Back to Black

Many of you said you didn't like the black background, and I agreed with you, mostly. But the blog started black and when I started messing around with the template, everything else just seemed all wrong. So now we are back to black, if not permanently, for now.

More on fasting: I decided to fast for a week in order to shrink my stomach and start the weight loss process. Boy howdy, was that a good time. I made it six days. And you know what? My jeans were every bit as unwelcoming as they were the day I started.

So now I am eating again... but not much. Because I bought a scale. And if you know anything about me and my issues with numbers, you know I will be in constant competition with that scale to force it to give me a lower number. Because the current number?? Inexcusable. Totally and in every way unacceptable.

People, I used to be hot. Granted, I was 23 when the hotness was occurring, but I don't think it is too much to ask, at 40, to be recognizable as the same person who was hot as 23. The great fun of this, of course, is that when I was 23, I thought I was ugly.

Young folks everywhere: no matter what nature gave you, you look great. Enjoy the hell out of it.

Anyone out there think I can lose 20 pounds in 40 days? Because right now, my obsession with numbers says that is the goal. Oh and advice on how to do it is always welcome. And yes, I know the basic truth about weight loss: eat less; weigh less.

Love,

Nina

Wonder

I wonder, too. Where is she? Where is that other, better voice who thinks all this is a story, rather than an merely a break down? Where is the person who makes all the drama into four paragraphs that end in a joke? Where is the person who makes all my problems funny? Where the hell is Nina?

Well.

Nina's here. The reason she isn't saying much is that her primary fuel is intensity - usually negative intensity; she talks when things are the most scary, the most painful, the most chaotic.

Note here the absence of these from my life: fear, pain, chaos. I don't have these things. All I have is sweet, uninterrupted calm.

Ever since I lost my job (last day: August 8th), I just haven't felt anything but completely serene. This makes no sense at all - considering the following:

1) I have no job (August 8th).

2) I have no money (OK, I have a little - but it is owed elsewhere).

3) I have no one to fall back on (no parents, no spouse, no trust fund).

4) I have no ambition (unless you count remaining calm - this I fully intend to accomplish).


I think my cousin Meg said it best the other day when we were having lunch. I listed all the reasons I should be feeling bad and she said, "Eh. You have misery-fatigue. You're just out of bad emotions the way you might run out of milk or eggs. You'll feel bad again someday. Probably just not any time soon."

Is that not about the smartest thing you've ever heard? I told her she was perfectly right. I just don't have anything frenetic and scary in my nervous system - so Nina has nothing to say unless I teach her to speak another language.

I didn't realize it at the time, but when I posted that picture of me in Iceland, I posted the last image of me ever taken before my dad got sick. That picture (2006) is therefore the last known image of me feeling good until very recently, when I started, due to misery-fatigue, to feel perfectly fine.

I'd take a picture but I've gained weight and - oh my God - did I tell you I bought a scale so I could see how bad it was?? HOLY BABY RHINO. I am going to lose weight even if it takes a chainsaw.

Next post will be about THAT. Or THIS (Nina looks down at her inexcusable breasts) and how much less (or is that fewer??? - Ugh, the grammar of them - there needs to be)) and how she plans to go back to normal. Hint: fasting causing hallucination and panic and sometimes just mundane hunger.

How are you?

(I feel pretty much awesome, in case that wasn't clear).