diligence, showing up, doing my job, working on progress for her, or the stuff I'm pretty sure she wants -- lots of money, fame, flirtation, health, great shoes, fabulous vacation, her husband's health???"

Someone recently said in my hearing that when you wish an enemy evil, you hang on to your enemy. When you wish them well, you separate yourself from your enemy, your lives diverge. That was the most powerful inducement to this form of prayer I've every heard.

So there you have it. Other than the battle scars of food, eating, prayer, and hatred, I've gone through almost all my papers and filed them, discovered I need a different kind of file box, washed my down winter clothes, replaced my clumsy rolodex, gotten a raise, thrown out all the pens that no longer have ink or are missing caps, and am making, I think, a new friend.

Actually, all in all, it's been a fruitful, not uninteresting five days...even at 246 pounds and holding.

Mid-spring dreams & dramas

Three moments have scared me in the last 48 hours, coming fullgrown out of my unconscious. I'm writing the most difficult portion of the book (I'll say this about every portion but remind that chapter two was a bitch) & I think, given how instinctive these two dreams and a response are, I'd better finish the bitch & get on outta Dodge to happier stuff.

Tuesday night's dream:

M. (who I've never met) & I went dinner at a fancy French restaurant where we were "seated" with another couple in conjoining bathtubs. Flash to after dinner: M told me he wasn't interested in me because (direct quote) "You aren't good enough for me."

Man, did I rage. "You don't even have a master's degree," he said, to which I replied I certainly do, from Cornell University ("Cornell University"). "So do I!" he said but went on to disparage me for not being able to afford the restaurant, to which I pointed out I'd paid for my own meal. I think he then pooh-poohed me for walking dogs & having no intellectual life or something of the sort & I yelled that I'm almost famous, that he'd verified my voice with that of the CBS clip of me online.

He decided we should try once more, by having drinks at a hilltop fortress, a club sort of place, because the original restaurant had been a failure. I climbed & climbed in the fortress & finally found the bar, which had young clubby men & women in it but there was a terrace that led onto a huge green lawn, where I took a table and sat, waiting...

(The name of this blog, BTW, comes from just such a scene in Joni Mitchell's song of the same name -- He said he'd be over three hours ago/I've been waiting for his car on the hill.)

*

Phone call at 7.30 a.m. on Wednesday:

"G. went into labor last night & she's going in for a C-section now. Can you take Hero for the night?"

"Of course I can."

"I have another favor to ask. We're expecting a bureau to be delivered between 9 and 12 this morning. Could you be there to let them in."

[Hesitation as I think about morning dogs.]

"You can say no. We can ask somebody else..."

"I have four Labs this morning," I say. I can cancel Mellie but not the others.

"That's fine. You can take `em to our place."

"Four Labs, S. Think about it."

"They'll have a great time. Frances, I gotta go -- "

"Of course. Yeah, I'll be there. I'll lock `em all in the bedroom or something when the delivery comes."

"Hey, Frances -- you know we love you, right?"

"Yeah. I don't know why, but yeah."

*

Wednesday night's dream:

I have begged Alix to take me back and said she can pay me whatever she wants, less than the summer intern if she'll just take me back. She agrees and I'm given the least wanted, most trafficked desk in the office. But I have so much stuff to take home: suitcases of clothes & books, open jars of water to pack. How am I going to do it? I ask co-workers from my previous job. They're off to the Frankfurt Book Fare & have no suggestions, only more stuff for me to get home, Fare stuff like catalogues & galleys & rulers that say Heinemann or Loganesi on them. How will I ever get it all home in one trip on this one night & why am I working here again for yeoman's wages?

*

I'm looking at the dreams as being part & parcel of that hideous response to S: I don't know why he and G. would love me. I keep Hero all day and adore the fur off her head; I carry up packages & newspapers when I come in; I leave a running series of photos I've taken of her; I bring over my Big Sky Journals for the fly fishing porn; I gave Hero a George Dubyah squeaky toy for Christmas...

What's not to love?

Why would I beg to go back to work at a place I hated and felt hated? Why were there once-loved friends/co-workers in that office to witness my mendicancy? Why would -- or is "should" the correct verb? -- I argue my worth and my equality with a man I've never met who said this terrible thing (which he would, adamently, never do. If anything, he loves my brain)?

I found this overwhelming at about 1 p.m. this afternoon when I was stepping into the shower after two rounds of the dog run, saddening enough that when I snuck out on the three dogs, I couldn't get it together to do anything. It's not having three dogs here or the tiredness of antidepressants or even, really, depression.

It's the chicken and the egg of self-loathing. I can do everything in my power not to admit it to myself or show it to the world, but it falls out of me at night and in response to random compliments. It's keeping me from working on my book today and it's keeping me from thinking carefully about dinner, which is always a dangerous time.

And I don't like it.

And even if S. had said, "Hey, Frances -- you know we loathe you, don't you?" that's still not a reason to loathe myself. I grant myself that permission and what has my self ever done to me?

I'm looking at definitions of self:

1. The total, essential, or particular being of a person; the individual...
2. The essential qualities distinguishing one person from another; individuality...
3. One's consciousness of one's own being or identity; the ego...

4. One's own interests, welfare, or advantage...
5. Immunology. That which the immune system identifies as belonging to the body: tissues no longer recognized as self.

Of the five I like the last best, at least for the purposes of this blog. Take all that other stuff -- essential qualities, individuality, consciousness, identity, interests, essential tissues -- & I cannot recognize it as me.

Do I substitute food for "me" or "I"? ("Me" being the indirect object, the self that is acted upon, versus the subject pronoun "I," which does the acting upon "me"). Do I let depression become "I"? Have I substituted men (not a powerful current in my life right now) for "I"? Clothes, tchochkes, books, music, jewelry, mahjongg, obsessions like Christmas, eBay and housework for "me"? Even the dogs for "me"?

Have I substituted obesity and thinness for "I"?

Yeah. I don't know why, but yeah.

But not, quite, tonight. Tonight Daisy can whine a little as I finish this post. Tonight I'm talking back to all that stuff. And I'm saying "I" write.

I even took the photos.