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This is a simple column by a complex
woman.
“14 years” After sleeping, eating, schooling, commuting, working, screwing and watching TV, we have about 14 years leftover. Last Sunday, I baked chocolate chip cookies, inspired by a church singer friend who’d baked hers and offered a plate to help me recover faster from my sudden cold. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I should’ve been out jogging, strength-training, meditating, showering, eating nutritionally healthy, balanced meals and generally making a productive citizen out of myself. But the thought of one more George Foreman-grilled chicken and steamed broccoli with two cups of butter just made my stomach literally churn. I had better things to do than spend half the day running back and forth to the bathroom, shitting my ass off. For me, that’s what happens when I am on and off again from the Atkins Diet. Cheating doesn’t help me in the long run, either. I know somewhere out there is a balance where I don’t have to think, analyze, calculate or suffer the consequences of extreme decisions. Somewhere along the line growing up, I missed the class on taking care of myself, self-control, willpower and the dangers of addictions. Maybe addictions are as natural as sneezing, burping and farting. I’ve given this some thought, especially when finding myself in the middle of mass mayhem, a toddler underfoot, alternately whining, crying, reaching out and begging for me to read his mind, every room in the house declared a disaster area, it’s way past noon and I still haven’t eaten breakfast, a bad sign for my sensitive stomach. I don’t drink, smoke or indulge in illegal drug activity. I’m not a shopaholic or a nympho. Basically, I have no hang-ups. IOW, I have nothing to keep my mind from stressing out, save for eating, which I do on occasion with mindless gusto, just to give me some reward for enduring another day of human crap. The third time I tried Atkins, I honestly believed I’d arrived at the maturation level to keep up with it, until I could lapse slowly back into healthy maintenance. As a new mother, I didn’t have time to sit in front of a King Henry-type 12-course feast (much less engage in sex afterwards). I barely had 15 minutes for a shower. I needed my young energy back to keep up with James and enable him to go outside and run around parks and explore the woods. I had to be able to sleep in an instant and wake up the same. Going on and on on the same cyclical treadmill afforded me a bill I could no longer pay. I thought the Atkins diet, once I survived the initial two weeks of constant diarrhea from my body adjusting and cleansing itself of the terrible carbo toxins, fit me best right now in this time and space. Just bulk-cook on the weekend, microwave a plate, eat it and go. If I cheated, who cared, I’d just keep at it the next day. It’s just that now, after about six months of semi-faithfully following the regimen (not counting the last three of summer), the thought of eating anything without carbo makes me sick. And I’m still bigger than Rosie O’Donnell. Should I revisit vegetarianism? Should I take up jogging again, with my snapping tendons and old knee injuries? Should I just hire a nanny and be done with it? And what happens if I achieve my goal by some miracle of God? What then? Cat calls, wolf whistles, the constant hassle of unwanted attention by lecherous men, the jealous stares of insecure women, the feeling deep down inside that they never wanted me, they only wanted the beautified version, according to society’s trained aesthetics. I’ve been chubby, fat, obese, emaciated, thin and voluptuous, and back again. I know what it feels like in each case. To tell you the truth, I never felt comfortable in any. (Thought I’d say I prefer being fat, did you?) Because maybe my truth is, I’m not comfortable, period, in my skin, on Planet Earth, loping and slipping around with this 5’6” ache of bruised flesh, rotting muscles, damaged skin and a science experiment of an ass (one day, I’ll tell you the true story of my crippling handicap in stinking, humiliating detail). I’d much rather fly around as an invisible spirit, able to leap seven-layer chocolate decadence cakes in a single bound, never a worry about the bowel consequences, just free to experience life, death and regeneration in a variety of forms on a variety of planes. Maybe sneak a peek at British actor Damian Lewis’s naked body. I do when I sleep. But let’s face it, I can’t sleep 24/7, for the 14 remaining years I’ve nothing else. Till I figure it out, I might as well dunk some of these chocolate chip cookies in some milk and finish up. I can go in my Depend.
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