Sunday: Today I’m grateful for feeling…
Out of touch with reality and panicky at the grocery store today. When I was 11, my favorite aunt died and for reasons unknown, her funeral room was filled to. the. brim. with stargazer lilies. They’re lovely flowers, suuuper pungent. She was also my first dead body and I was a kid that grew up obsessed with mummies and corpses. I spent hours looking down at her, trying to imagine this was the same person I hugged and not a wax figure. She gave off a formaldehyde smell in a big way. Now I can’t smell those fucking flowers without also smelling death and flashing back to that loss. I usually go out of my way to avoid them but they were by the checkouts at this new store. I was in the grocery store, then suddenly I was 11 again, then back at the grocery store, then back at the funeral home. It was so hard to stay present, especially with all the feelings pushing down on me.
Grief and sorrow and rage. My mom has always thought that my aunt was sexually assaulted growing up by their creepy neighbor. She died tragically in her mid-40s from causes that were clearly related to not having dealt with that. Now that I know my own history, I think of her frequently and in a different light than I used to. She’s a sister now, or would be – a fellow survivor. I feel deep sorrow for every victim like her who was never able to turn it around into surviving. Some meetings hold a moment of silence for CSA survivors who haven’t found SIA yet. I make sure to take extra time in mine because I know some victims die first.
(Switching gears here) Fucking gross and stinky because I have THE WORST farts. I feel like I’ve already shared this but I just hate it so much. Through the combined powers of Metamucil and stress reduction, I’ve fixed my constant diarrhea problem but the farts have definitely gotten worse. It’s so awful and I have no idea how to stop them. I’ll take Beano and that helps sometimes but some things seem too strong even for the Beano. Today was my fault, I forgot that if I even so much as LOOK at a kombucha, my house begins to pray that I don’t come home.
Feelin’ good…
- Explorative, in love, and satisfied. I have been trying to get to this one gourmet grocery store for months but it’s juuust far enough away for me to not go. I made it happen today as my date day and it was fantastic. Cubu and I had such a great time crawling through the aisles, seeing the crazy shit people can do with food now. We’re huge fans of novelty foods and trying any weird flavor we see so it was a wonderland. I could never afford this place being near me, but it felt great to connect with Cubu and spend quality time together doing something so simple. I treated him to lunch as a thank you for his budgeting patience so it even felt like we got a regular date in as well.
- Excited about my finds at a nearby crunch granola store. I found gifts for a friend and my mom, a tiny journal I’ve been looking for all month, a puzzle book of area mazes, and a birthday card for myself! I decided to write myself a birthday card every birthday to open on the next one, the idea makes me feel loved by myself and like I have a positive inner relationship. We both know how dogshit my memory is so I’ve set an alarm and will definitely forget about it within a month after writing it – the letter itself and the content will be a sweet little surprise. I’m really excited about this, it feels like celebrating some kind of self-love milestone.
- Smartish? Accomplished? I’ve been working through that book of logic puzzles and they’re getting easier, even the ones I couldn’t even complete when I started. And I’ve been doing IQ tests at night, those pattern/math problems that used to confound me are a joy now, if not frustrating sometimes. I feel like the brain training is actually working. So I’m extra excited about this area maze puzzle book. It should help with my math skills, which I have felt slipping for a couple years now and have been slowly trying to regain. I’m grateful for people and/or programs made by people that create these puzzles.
- Relief, foreboding joy, and maybe accomplishment? It’s been a month now and the binging seems to have just… stopped? It’s a completely new experience for me, I have a hard time believing it’s actually happening. I barely think of food, I don’t crave beyond being hungry, I stop when I’m full. I have no fucking clue what changed but after at least 20 years of binging I seem to be done? I don’t even binge when we have people over anymore. I used to sneak into the kitchen and pound down food when no one was looking, the urge is completely gone now! I’m scared it will go away, I LOVE the feeling of food freedom and would be crushed to go back to how I was living. I’m trying to embrace my present though and ride it for however long it lasts. I’m so grateful for whatever combination of things happened to give me this new chance at healthy living.
