Sobriety.
Ugh. So un-seductive.
Isn’t seduction supposed to be sitting in an opium den,
slowly sipping smoke from a pipe, wearing a see-through brocade dress, making
eyes at some beautiful stranger I will never see again after tonight?
“I know. It sucks. But that is just simply not the case,” says the Universe.
I’m sitting on an Amtrak train from Harrisburg to New York
after a weekend of helping my mother-in-law move. My husband is sitting across from me. I’m tired.
I miss New York. There is a peppermint
patty in my purse, and truthfully, I want to inject the sugar into my veins
with an IV.
As those of you who read my blog know, I am a recovering
compulsive eater. I use food like a
drug. I have come a really long way over
the years, and have a generally awesome relationship to my body and the way I
eat. Sometimes, however, it comes back.
Here on the train, I have a hung over/sick feeling in my
stomach from the cheeseburger I ate for lunch.
It came with a Diet Coke, chips, and so much mayonnaise you would think
the thing was made by a diabetes drug company.
I feel bloated, and the last thing my body wants is more sugar and
chemicals. But the part of me that wants
to numb out just wants to mainline that thing.
As I was purchasing it, these were some of the motivations
that crossed my psyche:
“I can’t make it 3 ½ hours without sugar.”
“It’s a peppermint patty, not a Snickers. It’s not that bad.”
“I can split it with my husband to make myself feel better
about it.”
“It shows that I am independent, that I can make my own
decisions” (see the next two paragraphs).
When we were leaving, my husband chimed in that he thought
we maybe shouldn’t buy train station snacks because we ate a lot of processed
food over the weekend (translation: please can we go to the farmers market when
we get home and get some fresh veggies so we are not supporting/taking part in
the downward spiral of junk food that is killing America?). My brain, however,
turned him into my worst patriarchal nightmare: “What, are you some kind of
freak? You can’t live three hours without a sugar fix? You’re lame. Fat.
Unattractive. Weak. Stupid.
Hopeless.”
In buying the peppermint patty, I got to say fuck you to
that patriarchal nightmare: “You think I’m fat now? Just you wait. I’ll show you how fat I can be. How much misery I can take. I’m just getting started. If you can’t take me like this then you can’t
take me period. Leave then. Let me be alone so I can eat my way into a
numb, miserable, isolated coma. At least it would feel different than
this”.
(Please note that none of this is happening on a conscious
level .It is only in retrospect that I am able to identify these feelings
clearly.)
Then I bring this patty, which now feels like a nuclear
reactor in my purse, onto the train. We
are riding Amtrak, so of course we
are delayed. Part of me wants to eat
through my purse to the patty. But I
hold off. I am still feeling totally nauseous
and I know that eating more sugar will only make it worse. And that is just not what normal people do
goddammit, so I’m not going to do it!
Finally, we board the train.
I sit in my own seat and listen to the song “Be Here Now” by Mason
Jennings, breathing deeply and taking in the sunshine. “You are the love of my
life” plays through the interlude. I
think to myself, “if God were singing this to me, would I eat that patty right
now? It’s not that eating the patty is wrong or bad. It’s just that I know I
don’t actually want it.” When I slip on
the suit of being the love of God’s life, I don’t see myself choking down
something that feels like poison.
Okay. Good to know. And yet, every 45 seconds, my mind drifts to
the ever-present ability to change what I am feeling in the moment with a
substance.
You may be reading this thinking, “Jesus! Throw the damn
patty out the window if you don’t want it! Or just don’t eat it!” But see, that would be like trying to apply
the rules of checkers to a game of chess.
By eating the patty, I get to physically act out several beliefs:
1. I am shit.
Eating this patty reinforces that, and then when I have the sick feeling
in my stomach that comes from eating it, I can blame my problems on my belly,
not reality.
2. If I can blame it on my stomach that means it’s
my fault.
3. If it’s my fault, I am the one in control. If 1+1=2, and junk food + fat belly = being
repulsive and repugnant, I can subtract one from the equation by drinking green
juice for the rest of the day. Yes, that
is what I need, a good baptismal cleansing of kale. Redemption, atonement, something to make me
shiny and new.
After all, when you are shiny and new, things like delayed
trains don’t get to you! Shiny and new means thin, beautiful and in
control. Thin, beautiful people don’t
have to worry about their businesses being successful. It all happens by
magic. They certainly don’t have to
worry that their nieces are getting older every day which means that once they
finally have kids there will be an enormous age gap that prevents cousinly
bonding. They don’t have to worry about
their parents being sad. BEAUTY FIXES
ALL. IF IT LOOKS RIGHT, IT WILL BE ALL
RIGHT. RIGHT???????!!!!!!!!!!!!
As a last ditch effort, I got out my computer to write to
you. Writing this, I can feel that the
jig is up. The cat is out of the bag. I
know now that a peppermint patty won’t fix a single goddamn thing. What I want and need right now is to feel the
heartbreaking fragility of life. To be
nourished by how much my nieces love and admire me, and cope with the fact that
someday they will be too old to fall asleep on my lap watching Mary
Poppins. To know that someday, members
of my family will die. And I will not
only be able to handle that pain, but also the pain of seeing my family grieve,
and that we will come out of it loving each other even more. I need to
acknowledge that right now my husband’s own crib quilt from when he was a baby
is in my suitcase. This makes calling the gynecologist to have my ovarian cyst
checked out before I get pregnant all the more real and pressing. And I need to be reminded that when it all
happens, somehow, it will be ok.
So. Seduction.
What I have learned is that those opium den moments come and
go, but they don’t fill me up for long.
Sacred seduction is about long lasting attraction and satisfaction. What
is most attractive at the end of the day? The truth. It’s not about having white teeth and
perfectly painted toenails. What is attractive
is showing self-respect by giving in to the glaring, white-hot, electric,
sometimes harsh-as-fuck truth, instead of just eating the crust off the pie of
my feelings, and covering the gooey center with a tea towel to pretend it’s not
there. We all know that shit seeps
through eventually.
After writing this, the feeling of my stomach wanting to be
over filled, pulling like quicksand on anything and everything, has reversed. I now feel extremely full, and can feel my
stomach pushing back. I can physically
feel that I don’t need or want anything else in my body in this moment. That is
not a feeling I had 15 minutes ago.
Sobriety, it appears, is extremely seductive after all.
Okay Universe, one for you.
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