No Sense

The Black Beast has been upon me today & I don't know why. I have been very nearly "perfect" lately & yet I feel as though I am bad -- undeserving, on the brink of disaster, failing at everything. When I look at this mood intellectually, I see it as both undeserving & well-earned. The net result is that I feel worse yet.

I'm finishing another Day Three of abstinence & perhaps withdrawal is to blame. Certainly the cost of night eating is a source of regret in what could be a meager month. Those Somethings cost a lot of money when it's all totaled up. One of my priorities for the year is to pay down credit cards & save some money for an actual, real live vacation. I've frittered away precious funds.

& of course, I am Fat. A friend took a picture of me in my raincoat yesterday & I shuddered mightily. In general, I'm fairly philosophical about photos. In that one, I was teasing Daisy & Hero with a toy & both dogs were caught in mid-leap. It's a picture of the dogs being teased by me, not of me. I get that. But I didn't like it.

The tiredness I've written about is evaporating steadily but slowly. Saturday was a day of sloth until about three in the afternoon. I'd had extra dogs in a hard bitter rain the day before & I was not getting it together. On Sunday, however, I was in overdrive, fussing with the first big wave of winter-to-summer clothes, vacuuming dust puppies & going through a large pile of New Yorkers to decide what I could toss, what I only wanted to read one thing in & those I'd need more time with. My house is in piles as a result but the piles are the sort I can do something about when I have the next burst of energy. My choice this evening, with the last of my energy, was going to the grocery store & returning some clothes or a laundry pile. I opted for the former & by the time I was done, I'd been walking for three-and-a-half hours straight.

Tiredness feels like the paw of the Black Beast.

I haven't had to wake up to regrets about what I've eaten the last couple of days. I've been praying very hard for the strength to keep my food clean & force myself back into the Rooms. I had dinner with friends the other night, got pleasantly tipsy & ended the evening with fireworks over New Jersey while our dogs scampered around. My hosts have been telling each other ever since what a great dinner party that was, a high compliment to my one-quarter part in it.

I've done some exceptionally good deeds -- taken Hero to her vet when there was blood in her stool, taking her stool to the vet, listening hard to a friend in distress. People tell me I am "good" for these things, that I make the extra effort. A friend complimented the dress I wore to do my clean dog walks this afternoon & told me it's too big -- I'd thought it rather small. I walk the streets mentally kicking myself when I've been giving honest work, good deeds, not as Fat as I want to accuse myself of.

The Black Beast tells me I waste time, playing too much mah jongg when I ought to be writing or reading. I've bought clothes that I hope to have reasons to wear, as a way of not eating, & I'm holding it against myself. I put a buck in my savings account for a clean day, 10% of cash I receive, extraordinary feats such as finishing the book or getting three or ten days together. I've earned my little savings but I don't feel like I deserve them. I have friends I need to call or write but I don't feel up to the effort or that I deserve the treat of conversation.

I don't know where this Black Beast came from, but I wish he'd go back there so I can enjoy the bearded iris & diminishing piles in peace.

Baggage

Last week I was in the Bad Place. I was finishing the chapter & experiencing a lot of the pain my friends went through. I was eating. I spoke to a man & he hazarded meeting in early June & I haven't heard from him since.

I was tired.

I was scared of my book.

I went through that familiar litany that men can induce so well: what did I say? Is the way I look? What didn't I say? Is he testing me? Should I call him & straighten whatever it is out?

Whatever. I woke up on Saturday morning after an ice cream adventure & thought to myself, "What did I do to deserve the way I treat myself???"

Sometimes the voices in our heads are Good. The What-Did-I-Say voice is Bad. That waking thought was Good.

I took a great intake of air & let it out slowly. What did I do? I've harmed relatively few people. I've been nice to a great many more. I've been nice to people I shouldn't be nice to.

OK, I have to back up a bit because there's another man I've been in touch with for a long time now. We speak on the phone & send emails back & forth. He admires my twist of phrase & imagination. I think he's pretty cool. I told him that I have some ambivalence about meeting but did he think we ought to. He reported that he's ambivalent as well but supposes that sometime...

My ambivalence has names for it. I don't like the way I look right now. I don't want to complicate trying to look better with a lot of guy baggage. I have a book that's overdue.

He probably doesn't have names for his. They're most likely along the lines of I like it like this; I don't really want/have time to get involved; what if I don't like her & the illusion is spoilt -- or -- what if I do like her & have to show up for that feeling?

Essentially, he doesn't want to meet me. Remember: I was in the Black Place. I guess I must not be worth meeting, I thought sadly. The more reasonable part of me said that's poppycock. Between the two of us, we decided to table the ruling but to leave the question open. Am I worth meeting?

Worth. Deserve. There's a theme devleping here.

AA calls it "stinkin' thinkin'," a phrase I really hate but this deserving thing is a classic example.

Friday night: I'm in bed. I get a call for an emergency dog walk. I hadn't had enough cash to go get something dangerous but now I do, & I'm out. Don't I deserve something for a hard day's dogs, the difficulty of writing, my general anxiety? Don't I deserve a treat?

Saturday: I get up angry with myself & blurt that question out. But it's reversed, in the same terms: What did I do to deserve to treat myself so badly? "Deserve" is no long a reward but a negative action; "treat" is no longer a noun but a verb -- "act, behave, regard, handle," among other meanings. Ice cream & cookies are how I act or how I regard myself.

& that's both nonsense & wrong. If I regard myself as ice cream where is my sense of humor or my obsession with deadheading petunias? If I act as ice cream, why do I care who the president of the US is or how some reader will react to this blog? Ice cream leads to more ice cream; it has no conscious but if it did, it would regard itself only as ice cream.

Whereas a human being can regard herself as "Divine Empress of the World," as I told Mellie this morning when she came running to meet me at the door with a Planet Dog ball of the earth in her mouth. A human being can regard herself as a writer.

A human being can regard herself as worth meeting. As deserving to be, at least, thanked for the email I sent containing information he'd asked for as a favor to a friend.

A human being deserves not be in pain when she has a simple headache or a complicated history with someone.

& so yesterday I wrote to the other half of that complicated history & said it's too painful to talk or communicate or even think about. The other half was as gracious as I -- we both expressed our faith in the other & our good wishes. & I'm lumpy-throated today but I know it will be better tomorrow if I don't do something stupid like delude myself into deserving a treat that will give me one more painful feeling to wake up with tomorrow.

I don't "deserve" that either.

I suppose my next email ought to be why I haven't responded to email gambits from an ambivalent man.

Who knows who or what comes next?