And I did it all sitting down...

Yesterday I had an appointment with my counselor, drove 600 miles to visit my dying father in law, and wrote my first ever pornography. It was an interesting day and I actually liked it quite a lot. Here is a list of things I learned:

1. I need to drink 6 to 8 glasses of water every day, not milk, not coffee, not soda. Water! Margaret, my favorite mother in law, got that message directly from God’s lips.

2. The soul will cling to a useless body against all reason. It is a biological imperative. No matter what the cost in pain and misery, how much faith we profess to have in an afterlife, how sick and weary the frail shell becomes, so few choose to go gentle into that goodnight.

3. Everyone, even the very intelligent among us, see the world and the solutions to problems only from their own point of view. My therapist doesn’t want me to have the surgery because she thinks she can heal me. My surgeon wants to stop fat people on the street and offer them the magic salvation of the lap band. I’m almost ready to withdraw and let them fight it out.

4. My counselor smiles a lot, but has very little sense of humor. Professional hazard I suppose, in a job where every subtle positioning of my body, every careless word is recorded on her little notepad for analysis. She told me I had to find something to put in the place of food in my life. I smiled and said, how about sex? She didn’t write it down. I wish she had known I was serious. I’ve lost 10 pounds in the last two week by just thinking about the possibility. Oh, and she told me the food diary I kept faithfully for her was not in the right format, and she handed it back to me unread. Not to worry she said, and spent the rest of the session going over a form that has 21 columns where I must put numbers beside each morsel for the next two weeks, with ratings for hunger and “feelings”.

5. I didn’t know I could write porn, but it was actually very liberating. Because of the non-judgmental kindness of a wise young man, I was able to let go of the guilt and acknowledge wonderful memories of my sexual experience, and dare to think that maybe there is a light beyond these woods of deprivation. I have come to believe that giving myself permission to taste, to feel, to embrace that important part of my life is essential to my well being.

6. My husband doesn’t want to talk about it. I really tried on the three-hour trip to Roanoke and again on the three-hour trip back. He said he there was too much traffic for a serious conversation. I picked up his urine soaked jeans from the back of the kitchen chair this morning at five.

7. I still have two weeks to make this decision. I’m going to start slow on the treadmill and get back on the fat flush diet that worked so well for me before. I’ll even put the stupid numbers in the stupid boxes so my humorless therapist can show me where I’m gone wrong.

8. We’re all going to die and we’re all going to rage against the dying of the light in the end. I think I’ll start living today so when the time comes, I’ll really need the rest.