Losing a part of me

If I could believe my bathroom scale, I am down three pounds from yesterday. I do not believe my bathroom scale.

For the most part, I did pretty well yesterday; my only cheats were a few honey graham crackers that my girlfriend was eating, and I do not think they did a whole lot of damage. Certainly, they would do less harm than the piece of cake that I had at Lyle ad Dorothy’s the other night – something that I neglected to mention, not out of shame but because I forgot.

I think my class is going well. I am zipping through a lot of the material because there is a lot of redundant material between the last class that I taught this group, this one, and the next class that I will teach the group. Some of my students are still trying to pull the wool over my head. They log in, make a big show of saying hello in the chat window, and make sure I have marked them as Present in the book. Okay, it’s not a book. I just had a flashback to elementary school where there was an actual book that the teachers all used. No trauma… just a memory.

On that note, it seems that recently, so many of the memories that are coming up are in fact traumatic. I have had disturbing memories and realizations of my sister (and of my whole family) and of my professional life. It is funny that through it all I am now longing for those wistful days in the Army when I was getting shot at and bombed a lot. For so many years I have been hopeful that one day my sister and I would reconcile; I have come to realize in the last two weeks that that will never happen… and it would probably be a bad thing if it did.

That is a very disturbing realization to come to, and it is one of the reasons I have been down these last two weeks. To come to terms with the fact that life was better when Hamas and Hezbollah were trying to kill me than when I was with my immediate family (both growing up and later in life) is harsh. My father was a wonderful man, but a weak man, who failed to protect me when I was growing up for fear of my mother (his wife). Many years later, he finally left her. He and I were driving somewhere one day when he asked my forgiveness. I do forgive him, and I love him, and I miss him. But the damage was done.

I cannot be sure, but these family traumas just might be the root of my unhealthy relationship with food. I am not blaming anyone for my obesity. I am just coming to terms within myself with some of the root causes. How does a high school athlete and soldier devolve into what I became? There you go.

Fortunately, Leslie is here to help me through it. My friends are here to help when she is not. I have a great support system… now. Maybe, just maybe… if I had had one twenty-five and thirty-five and even forty-five years ago… well, the sands of time are in a one-way journey, and we can look behind us from whence we came, but we cannot reach back and change it.

I do not know if I will make it through the day without cheating today, but I want to be good because I am planning a dinner for Leslie and I that will be scrumptious. I am going to buy some fish fillets (maybe rainbow trout), and I will make my Buffalo wing sauce for them. There will be some sugar in the sauce (ketchup is an ingredient), but not a lot, and it will be so delicious!

The weather forecast is not great. Looking at today from yesterday, you would think that we’d be wearing shorts outside, with high temperatures of 11°c. What that would not have told you is that the high would be reached at 1am, and that by the time we woke up, it would be windy and snowing, with temperatures already below 0°, and heading for -8° in the evening. The winds are gusting at 35km/h, which is to say that while I might pop outside for a quick one, today will not be a comfortable ‘sit on the porch smoking cigars’ day. Phooey.

Have a great day everyone!