Since I went home for Father's Day, I haven't been able to get back into a routine when it comes to these posts. Well done, Johnson. It lasted, I think, 9 days before I screwed the pooch and fell of the wagon posting these things. Anyway. Here's two posts that sat trapped on my traveling computer for a while. They are written in the same rushed, one-draft policy that the other posts here have followed.
Mom said, Oh, you’re so skinny! She poked me on the shoulder and felt the bone protruding through the skin. Feel your shoulder, it’s not that big of a deal. Most people of appropriate weight have their shoulder bones showing like that. Anyway, Mom took it as a sign of malnutrition. Malnutrition is a strong word, but this weekend when I was back in St. Louis, I was fed like a person suffering from not enough food. She said, Do you want this? while holding out a fritter or something and then she’d say, Oh take it, go one, take it. One weekend isn’t going to hurt you. Try it.
Honestly, I still feel fat, and that’ll be the way I feel for a long, long time, even after these final twenty or so pounds are lost whenever they are lost (I‘m not making it easy on myself). Hearing my mom pronounce me skinny and then push log after brick of food on me in that motherly pressure way, I now feel even fatter. Bloated. Obese. Disgusting to myself and others. I have let down myself and all the disciplined choices I’ve been making.
I don’t blame Mom for acting that way. All my life, I’ve been her fat little boy and to come home, turning my nose up at extra portions and turning down ice cream, potato chips, and everything else, it’s worrying to her. Probably also makes me look elitist, like I’m too good for what she wants to give me. Or least I’m afraid that’s how she feels.
This weekend I relented. I don’t want to recount the food I ate or the calories I know I consumed because it was too many. It was a weekend of food that I shouldn’t be eating, no matter what, and I had choices. I could have always said no. However, during the one very big home cooked meal I had this weekend, I didn’t push against anything put in front of me and I could tell it made my mom quite happy to see me chowing down like I used to. After dinner, just like I used to, Emily and I went out for frozen custard to just heap more and more ugly pounds of food into my body.
The last day I was home, I felt just generally depressed. It wasn’t a sadness because I was leaving, though I bet that was part of it, but I had come to realize that I don’t want to live that way ever again. As nice as it would be to be close to home to see my parents, I have my own life away from my mom without old expectations or rituals or pressures. And, you know, maybe I am better than my old life.
Maybe that makes me a terrible person for saying it, but that’s the way I feel now. I like food choices being my own and without pressure.
When I was a young fat kid, I had this feeling that if I could only move out, then I would be able to get control of the food and everything that I did to make me fat and reverse it. It took me years after I moved out to get a hold on that because I still ate like a moron and without exercising or anything remotely resembling physical activity.
At my parent’s place, unable to fight their peer pressure about food and everything, I relapse and go home feeling terrible about myself. My foremost reason being for thinking of this as an excuse because I’m not powerless against Mom’s deserve to push food on me like the way I was when I was in her house. I can say no, but goddamnit it’s difficult, much more than it should be.
My dad’s heart surgery went well and he should be back home today, barring any complications. Even got to speak to him over the phone, so I’m feeling relieved about that.
My own condition, well, I don’t know anything else about that. I’ve been tested and the results seem normal. The doctors are supposed to discuss the next plan of action with each other and then let me know what happens next.
However, the new worrisome is my two aunts. One of them, Aunt Sissy, is having knee replacement surgery. That isn’t the troubling part. She’s a tough broad, so swapping out knees won’t cause her any issues. However, she has a heart condition that was discovered in preparation to the knee surgery. Further testing is pending and they’ll find out what’s troubling her. My other aunt, Aunt Cheryl, has a raging case of diabetes that will probably result in both her legs from the knee down being amputated. She, too, has a heart condition, congestive heart failure (or maybe it’s congenital, I don’t know which).
Here’s the problem I’m having: I don’t feel worried. I know I said I’m worried in the above paragraph, but I don’t feel it. It hasn’t manifested as feelings yet, only habits. I’ve noticed that lately I’m having trouble sleeping. I’ve talked about all these issues with whoever would listen to me, but the corresponding worrying feelings just haven’t been there. It’s like I’m having these outward expressions of worry, yet not actually feeling worried.
Is that normal? Is that what worry is, behavior without feeling? It’s not the kind of worry that I’m familiar with, surely. There’s usually a kind of mental tightness that goes with it or the thoughts are just dogging me as I play out each possible scenario in my head. This batch of problems, it’s been more like I’ve been just living my daily empty-thoughted day to day and then I just find myself talking about these things, even if it wasn’t anything to do with the conversation I’m involved in.
So, I guess it’s clear that it really is bothering me because I’m exhibiting the behaviors…right?
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