Taking Charge

Tonight I skipped a press screening of Rumor Has It to do… nothing in particular. I love movies, and I love Mark Ruffalo, but I just couldn’t get excited about this one. I don’t think it helped that my friend bailed an hour and a half before the screening (texting that her cold was getting worse) and I’ve just started a diet.

What is it about starting a diet that makes me want to stay home so that I can be assured of sticking to it? Is it because every day there are so many pitfalls – and so many coming up, like Sunday lunch at literally the best restaurant in the world this week – that you want to give myself as much of a buffer as possible? Is it because there’s something about that sharp moment when you realize not just that you must do something, but you must do it now, that makes you unable to see anything in the mirror but just how awful you look? (And therefore makes you want to hide?) Is it because now that you’ve decided to do something, you want fast results – and by results I don’t mean that nice-but-not-enough concept of “feeling better?"

I also wanted to come home because I’m in the middle of a major reorganization of my flat. For me, there’s also something about taking charge of what I’m eating that makes me more able to take charge of the rest of my life. Suddenly I am finding time to run errands that have gone unrun for months and energy to deal with problems that have long festered. I guess I shouldn’t find this surprising. When you can’t control the one thing in your life that everyone else in the world seems to be able to control, it doesn’t give you a lot of faith in your ability to get much else done, even if it’s as small and simple as finding a place (my usual cobbler can’t do it) to fix the gaping hole on the side of your pink satin toe shoes. I book doctors’ and dentists’ appointments and find time to get booster shots – somehow the less haphazard my eating, the less haphazard my life.