Beautiful Wasted

Ah, it's been so long. I guess nobody reads this anymore - and why would they after all? There hasn't been anything new here in over three years. So much has changed, and at the same time, so much is the same. It just keeps going - life, I mean. Measured out in seasons and moments, happy sighs and sad ones, thrills and boredom. I remember what it felt like to be good at something. Sometimes it pulls me back, the fury and the glee of it all, captivating in their intensity.
I live in the city with A, still. And we are still, most of the time. The fighting has subsided and it's peaceful - sometimes in a melancholy way, like dusk. I changed careers. We didn't have kids. I don't believe any of the things we tell children, hoping that they'll believe us and grow up to be better adults than we were. And I'm frightened to love anyone else that much.
Weight: 128lbs.

Dallas

Wow, it's really been a while since I posted here. Thank you for the incredibly sweet comments on my last post - you all are so kind.

So, I've mostly been occupied with moving into the new house. We're more or less settled now, and have acquired almost all our furniture - we're just lacking a wardrobe, and half a couch. By that, I mean that we're making our couch out of shipping pallets, and are only halfway there. We treated ourselves to a big Expedia bookshelf from IKEA, which we both really wanted but couldn't justify splashing out on. Then one of my mom's friends gave us some money for Christmas, and we found someone selling an almost-new one at a second-hand price, so decided to go for it, and we love it :)

I'm currently in Dallas for two weeks of meetings. It's nice to meet with my colleagues in person, as we're a distribued team spread out all over the States, England, Scotland, and Thailand, so don't get much face-to-face time together. It's also nice to have traded in the UK's -5°C weather for 23°C and sunshine!

However, A and I don't deal well with being apart for so long. Or rather, I don't deal well with it. I don't realise until I'm away from him how much influence he has on my health. He doesn't really check up on what I'm eating or nag me about it, but somehow knowing that it upsets him when I don't eat makes me more inclined to do it, although I still aim to eat no more than 1,000 a day. But here... the combination of unfamiliar and bewildering foods/brands of which I don't know the fat and calorie content, and being in an unfamiliar place where - even if I don't consciously feel stressed - subconsciously I retreat towards tried-and-true havens of calm, and the absence of A's stabilising influence in my days means that I find myself eating less and less. Also, the dining setup is canteen style, so you basically eat what you're given. From what I hear, the food is really good, but I just can't bring myself to eat it. They provide salad with every meal, so I mostly tank up on that and eat a couple bites of meat.

Sunday morning just before I left the UK I was at my old bugbear, 125. (Argh! This is my least favourite number, just because whenever I stop watching what I'm eating for a second I invariably spring back to this same infuriating weight.) However, I tend to lose weight when I travel, for the aforementioned reasons, so I'm hoping to be significantly lower when I get home on February 1st.

I've missed your blogs, and have been trying to catch up on them this afternoon. It's always good to hear from you all :)

Much love,
Sophie xx

Christmas Party and a New House!

Zoie and Princess Perfection, you guys were right. I did go with my gut and wore the black dress, with brown high-heeled boots, and felt pretty :) Maybe I was a little more dressed up that some of the others, but not enough that I felt uncomfortable or like the other girls were sending bitchy thoughts my way! And A liked the look, so that's good enough for me :) I did say I'd post some pictures if it ended up going alright, so (deep breath) here they are! (I had to do the whole set-a-3-second-timer-and-then-sprint-to-the-other-side-of-the-room thing, so excuse the "uh, yes, this is totally natural; I don't feel stupid at all..." facial expressions. I was also halfway through getting ready, which is why my hair looks like it hadn't been brushed for a week. Because it hadn't. I did not go out with it looking like that!)

[photos deleted]

So, uh, there you go. That's me.

Now, would you like the same-old, same-old news next? Or the shiny, new, exciting news?!

Well, in same-old, same-old, I'm still hovering around the 120-125 range, which means my BMI, with infuriating predictability, is still hovering around 20. Sigh. This is entirely my own fault. I might just eat the whole family's Christmas dinners this year, move to the forest, and become a fat little recluse.

But, in shiny, new, exciting news, A and I have moved into our little house! It's about 1/3 the size of his parents' place, where we've been living, but it's so nice to have a place that feels like "ours" (even though we're still renting). It's unfurnished, and the grand total of our own furniture is a bed, one old dining chair from the early 1900s that I really do intend to re-upholster one of these days (...) and the wardrobe I was working on over the summer. So we're scouring freecycle and ebay, and trying to resist the overwhelming temptation to blow our life savings on a massive Ikea-thon. But for now we're pretty happy just sitting on the floor and enjoying being there, together, in "our house" :)

This is partly the reason I've been absent from blogging for a while (in addition to the reasons mentioned in my last post, which are also still in play) - because I've been sorting and packing and unpacking and arranging. This will continue for a while, so I may be largely silent over the next few days, especially while we wait for the engineer to come hook up our internet at home.

But I will try to read your blogs whenever I can and keep up on all your news and progress! In case I don't get on here again before Christmas, I wish you all a time of peace and contentment, and a rest from all this yearning and striving to which we subject ourselves.

Much love, Sophie

Oh bugger...

A's colleague's just told him that the party tomorrow is "pretty informal". What does that mean? I don't want to scrap the dress and go in jeans or something - I feel ugly in jeans! And what if "pretty informal" to other people doesn't mean jeans at all, it means casual dresses. Then I'll be extra-ugly. Then again, if you're too overdressed people think you're kind of stuck-up :/

It's not an extremely "dressy" dress; it's black, and knee length, a body-con/pencil fit, shows a bit of cleavage and has little cap sleeves. If you had quite a smart dress code at the office, you could almost wear it to work, except for the fact that it's a bit booby. Kind of "Mad Men", and I do like it a lot. But I don't like the feeling of walking into a room full of people and all the women thinking, "Who the hell does she think she is?!"

A suggested wearing it with flats instead of heels, which I guess could help. But I think it's too long for flats - there's nothing worse than stumpy-calf syndrome is there?!

*sigh*... I know this is a trivial thing, it's just a Christmas party. But it's the first time I'll be meeting anyone from A's work, and I want to make a good impression. I don't want his colleagues sniggering at him because his wife's turned up looking totally inappropriate.

Wish I was a man - what I wouldn't give for "chinos and a shirt" to be the answer to every socio-sartorial crisis...!

Starving... or not...

I'm sorry I haven't posted in such a long while. I'm toying with the idea of giving up this blog (again - ha) because I feel kind of removed from the person I was when I first started writing it. For the most part, I don't even want to be real skinny and any anymore. Don't get me wrong, I love when I can feel my ribs or my hip bones. And I still haven't learned to look in the mirror and see anything other than a giant beached whale. But I've decided to stop trying to do that and instead try to believe that my opinions about my body or about food and nutrition in general are just wrong. I won't give those opinions up, I'll just make the choice to believe that they're false.

As in:
"Sophie, you look like a huge gelatinous behemoth, and that may always be the case. But you're not one. What you see isn't really there."

I'm just in two minds about the whole issue. I've tried before to stop thinking I'm fat, and it's just thrown me into a panic. So I'm not sure, in practical terms, how one goes about it. Any ideas??

I feel like I'm starving at the moment. But in reality, I know that I'm not. On Friday and Saturday I was really busy with friends and Christmas stuff, and indulged more than I should have. (Think pizza, Nandos, and Maltesers... :/ ) It's 5pm now and so far I've eaten 3 teaspoons of cereal, 1 bite of cake (it was a colleague's leaving party at lunchtime), a pear, and a banana. I'm planning on just vegetables for dinner, though it depends who else I'm cooking for - I can't very well feed that to A! Tomorrow night is his office Christmas party. I'm excited about it - about meeting his colleagues and having a night on the town, but I'm nervous too. Am trying  not to assume they'll think I'm a total loser straight off, and am restricting more than usual yesterday, today and tomorrow to try and give myself a little confidence boost. I've got a fitted black pencil dress to wear and if my tummy's not flat it'll show. Still need to figure out how to accessorize it so it's less funereal and more festive, haha. If I'm not gross, I'll post a picture. I think if anyone who knows me reads this blog they've probably figured out long ago who I am.

In other, more exciting news, my sister did have her baby a few weeks ago! She had a little boy; they named him Levi.  I'm just dying to go visit, but that has to wait until January...

Also, I think A and I have finally found our new house! The landlord's just doing a credit check on us before he accepts our offer, so we're trying not to pin our hopes on it until it's secured. We've done that before and then been crushed when it's fallen through, so being a little more cautious this time.

Ok, that's all my big news! Now to go catch up on yours... :)

121.8

That's the lowest I've been in a while :) I'm feeling more positive than I was when I last wrote, and I relish the chance to write something more upbeat.

The weekend has been close to perfect.

I've not eaten much, and what I have had has been pretty healthy.

A and I went to play squash and I feel like I played my best game yet. Ok, I still lost, but not as badly as previously! I've only been playing for a few weeks so I'm still very much a beginner, and it's something that takes me totally out of my comfort zone. I've never been one for organised sports; I like to go running, and I like to dance, but I've never felt the urge or had the ability to hit, kick, catch, run after or throw a ball! Doing so just reminds me of sports classes in school, when I was this geeky, uncoordinated little girl, always afraid of the ball hitting her glasses and always feeling ashamed of her lack of grace and sporting ability. So the first couple times we played squash I didn't enjoy it, and was pretty frustrated with myself because I sucked. But I feel proud of myself for persevering with it and for getting a little bit better :)

We also spent a bit of time just hanging out. We sat in Starbucks for an hour or so; I brought a book and he brought his laptop, and it was just wonderful to sit in companiable silence with him, relaxing together in our separate ways. We did some errands - bought groceries, did some cleaning, did some more house-hunting online - and those mundane tasks became more fun for doing them together.

A is American so we'll be celebrating Thanksgiving even though we live in the UK. His family are all abroad, in various places, so we'll celebrate with a few friends. I'll be making a pecan pie, rather than a pumpkin one, as that's A's favourite, and am determined not to stress out about the calorie content of that or any or the other traditional Thanksgiving fare. (However I will be making sure there's lots of steamed vegetables and fresh salad for those of us who are a little frightened by all the more indulgent foods!) Mostly I'm really looking forward to it :)

It's just over 3 weeks until A's office holds their Christmas party, and I'm hoping to be 115-117 by then. I'm conscious that I've not made most of my targets this year, but this one feels really attainable. It would give me a 19.3 BMI. I'm in two minds about trying to get below 18.5 - part of me wants to prove to myself that I can do it, but part of me knows it's not healthy and doesn't want to start down that road again. 

All of that weekend news aside, I've saved the most exciting thing for last... my sister (the one who lives in the States) is having her second baby today! She's due in about a week or so, but was induced a couple hours ago as the baby hadn't been growing the last couple weeks (though it was otherwise healthy), and they decided it's better off outside of the womb where they can monitor it. So the rest of us are waiting with bated breath to meet the new addition!

"The taste of dried up hopes in my mouth"

I guess I was pre-emptive in celebrating the brevity of my usual October/November slump, as it's back with a vengeance. Maybe I'd over-analysed it and it's just the changing seasons getting me down, though this year I feel unusually eager for winter to come. 

I sleep fitfully at night, and wake feeling tired and heavy. In my office I sit at my computer with the curtains drawn and the lights off and tears streaming down my face, frightened and confused by this inexplicable, all-consuming sadness. I sit alone until 5.30, not eating, not seeing nor talking to anyone. I drive home in the dark. Often the thing I want most is to take some sleeping pills and fall into the warm, dark winds of sleep and dream that I'm not lost. I imagine sleeping for days and days - days and days worth of cell turnover and renewal until I finally wake up and I've become someone else. Instead I make dinner, make conversation with A and our friend who's staying with us for a while.  A drifts between being bewildered by this thing and exasperated by it; between dismissing it as an affectation and trying to fix it. Sometimes there are moments of buoyancy; bright little glimmers of laughter and light that pierce the fog with a straight, narrow beam.