Self Discipline In The Details

Last night I went to sleep hoping for snow.  And just as soon as I was wrapped up in Margaret staving off the strike riot with her fierce convictions and ivory skin, it began to snow.  But I didn't see it until this morning.  I'm not sure whether it was Monica sending it my way (she promised she would) or if I suddenly have stardust for blood, but does it matter how we explain it?  It was magic in every possible language.  To wish for something as your head hits the pillow and to find it in front of you upon waking?

Something has been happening this week.  I don't know why it is finally coming to me, but ragged scraps of the self control, of the willpower I used to depend on to get me through everything, has returned to me.  Just bits, mind you.  Do not clamour up into jumping joy or you will frighten it away.  I don't know why it ignored me so completely for three years.  I don't know why the universe was so silent to my grieving and my begging for help.  It was all silence out there, like being locked out of myself. 

I can't say when it returned.  It isn't full strength.  It's in the details, like I'm always saying about everything.  It's in the minutiae that I have found my lost power.  It came like this- I wanted more food on Monday like I always seem to want more food and I asked myself to think first.  Just think: am I actually hungry?  The answer, as it often is, was no.  So I asked myself if I could wait until I was truly hungry to eat more.  And I said yes to myself.  I said "I can do that."  and it didn't hurt.  I didn't eat because I wasn't hungry.

To anyone who has been balancing spirit and head well against desires and fears, I will seem seriously retarded.  I know.  But this is what ails me.  This inability to listen to my body, to respect it, to do what is moderate, what is healthy, and what is reasonable. 

And then, that evening I drank my allotted amount of wine and I immediately pulled some liqueur out of the cabinet, thinking "I'll have just one more glass" but I asked myself to stop and think.  I asked myself if I wasn't already quite tired and ready for bed.  And I was.  Before my head and my fears and my anxieties had a chance to impose their agenda on me my hands put the bottle back on the shelf and I returned upstairs, brushed my teeth, and got into bed with Margaret and Mr. Thornton verbally duking it out.

It didn't feel like a triumph so much as it all felt guided and as it should always feel. 

Do not cheer for me now.  Please.  Because this is almost microscopic in magnitude.  I am sitting here telling you because the last three days have been the same.  I am keeping my food log and I am not eating diet food or trying to trick myself.  I am merely being reasonable and not over eating.  I am not trying to see how I can fool myself.  It's like a thin film that kept me from exercising willpower has been peeled down and we are tentatively examining  each other.  Like you do a good friend you lost for years and then reunited with.

Last night I again instinctively plotted to open up some other wine in the house because I was done with my two glasses and I always want more.  But there it was again- my own reason asking me to think first and consider my true need.  My true need and my true desire was to get to the riot scene in my book.  My true desire was not to drink more, because two glasses felt good and comfortable and moderate and relaxing and more would make me feel hopeless to change.

I used up some peanut butter cookie dough two days ago and the cookies sat on the counter with Max taking some.  There weren't many and maybe I didn't eat any at first because I wanted Max to eat them.  But then yesterday I ate one.  And it was good.  And I didn't eat the other one sitting there. 

For a second I didn't recognize this body I was in because I forgot what it felt like to walk away from cookies with disinterest.  Jesus!    You can laugh at me if you want.  But this body of mine was finally showing restraint without pain.

I weighed myself a week or two ago and I weighed 248 which was higher than I was when I decided to finally get on this effort to regain my health.  I haven't really changed anything major since January 1st so I don't know where the extra pounds came from.  But I have been freaked out at the consistent weight gain.  It seems I gain it no matter what I do and my worst fear is that I am going to wake up one day and weigh 500 glorious pounds.

That can't happen.  My friend Carrie says it can't happen because I'm not a fat person.  I believe her.  Though I am fat already.  This fat is a lie.  I am not supposed to be this large. 

This Monday I weighed 246.  I have not lost any in these three days of finding my willpower, but the scale is nolonger moving up.  And just as quietly as it slipped away from me when I thought I was going to die from the pain of my fractured hip, it comes back to me- this self discipline that I used to have, without fanfare or voice or warning.  So I am logging my food and I am going to assume that if I ask myself to stop, to think, and choose true need over want and fear and whatever other strange sabateurs are lurking in my subconsciousness, that the power to hear myself will still be there.

I want balance more than I want anything else in my life.  I want balance in my spirit.  Balance between my head and my heart.  Balance in my life.  Balance between my hours of mothering and my hours of writing and taking care of my house.  Balance in my choices, in my politics, in my marriage, and in my body.

I have such a tremendously long road ahead of me.  So long and who knows how long I will maintain my grip on this reunion between my old strength and my weak body?  Tomorrow I could find myself back to feeling that the needs of my mental illness are greater than the needs of my body.  Something I know is not true but is very compelling.

I will approach tomorrow the same as I am approaching this very minute.  I could drink beer tonight if I wanted to because this is my weekend night.  But just for tonight I am going to choose to have a couple of glasses of wine and call it a night again.  Because it feels good.

It feels good to have an answer other than silence.