There are still moments when the dawn is cracking it's yolk-yellow eye against the last drifts of my nightmares.
My nightmare was long and intricate and ever so obvious, a mix of old school anxieties carrying over to lean on the more nerve-wracking aspects of being declared an "essential service" at work. The honour and pride is there but some mornings after a three day weekend after a long and difficult week beginning a day wherein exists a meeting with both the OPP and the CEO (one after the other, no less!)...
The stress is there in obvious piles and my rational understanding of this is helping to slowly mitigate the tides of unnecessary panic as I write.
This weekend we ran and we laughed and we installed a humidifier with tin-snips and we cut commandeered holes into our furnace. The instructions told us to, to take tools and marr the intimidating surface of mysterious shiny tin-silver boxes.
This weekend we ate greasy dinner and watched hockey in a bar and went to the movies and out for dim sum and wandered chinatown with an overly independent little girl dragging us in tow. We bought a pressure cooker and a teapot for work, forgot to grab baby bok choi in the interim.
This weekend we sat down to plan the beginnings of the wedding the way we want it to be and even in my pms haze it began to feel right despite my attempting-to-be-overwhelming sense that I was eager to do it this way just to be different. This morning in the growing light of rational confidence I don't think that's it, I think what we're trying to do it beautiful and right, and still terrifying.
But I have a list of action items and suddenly the tasks are reasonable, not vague and daunting.
Yesterday I could have slept in but my body wouldn't so it was seven hours of Neverwinter nights until noon, and the proud feeling of still enjoying seven straight hours of a computer game.
Yesterday we stained our new window frames without a single drip on the carpets or wood floors, and I hemmed curtains without a single mishap with the tightness of the thread on the sewing machine! I learned a new lesson that if I iron my seams I save a good forty five minutes of only slightly effective pinning.
The new curtains are sleek and graceful and if I'm as clever as I almost feel right now then when the bedroom ones are up they should be lovely.
One of the most inspiring people in the universe stopped by for tickles and put up with my incessent cuddles and crawling into her lap and brought patterns for pants and dresses and attempted to explain them.
If my brain holds on just a few more weeks I might actually learn to sew...
A task that has seemed ever so daunting.
I am sitting here this morning, running late for my shower, slowly losing that intimidated feeling of the day ahead.
I might treat myself this morning to an egg and tomato sandwich at the local cafe, despite the careful measures of the foods I put into my body at work.
I have been so careful, always raw vegetables for lunch (or the occasional sushi), always only fruit for breakfast, dinners sometimes lose control in the rush and tribulations -- but my eating habits the past two years have been so extreme...
and yet this month while I wait for my cardiologist appointment and my gym membership lies restless, I can already feel my pants losing their slackness, all the careful eating in the world and I know that in ten years, in twenty, when my metabolism slows even further, there will be nothing I can do save commit myself to the manic lifestyle of 6am runs to the cardio machines.
I look at my blood pressure and test results and I hope that the cardiologist has some magical inspiration -- the discrepency between systol and diastol to me only means that my heart is working to hard, despite each careful bite and each resolution to push myself harder.
I have an urge to go to the pro-ana sites and tell them what they are doing to their future metabolisms, to their hearts, to their strength, but I know what I would have heard instead back then
I would have heard "never stop"
rather than "stop now".
Last night as I stuffed potato chips into my mouth surrounded by glorious faces I heard that ghost voice whisper what I would have to restrict this week to make up for it.
Maybe I won't have that breakfast sammidge after all, I've just lost my appetite for it.
But I will still eat all the vegetables in the universe, because strength is just a touch more important right now.
But still. Of that I am irrationally terrified
and of this weekend I am inordinately satisfied
and of this week I am slightly tense but significantly less than when I started spewing.