Divisions and Precisions

Brr!

It's 6 degrees outside, and I have no heat because maintenance is doing something to the drywall in my furnace room. It's a planned thing that they're doing all over the complex. Who the hell decides to mess with drywall in February? Especially when it means turning off heat? Jeez. The cats are going to freeze today.

Fear

I started with my new therapist today. He's an older man with an MSW named Ralph. He seems nice enough, but I left my session feeling very raw and vulnerable. I suppose telling bits and pieces of your life story to a total stranger will do that. Still, I felt very much like I was in danger of losing all the secrets I try to hide from people, all the 'truths' about me that I don't want anyone to know. I have a lot of those, you know. Just little things that I'm sure would disgust or shock other people. This is entirely in my own head and probably isn't true, but there it is.

I think part of what made me so uncomfortable was that he kept coming back to my size and my body image. Part of me feels defensive and angry, not wanting him to start harping that I should lose weight (and make no mistake, if I'd shown the slightest interest, he would have), but it scares me too. I KNOW I have enormous self-esteem issues and that they're connected to my weight. I know a lot of my issues come from there. And I know I should stop avoiding those issues. I just want to be able to trust him, and not feel like his first solution to my self-image issues is "lose weight", because that's not what I want to concentrate on.

I know some people wonder about that. A couple of people asked me, after my doctor's appointment, if they'd put me on a food plan or diet. No, and for one important reason: it would exacerbate all the crap that's going on. I don't diet (or do "food plans" or "lifestyle changes" or whatever jargon Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers and the rest are selling this year) because I spent my entire childhood dieting, thinking about dieting, or cheating on a diet. (I am not exaggerating. Name a plan, I'll bet I tried it.) More than anything, endless dieting is what fucked up my perceptions of food and how I relate to it. Just the thought of dieting is loaded with emotional baggage, like fear of failure and guilt and uncertainty. I finally realized (after a final disastrous attempt at NutriSystem, which I was pressured into my ex-husband's family) that what I need to do is stop focusing so damn much on what's going into my mouth and focus more on what's going on inside my head.

So that's why I don't diet. And I always feel defensive about it, because clearly, I haven't successfully dealt with what's inside my head yet.

I want this therapy to work, but right now I'm scared shitless. In my less rational moments, it feels like my life and all my plans are falling down around my ears like a flimsy house of cards.

For now, I'm crawling into bed. My new sleepy pills are kicking in.