Fencing Bear at Prayer

It feels almost miraculous.  Everything in my life (well, almost everything) that was holding me back (funny, I feel anxious just writing that) is now, well, perhaps not gone, but markedly better. I have a whole new set of tools for thinking about my eating and my body and my weight; I even forget to count calories most days (and know that it is better to stop myself when I start and simply ask whether I am hungry), and yet, I am eating better than I ever have and ( mirabile dictu ) enjoying my food. Our home is calm and happy, no longer stuffed full of junk we don't need .   Even better, I have gone shopping several times in the past month and come home without having bought anything because I couldn't find anything that was exactly right. I have established a regular schedule for working on my research and stuck to it for nine months even though I am not on leave.  I have made good progress on my translation , as well as researched, written, sent out for review,...

I had a glimpse last week of what it would be like to be normal.  At least, it's what I imagine normal would be like: to be able to look at my husband and feel nothing but tenderness and love for who he is and how much he loves me.  No threats, no anxieties, no misunderstandings.  Above all, no conviction that he is angry at me when he actually isn't.  I've been so deaf.  So blind.  So scared.  It didn't matter what he said to me, I couldn't hear. Nor was it just my husband.  I've been living in fear of what other people were thinking of me pretty much all of my life.  Running scared.  Absolutely convinced that there was no way anybody could actually like me .  That there wasn't some hidden agenda or lie.  That they weren't angry when they said something about what I'd done.  I've heard criticisms when there wasn't even advice, challenges when all they were saying was "Hello," scorn when they were trying to invite me to ...

One of my most loyal blog readers (who wishes to remain anonymous) sent me this comment on yesterday's post : "It was refreshing to have a fun, positive blog to read--maybe you should concentrate on similar items more often!" To which my not-entirely-charitable knee-jerk response would necessarily be: "I would love to, if only I weren't such an Eeyore and actually felt that happy more often." Okay, okay, I'm not being fair. Because, of course, in part at least, she's right. Maybe if I wrote about happy things more often, I would feel happier more of the time, although, again, of course, that's one of the reasons that I keep this blog: more often than not, it is only in writing about the things that are upsetting me (or, perhaps more accurately, that I am upset about) that I am able to see them in a clearer light and thus feel better. (As, for example, here , when I had a rather different experience taking my puppy for a walk than I did this ...