Waiting for spring (it's supposed to snow tonight), waiting for the vaccine, waiting for the end of lockdown, waiting for more clothes to fit, waiting for this period of difficulty between J and me to pass, waiting, waiting waiting.
And yet as much as I want lockdown -- and winter -- to end, I will miss the safety of it and my enormous winter coat. For nearly six weeks now, I've known exactly what's in everything I've eaten. I can hide out sweatpants and the red fleece I bought my junior year of college. (Yes, there have been many more weeks of lockdown than six, but I've eaten my way through a lot of it.)
I'm in that stage of a diet where nothing has changed enough. Forty days and the jeans I hate aren't big enough to throw out (though at least I no longer have to fear holes wearing in the inner thighs and my not being able to replace them in this land of size zeroes.) The ones a size down (which I hate marginally less, in part because they're black) fit but don't look that great. Both were desperation purchases. My old ones didn't fit and I couldn't face spending a ton of time and money on ones I hoped would be temporary. (Will I ever learn? I guess not.)
Sometimes my iPhone coughs up a picture of me from a couple of years ago and I am shocked by it -- by how slim I was. Did I ever really look like that? Will I ever look like that again? Do I even want to do the things it takes to look like that again? What is it going to cost me, not in money but in time and emotional energy? That endless planning and plotting and motivating...
I wonder sometimes if this will end J and me. Not that it will be a direct cause, but some of our problems could no longer be ignored (at least by me) once I stopped overeating and drinking. There was nothing to take the edge off what was going on, no shared conspiracy of a drink too many. Plus taking charge of my food has always made me more proactive in other areas of my life; less willing to settle. Little wonder, then, that J and I do not agree about whether this recent eating experiment makes me happier. (Not that he has been unsupportive. He is unfailingly upbeat about being served salmon, roasted broccoli and brown rice for dinner for the umpteenth time, and says it's inspired him to eat healthier lunches. Though what a 49-year-old man's idea of healthy is is... a subject for another blog post.)
Once or twice over the past year -- as I have hidden out in his sweatpants and his dad's old beige toggle coat and my own bought-out-of-urgency-not-love clothes -- it has come up how much he liked it when I used to get dressed up. He doesn't say it like a criticism, and I try not to hear it that way. I know he doesn't understand how much is wrapped up in whether and how my clothes fit, and honestly, I don't want him to. "I like it when I used to get dressed up," I reply, and then I change the subject before I say too much.
