Saturday, December 3, 2011

Frightening Hungers

First, let me get Friday, December 2nd's food log out of the way:

a fried egg, satsuma mandarin, and 2 pieces of toast
a bowl of cheerios with a banana
a Kind bar
Dairy Queen double cheeseburger, fries, and a small blizzard
hot cocoa with mint marshmallows (this was gross)
a few crackers

The Dairy Queen meal was unplanned, as was that blizzard. I could dissect the whole incident at length--the way I was tempted by the novelty of a blizzard flavor I'd never seen before, the way I should have ordered the mini size instead of the small, the way I thought "fuck it" and had hot cocoa a few hours later since I had "blown the day." But I'd rather just brush myself off and move on, and not consider December ruined; my effort to limit desserts to just Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year's Eve is restarted as of this morning.

***

Sometimes I'm frightened by the amount of (metaphorical) hunger I feel. It seems I want so, so much from life. Knowledge, experiences, relationships, feelings, and of course, material pleasures too. There are so many things I'd like to master, so many things I want to do, and so many places I want to see that when I contemplate them, I feel crazed with lust and full of fear and despair at the same time.

How will there ever be enough time and resources?!

But I have to choose among these desires and prioritize. We all do. This isn't a bad thing; it's just reality. I'm lucky to even have all these possibilities open to me! I want life's array of possibilities and pleasures to be a source of joy for me, instead of a wellspring of anxiety and depression. Working on that...

It's amazing how binge eating dulls these hungers, though, isn't it? When I binge, I don't feel the overwhelming pangs of lust for life as sharply. It's there, churning and moaning beneath the surface. But if I'm physically bloated and slow and miserable--if I'm obsessing over my next sugar conquest--if I'm worrying about how I'll forever be fat and blow my knees out by age 35--I can't really focus on my deeper desires.

That's a big part of why I do it, and the biggest reason I've got to stop.

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