Calming Down

Up half a pound.
Weighing every day, no matter what anyone says. I can handle a fluctuation. That's what today is. It's a monthly cycle deal. Speaking of which... last month I missed, possibly due to the death of my friend, possibly just pre-menopause. It's hard to say. It's been a painful month: loss, fear of loss, my dad's first surgery at 77 and an episode of delirium from the medication or anesthesia they gave him. It took a few days for him to fully recover  his mind. I feel teary just thinking about it.

Okay, so I'm crying. Crying and typing.
I'm sad for my dad, I'm sad about a lot of things, and in a way I'm sad for how relentlessly I abuse myself about my body. I really did gain five pounds in about a week. It was after shiva. My period never came and somehow the pounds just packed on. Two went pretty fast, but I've been struggling. It amazes me how I can never just say, "okay, things are a little hard and I put on a few pounds," and then just let it go. But I can't. Maybe it's a convenient distraction. A way to not feel the sadness that is just below the surface. And the pain is right there- just a little scratch and it starts to flow.

My friend is gone.
My dad is getting old now.
I'm facing menopause and I've never had kids.
But, you know, focus on the five pounds. Three, now. As if it really fucking matters.

And yet, it does.
Maybe it is a distraction.
Maybe it's just a habit.
But it matters to me.
It matters because the weight gain, the food issues, they are all an indication that something is wrong. Whatever natural processes regulate hunger and feeding, in me, they are still all screwed up. And as long as it is screwed up, I'm not whole and I am not free.

That's the real issue. I'm not free.
Even if the solution were not weight loss, even if the solution is acceptance, I don't have the ability to "do" either. It amazes me, it always does, how little control I have over so many things. Add my weight to the list. Add my hunger and my fear of being hungry. I know in my mind what is "right," what I should do. Like Paul says: "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do- but what I hate, that I do." It's a war in me, that rages in spite of me. Well, again, Paul puts it thus: "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness in this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

That's some heavy stuff. Do dark powers care about my weight? No, but they care very much about the fact that they can cause hopelessness in me, that they can control my emotions and my body by encouraging the tensions and obsessions that consume and dominate me. They can divert my thoughts from things that are good for me: work, love, grief, working through the changes going on in my life. They can control me, and they like that. Every thought wasted on negativity and hopelessness is their food, and they pig out on my obsessive energy. I'm about fifteen pounds from a good weight, a weight where I can be happy. I'm not obese and I'm barely in the overweight range, depending on what chart I use, so the pain is less about the weight and more about control. I am not in control, and if I am not, and it's my own body here, who is?

It's a spiritual fight where I don't have knowledge of the players and the rules. On the battlefield, it's chaos and there is no big picture. I'm on that field and all I can see is the stuff coming at me. I'm often blindsided and reeling, because I'm in it. I need to get on top of it, to get to the hill and look down in order to really see what's going on. I need to transcend the problem. I need to get outside of it.

It's not like I don't have experience with this sort of thing. I've quit smoking, I've quit drinking, I've found my way out of a lot of difficult stuff. All of those slave-like conditions, in time, were transcended, somehow. Somehow, the freedom comes. I fight and struggle for years, banging on the door, bloodying myself and then one day, the damn thing just opens. Now, maybe each bang loosens the hold and is necessary in a way I can't see, but when the door opens, I'm in the sun and the sky is blue, and I wonder, "what the hell was all that about?" I mean, it becomes so easy. What was once impossible becomes so effortless, out of nowhere. But maybe that's just what it is when you are fighting dark powers and principalities. It's a war in the spirit that you only feel the effects of.

But what is there to do in the meantime?
I just struggle. That's all. Keep trying, keep praying and hope the door swings open. The thing is, I can't know the date and time of my deliverance. I can't choose it or control it. The dark forces rage on until the day I am suddenly in the sun, in the light.