Identity Crisis Abating

You've shown so much support, concern and wisdom in how to handle my unwitting parachute jump, that I owe you both thanks and the partial resolution.

I think the metaphor I felt earlier this week was standing on sand as the tide moves out. I see it now as an identity crisis, not helped by simple things like not being able to get hold of my sales rep at the Canadian drugstore from which I order my steeply discounted Zoloft (don't worry: I ponied up the $40 for a two-week supply and will do it again if I have to) or wondering when a client would pay me.

It's pretty easy to see now that I and my agent, in tandem, made enough noise at my editor to get a verbal, positive response to the revised manuscript I turned in eleven weeks ago: I needed, to told my editor, to know where I stand with her in order to stand. I've become a kind of aunt to my parents which is shocking at the immature age of 52. The silence regarding the thing I love best in the world -- writing -- stripped me of an enormous part of my self. As soon as I got the validation I needed (the manuscript will be accepted), I felt like I could breathe and plan to move on.

The next masks, of course, and fashioned to suck me away from everything I love, are depression and compulsive eating. I know how much my mood is improved by being abstinent. I know how much more I can feel that I'm a writer and an author. By accepting the restrictions of my food plan, I can accept more easily the fact that I really can't do anything about my parents' situation, that it's their journey and by being with them, the journey stops.

The only person I'd like to talk to about all of this (it's so complicated; we've been through so many rounds of discussion and argument; their moods change three times a day) is my brother. His last response to me was to go to church and pray. That's good advice but not quite sufficient. His wife is in the loop so the loneliness of the looniness isn't as acute. So I have one tool and one action: accept the need for me to let them assess their happiness, health and peace of mind.

My favorite dog moves to the `burbs next week. The failure of a couple of family members to respond is another feeling of loss. I could get tremendously angry at losing my abstinence but I don't, frankly, have the energy. I have just about enough energy to try to make in through Day Two and to thank you all for listening. I'll be in the Rooms tomorrow.

Breathing

Yesterday was a bearcat. I knew it by 10 a.m. when Daisy and I walked the mile down to pick up Henry. As we approached the corner, crowded with garbage bags and early morning worker bees, I saw a Welsh springer spaniel approaching.

"Don't be scared," I soothed Daisy as I shortened her leash. "It's OK, you don't have to be scared." She lunged anyway & the owner of the spaniel yelled at me about controlling my dor or what is the matter with her or some damn thing. He'd heard me talking to her about being scared & made no attempt to sidestep us or simply ignore the lunge. "I'm sorry," I called over my shoulder as I struggled to get Daisy away from a bag full of bread someone had dumped on the sidewalk, "I'm doing the best I can."

But I broke down in tears by the time I turned the corner, leashed her & went back to pick up the 20 rolls that had spilled all over the place. I cried intermittently the mile and a half to Hero's house, although by then it wasn't about being yelled at. I was crying because I lost six years to compulsive eating, & 42 years before that. I was crying because it's Not Fair that God gave me this disease of addiction and of depression as well.

I did a smart thing when I got home. I turned off my computer, stuck the DVD of the first half of the first season of 30 Roc in my new thingie, sat down with Daisy curled up against me & disappeared into this OK sit-com.

A good crying jag must release some hormone, one that leaves one limp for the day. I was exhausted by 11.30 a.m.

That was the Pity-Me part of this post.

I must now say a couple of things that directly attack my right to self-pity.

The first is that I am feeling every which way at any given time (although yesterday just left me depleted). I'm not medicating with food. I'm walking through my break-up with my lover. I have no words for how fiercely I WANT this abstinence. I WANT it. I WANT it. But breaking up is still hard to do.

The second is that I was walking my three-mile morning walk without Naprosin or any other pain medication. I've lost enough weight to be more pain-free than I've been in a long time.

The third is that I watched 30 Roc, then watched TV that night. I've lived in silence for years, unable to sit still long enough to watch a video or TV show. I didn't know my television was dying until the presidential debates. Some power of concentration has come back & it's a welcome guest.

OK, the next part of this post is enlightenment. I told my sponsor about how wretched I'd felt that morning & how I'd taken the day off, which she thought was a very good reaction. Then she reminded me of the 12-step axiom:

"You have awareness of this disease, but as long as you keep saying `I'm so angry at myself for relapsing,' you're playing God. Awareness, acceptance, action. You've got to accept that you're a compulsive overeater."

We ended the conversation & I went back to bed with Daisy, who was being therapy dog par excellence last night. What did she mean that I had to accept my disease? Wasn't I, every time I measured an ounce of chicken or went to a meeting? How could I move beyond my anger, at myself, at God? I'd relapsed, no one pushed me into a pint of Ben & Jerry's. How could I not be angry at myself?

As I was ruminating on this today, I stepped on a rock right on the ball of my foot. I have terrible, deep corns on the nerves in the balls of my feet. A podiatrist explained that they're too deep to remove & not curable because I have one toe that's too long & one that's too short. I can shave the callouses down & that helps a lot, but stepping on a rock will always make me wince smartly.

I've never blamed myself for my feet. I've never blamed God for them. I've never blamed myself for smoking (or only a little) & I don't blame God. I don't blame either of us when I get a cold (although I blamed him when my intestines got all tangled up & I had to have abdominal surgery) or it rains or my eyebrows need waxing. (I blame myself & my weight for being tired and achy, however. The examples I've given are really accurate). I shave my feet, enjoy my cigarette, take Thera-flu, complain a lot, put on my raincoat, make an appointment or let them go.

I decide whether to take action on stuff I'm stuck with or leave it be. But I don't rant at myself or God about them.

Compulsive eating & depression are painful. My feet are in pain. Compulsive eating & depression are physical facts about me as much as the way my feet are made. They just are. They aren't my fault. An addict will go back to her substance when she doesn't want her sobriety & when she doesn't take the actions to keep it from happening. & my best shot of conquering or riding out depression is not to eat sugar & flour.

I got it, finally. I have funny feet, two diseases, navy blue eyes, long fingers, am right-handed, am a spendthrift & like 19th century British novels.

It's who & what I am.

Day 21. Time to go make a salad with 1 cup of garbanzo beans, it being Lent & all.

All Bent out of Shape

I poisoned myself on sugar earlier this week. This is Day 4 without it so that must have been Monday night. So Monday night I poisoned myself with sugar.

Take two rather innocuous sugar items & combine them with a sugary Grapenuts sort of cereal & the next day was pretty dreadful. I felt like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Woman for about 24 hours after & it's only to day that I didn't feel ill at the thought of raw vegetables.

So, after a pretty good run of things, did I poison myself? I've got my knickers in a twist over too many things on my calendar & too many things not yet real.

I've had 7 a.m. walks with the 16-year-old Zeke, as well as 3.30 p.m. & 9 p.m. walks. I can't really take Daisy with me because, at 16, Zeke needs to go his own pace (which is mind-blowingly slow & boring) & he's too frail to fight interference on whatever pee-mail must be smelled first. This means I either get Daisy out before or after the morning & night walks. She's getting the short end of the stick & I'm getting the shortest yet.

It's tough when one's day doesn't really end. There's less sense of relaxation &, of course, NO relaxation in the morning. I finished the second-to-the-last chapter this week but until I did, my guts were gurgling over that as well. I haven't started the last chapter yet. I want to. I want to at least take some notes. But 21 Zeke walks as well as my other dogs & the mountain of things that went to hell while I was hell-bent on finishing the chapter have left me in another kind of panic.

Panic & resentment: the order of my days. I'll be paid for Zeke &, although I swear I wrote down the dates to include this weekend, Zeke little human brother informed me Mom is home. So maybe I won't be doing any more walks until Monday.

Little down time -- little time, that is, that I could really sink into -- was the "destructor" that led me from resentment to poison, the destructor I chose.

I am tired of the cold. My hands are especially sensitive to it & yet I have to manipulate leashes so I end up taking my gloves off. My skin is rough that even cotton catches on it.

I am tired of this book that never seems to be done. I'm tired of the prison I'm in with dogs all day & on weekends, the obligation to be writing even when I'm not (especially when I'm not), a profound desire to take everything out of my kitchen & restore it all. I'm tired of being a good girl. So I poisoned myself.

Resentment & rebellion are two states of mind that I absolutely cannot afford. They are, to begin with, helpless by nature. Resentment of dogs & a book to finish is ridiculous. Resenting the cold will get me where? It's not like I can call up the North Wind & say, "We've got to talk. I've been harboring a resentment toward you." Rebelliousness over walks & writing I've committed to & been paid for is rebelling against...me. If I'm going to rebel against myself, why not do it destructively (you spend too much money! Your abstinence sucks!) or constructively: don't spend money, stick to my food plan & cheat the diseased portion of my brain.

& rebelling against the weather falls again into the category of absurd.

These have been Serenity Prayer days. Acceptance, acceptance, acceptance. Get the resentment out of my brain.

The weird thing, though, is that I'm also bent of shape because the book IS almost done. There are so many things I've put on hold for that moment -- going back to the Rooms, cleaning, working on my novel, going to the movies, reading books that don't mention the phrase "BMI," dating, seeing friends, getting my hair colored & eyebrows waxed, going to the Botanical Gardens in High Spring, going on the academic job market, returning letters & emails, taking stuff to donate to Housing Works.

& that's just a start. There is ironing to do. There is John LeCarre I want to read. There are 2 years of New Yorkers in a dusty pile. There is, slowly but happeningly, a trip to Ireland to plan...

All of that has me just as panicked & resentful & scared as the book. I've gotten comfortable out here in the Heights, putting the rest of life on hold. Zeke walked me one block across & up Montague Street last night & I realized that even one block has become foreign territory to me. I'm scared to go out in the world. I'm scared & I don't know where to start first. I'm scared & I haven't started that last chapter that will be the gate to the freedom I crave but no longer know how to use.

My head is spinning. I have inadequate words for individual people. I'm going in all kinds of directions. I wouldn't mind sample part of the poison again even though I feel good eating chicken & broccoli & kidney beans & yogurt on a daily basis.

But here it comes: one more dog to walk. Maybe.