Five months ago I met a nice guy and started going out with
him. Anything I could say about him
would sound very much like a Hallmark card but, I won! After 44 years, far more
of which were spent single than not, I found the guy I kept insisting I wasn’t
actually waiting for but really I was. I’ve
got joy, laughter, friendship and love coming to me now in regular doses and I
don’t have words to explain what that means to me.
This really isn’t about him, exactly, but it’s a good
starting place. I’ve been on the earth
enough years to understand that the idea that a man is going to solve your
problems is one of the worst delusions out there. I knew that before I met him, and I’ve known
it as we started this journey together. I’m still me, and I’m still dragging
this broken wheeled suitcase stuffed with crap I’m not thrilled about everywhere. Not to be indiscreet, but he’s got one
too. We’re middle aged. At this point,
if you don’t have one of those battered cases that in itself would be
profoundly suspicious.
What I wasn’t really prepared for was having some of those things
about me I’m not thrilled about actually start to get worse. I’ve been packing on the pounds since he and
I started going out and I hate it. It
started innocently enough really. He and
I go out to eat together a lot, more than when I was eating alone, and if you’re
going to be eating out you should have what you want, by god, and suddenly
gravy is starting to be a significant food group. But, it’s not just the eating he and I do
together. I’m eating like crap at home
too. More often than I should admit
publically (I should never admit this publically) I find myself visiting 7-11
for an Icee and nachos, or grabbing a bag of chips for an afternoon snack, or
doing drive through breakfast even though it would take me exactly the same
amount of time if not less to make breakfast for myself.
I brought it up to him, that I felt we should eat out less,
and he agreed. He admitted he wanted to
start eating better himself and then, get this, he’s actually started to eat
better. Skipping the bread and desserts.
Leaving food on the plate. Making
himself oatmeal at the beginning of the week to eat for breakfast. I have…well…I
have definitely decided that I’m going to join Weight Watchers again and, um, I
was going to go today but then I didn’t and that’s as far as I’ve gotten. Still I’m making food choices not conducive
to health or weight loss. Still I’m beating myself up for it.
In my younger incarnations, I can imagine handling this
differently. I think the correct term is
“poorly”. Getting pissed at him for doing what we both agreed was a good
idea. Using this as an opportunity to
assault myself for being a failure as a human and proof that I would never ever
ever lose weight. I know this is true
because this girl is not gone, and the feelings snap at me, but I see them coming.
I see the crazy. It has made me wonder,
though, about the difference in methodology.
To make a change that’s good for me, is it always necessary for me to
drag my ass through a long dark night of the soul first, or could I just make
the oatmeal and start eating it?
The thing about being single for most of your life, and in
my case not only single but living alone sans any roommate or human
companionship for over 20 years, is that there’s a lot of crap you don’t like
about yourself that you can hide. Or at
least pretend to hide. Housekeeping is
something with which I am not naturally proficient.
You remember that Friends episode where Ross dates the woman with the
disgusting apartment played by Rebecca Romijn?
Well, usually, mostly, my house isn’t quite that bad although it has
approached it more than once.
I have dealt with this mostly by not having people
over. For a while, in my 20s & 30s,
I would have a big party once a year and, in part, the point of the party was
to make myself REALLY CLEAN my house.
Eventually it just seemed like an insane way to keep house, so I did the
only rational thing. I stopped having my annual party.
It bothers me, that I
don’t keep my home clean, but somehow never enough to keep up with it. I spend a lot of energy making myself feel
bad about it, but little doing. But now there’s this other person, this person
I want to spend time with. For the first
month, at least, that we went out, I wouldn't let him come over to my
house. I saw, clearly, that there was
some crazy happening, but I felt kind of helpless against it. I have cleaned since then and, in fact, I am
cleaning more regularly than I have in the past, but it feels like sweeping the
desert sometimes, and most of the time I don’t want him to come over. I don’t
want to spend time at my place.
The problem is, though, that my life is at my house. My pets. My clothes. My home. This is not a problem that can be solved by
spending every available minute over at his place. I have to find a balance. I
have to find a level of clean that I don’t mind him seeing and that I can
maintain. Can I just start sweeping without having a long dark night of the soul
first? I haven’t managed so far.
This week I went out to Wenatchee to present at a conference
and I grabbed a talking book from the library for the long drive. I grabbed Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by
Anne Lamott. I love Anne Lamott and I
was pretty sure I’d already read Grace
(Eventually) as I read all her books.
As I started listening, though, it seemed new to me. Sometimes we read things and they slip
through our fingers, but when we pick them up later, at the right time, they surprise
us.
Lamott covers a lot of ground in Grace (Eventually) but the part that sparked in my brain wasn’t
even a big part. It was something said more in passing on the way to somewhere
else, but what Lamott said is that keeping your house clean isn’t about
maintaining an outward appearance but about feeding your soul. I’m not really
doing it justice, what she said, but that’s what stuck with me. It’s about
caring for my soul. I don’t mean soul in the sense of salvation or dirt is a
sin or anything like that. I mean you, your soul, the most you of you, deserves
a nice place to hang out.
So, today, I didn’t make it to Weight Watchers. I flopped
around the house like a deflated balloon. The presentation was a lot of hard
work, and then it was over, and the tide rushed out and took me with it. But I
kept thinking about my soul, what my soul deserved. And I went into the kitchen
and started to wash dishes. I washed all
the dishes. I wiped down the kitchen
counters too, although there’s more work to do in there. A floor to mop. A
fridge to clean. But, for now, all the dishes are clean.
I went to the diner next door for dinner. I got half a dinner salad, a baked potato,
and a piece of chocolate pie. That’s the
way it goes sometimes. I wasn’t built in
a day.
