The Impulse to Crash and Burn

I'm soooo used to obstacles. I've been conditioned by my life to cope. I take pride in overcoming impediments - so much so that if I find myself in a beautiful meadow, crickets singing and birds chirping, sun-dappled shade making patterns on the moss-covered path along the shores of a babbling brook, I start maniacally searching for the wasp nest or the bear trap or the black adder ready to strike so the whole bucolic scene can become what I secretly believe it really is - an ironic, Disneyesque backdrop to harsh, desperate, life-threatening calamity. I'm Bambi in a beautiful glade, free to cavort with Thumper, but ruining it by believing that forest fire and buckshot are right around the corner. I mean, sometimes they are. But do I need to prove it by lighting a match and tossing it into a pile of leaves at my feet?

Here I sit on a beautiful Saturday morning, truly grateful for having good health, great friends, a nice apartment, an appreciative boss, a decent steady paycheck, sunshine almost every day, a sweet old cat, 400-count Egyptian cotton sheets, poached chicken breast with red peppers in the fridge, and access to a gorgeous pool, all of which comprises a well-designed platform to support the most important thing I need to do: lose weight. And yet, like an obsessive-compulsive juggler in some never-ending circus show, I just want to get all the plates spinning on their bamboo reeds again, adding more and more until it's just impossible to keep them all going. What am I trying to prove - that crashing is inevitable? That life is supposed to be this extraordinarily difficult task, that smooth sailing inevitably leads to the perfect storm? That there is such a thing as an experience or event big enough or horrible enough to really excuse being - and staying - as fat as I am?

I simply don't need to pick up the stack of plates; I don't need to disturb the neat pile of reeds. My circus days are over. But I'm itchin' to. And once I get the plates aspinning, bring on the unicycle, boys! And the wind machine. And the flaming batons. Because when it all comes crashing down, I'll have my excuse. My big, fat excuse.

I bring this up because I've been contemplating another - oh shit, no! - job search due to the Indian preference court decision, which effectively halts any opportunity I may have to advance at my agency (I'm not Indian, therefore I won't be eligible to apply for any openings). But I realized yesterday, so what? SO WHAT? Why would I grab for the plates and fuck everything up when I could just sit here calmly on my nice weight-loss platform and do what I really need to do - lose weight? Why make it into some grueling marathon with a built-in probability for failure when life can be a stroll in the park? So I'm letting go of looking for another job. It's much more important to stay on my sun-dappled path now, keep on keeping on, instead of indulging in some pyromania.

My mother Cookie could rationalize anything, persuade anyone, in a display of sheer wit, cunning and dazzling verbal skills I witnessed on many occasions. I'm pretty good at it, too - I learned it from the best. But I also saw how this four-foot-nine, 200-pound woman could rationalize eating another Rueben; how she somehow persuaded herself that being fat and moody was about punishing my dad, not herself. She used her brilliant powers of rationalization, self-deception and self-destruction to keep her life in turmoil - emotional distress, isolation, worry, depression, anger, dysfunction, fear, failure - the whole smorgasbord of angst. To put it plainly, she whipped everything into a frenzy to have an excuse for being fat, for staying fat, for not taking care of herself, for having another Rueben. This was not someone who had it all that bad. Nice house in the suburbs, a faithful and good husband, financial security, loving parents living next door, and a bright, cherubic child who idolized her. Yes, yes, there were bumps in the road (including mounting evidence that her cherubic child was a sissy), but with a change of perception Cookie might have actually enjoyed her life, even used her own platform to discover a little self-acceptance, a little self-love. But no. Finally, inevitably, after all of the pseudo-disasters and manufactured obstacles, true horror came into her life - pancreatic cancer - and she could drop the rest of the bullshit. Life became what she believed it was, all previous evidence to the contrary. A battle. A nightmare. An epic journey fought to the death. Which, I've got to give her credit, she handled bravely and with great dignity. Her best self came to the fore, the clutter of self-created obstacles swept away, she lost a hundred pounds, and then she died.

I know that Cookie was an ambivalent mother. Sheila O'Malley's description of this book freaked me out. Sheila's writing and insight, as usual, are brilliant. I've requested the book from the library. But I know it's gonna be a challenge to plunge into this world, because I'm sure to see correlations with the story to my own experience dancing a tightly-wound tarantella with Cookie. No, I never got a gun and went on a rampage through my high school. But sure, there was fallout. It's there for all the world to see. A great big mountain of self-loathing and self-destruction, hanging over my belt.

Crap in my life has been an excuse for being fat.

Being fat has been an excuse for crap in my life.

I pick at a scab - it bleeds - it starts to heal - I pick at it - it bleeds - it starts to heal - I pick at it - it bleeds - it starts to heal - I pick at it - - - - - - what the shit!! STOP IT! Just let it heal, damnit! And that's what it really is: letting myself heal. Weight loss is in many ways a passive thing. A simple thing. I just have to not eat too much, sit back, and let time do its magic. Let the damned scab heal.

Well, no more self-manufactured obstacles for me. No more scab picking. I'm just gonna coast. I'm just gonna keep losing weight. I'm dying of thirst, and life has given me a pitcher of icy spring water. Instead of dumping it on the ground as I have done in the past, I'm gonna drink up.

Hand me a straw.