Day 50 - Banana Nut Muffin, Bread, a Manhattan, and Pot de Crème

I wrote yesterday that I wanted to put my face into a chocolate cake, but, of course, I have much more self-control that to feed my emotions like that.

Instead, I had a giant banana nut muffin for an afternoon snack, and then with dinner I had bread, a Manhattan (when you have not had a drink in weeks and then you have a generously poured Manhattan on a stomach that just has a bunch of chewed-up muffin in it you could have a root canal at the bar halfway through your drink and think someone is just trying to kiss you) and half a pot de crème. 

I was very, very happy. I was with a dear friend and we talked and talked about wonderful things and I was feeling the joy of a fun night out.

I woke up a number of times last night. I’d had a nutritionist counsel me once that if I was going to drink or have sugar with dinner to have a handful of nuts before bed to help counter the blood sugar dip that would happen late in the night and that would cause my brain to wake my body to let me know I was dying and that I needed food, stat. Only I never get the message. I don’t eat at 2 am or 4 am, I just wonder why I can’t fall back to sleep. 

The nuts never seemed to keep me from waking up in the dark of night, FYI. Cutting sugar and alcohol, however, did.

The other thing that woke me up was that my knees were aching. This used to happen a lot, but since I started avoiding gluten and processed food, the pain stopped and I forgot about it. How a muffin and a piece of bread and a Manhattan and a pot de crème translates into joint pain befuddles me. I know it has to do with an inflammatory response to what I put in my body, but I still can’t quite believe it. That muffin looked so innocent. So cute. So…eatable. And the bread looked like home. 

Knee pain?

Part of this 93-day project is coming to terms with how much the life of an adopted person needs to be like boot camp or, to make it sound more appealing, The Golden Door Spa. If I want to live without pain, mental and physical, I have to treat myself like…a child. I need good food, enough sleep, physical contact, a feeling of safety. 

Who knew that part of thriving as an adult would be to go rock a bye baby on myself?

But there it is.

On another note: it’s day 50. I’m starting a novel today. Thinking about doing what feels impossible can make you either depressed or elated—the depression comes from the belief that you can’t do it and so the desire gets pushed down…depressed…and your body and mind mourn the loss of that future you. The elation comes from your fear giving your spirit its head in a race and telling it run run run, you can do this, and you get an adrenalin high and the joy of going Dorothy on your life and searching for the Wizard and meeting all sorts of helpers along the way. 

I don’t see how I can write a novel. I only know how to write the truth. I’m not sure I can stay in a narrative line that long. Novels are things that other people write. But in ten years, I want to be the person who wrote a novel, not the person who didn’t. I have to give up the focus on but will it be good enoughand focus instead on how much what will the world have less of if I don’t write this book? 

It’s so easy to judge yourself before you create. You get to stay safe if you are silent.

It’s almost like you are dead.

Blecch. 

I'd take knee pain over silence.

See you tomorrow.

xoxo