argh!!

January 17, 2008

Two days ago my adult son's girlfriend's mother didn't wake up. She

was a fit and vibrant 64 year old sexy looking dame who looked 10

years younger than she was. Apparently she just quietly had a heart

attack and expired in her sleep. She did not smoke, she was not

overweight, she was apparently not a big boozer. She evidently beat

cancer a couple of years ago, I don't know what kind or how serious,

but was healthy as a horse.

I had only met her once at Thanksgiving, but I was stunned all to

hell. I took my son's 3 kids for him for the evening so he could go

down and be with his girlfriend. I was like in some weird fog, glad

to have 5 kids to keep me busy because I was so moved by this thing,

faced with my own mortality so immediately. She was so alive. I

didn't really know her, (relatively new relationship for my recently

divorced son) so it's not about that, just that in a way she was me,

know what I mean?

I was making school lunches for my 2 little ones and my son's 3 so he

didn't have to bother, and I was just stuffing cheese and bread into

my face like an automaton. Then I had a bag of potato chips and some

leftover chocolate from Christmas. Then I had a glass of wine from a

bottle that a customer gave my husband at xmas. I don't even like red

wine. I could see me doing all this stuffing and numbing, but I felt

powerless in the face of it so I tried to be okay with it.

Yesterday I got up and decided to get busy and not dwell - I decided

to colour the grey out of my hair. I got a haircut and had my

eyebrows waxed. Then I came home and did my new yoga DVD and then I

thoroughly cleaned my house. The desire to eat dogged me all day and

I tried to give myself permission to go with it, but by nightfall I

felt like I had been on a diet and blown it and wanted to eat in

retaliation. Which I did, albeit in relative moderation.

When did I turn this into a diet? I felt so centered and calm in it

and now I just feel like a failure, irrational as that is. I

obviously am kidding myself if I think I have internalized " NO diets -

this is not about weight! "

Okay, rant over and back to the drawing board.

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