bitterfig

Despite a certain amount of anxiety incurred by actually eating foods that contain more than 2 grams of fat per serving I’ve managed to persist in my efforts to eat more sanely. It’s actually rather exciting, being able to eat things that would I would have considered taboo a few weeks ago. Indian food! Pad Thai! Chocolate (for the first time since X-mas 2006 when I was only able to eat it because I was drunk off my ass)! Even though I’m experimenting with forbidden foods I am being very careful to stay within the daily caloric boundaries for maintaining my weight and my daily fat intake is also still on the low side (20 to 25% of my calories whereas 1/3 is the recommended intake)

Maybe because I’ve been devoting a lot of mental energy to changing my eating habits I have hardly written at all since my Birthday, only one or two drabbles. Something else I’m trying not to worry too much about. It’s hard for me to back away from my writing and give new ideas time to develop because I always feel like if I’m not constantly engrossed in a project I’m going to lose whatever it is I hope I have but I think that when I take this slower I do better work. I have to try and have a bit more faith in whatever abilities I have.

Most nights I remember my dreams, so I’m used to carrying strange images away from a night’s sleep however the last couple days have been particularly bizarre. Two nights ago I had a dream that dinosaurs got loose in the Susquehanna river valley where I grew up and where my parents still live. To contain the threat, the government covered the whole area from Portlandville to Cooperstown* with a bio-dome that they released a carcinogenic gas into. My parents house, which is on a hill top overlooking the river, was actually outside of the bio-sphere and at the end of the dream the dinosaurs tore through the dome and the fences and I crawled through and started climbing up the hill towards home. Then last night an even odder dream that managed to encompass sexuality, race and religion. Unfortunately I really can’t describe adequately without providing a huge amount of background on the church I went to when I was growing up, my father’s personal experiences with school integration as a young man, the writings of Eldridge Cleaver, my thoughts on bi-sexuality, ragtime and the Cosby Show as well as my mother’s obsession with John Wesley (the founder of Methodism).

*Note to poultrygeist99 and madjh, I’m afraid your parent’s house was just about at ground zero as the dinosaurs came from an area roughly equivalent to the Field of Dreams baseball camp.

Yesterday was to be my big job hunting day.  I applied for a few positions but overall I didn’t do nearly as much as I should have.  Part of it was that it was my first day off in forever and I had some other things I had to take care of, mainly renewing my driver’s license which was set to expire on my Birthday next week.  I couldn’t renew on-line so I had to haul my sorry ass over to the Chicago North DMV building which is way, way out on Elston Avenue and go through the whole process of standing in various lines, taking a number etc.  At least that’s taken care of for another four years.

 

My other distractions were purely frivolous-- going to the library (as if I won’t be reading Vanity Fair for the next month), writing, and updating my journal.  Things I enjoy doing and want to do on my day off but still I really have to make job hunting a priority.  I’m particularly aware of that this morning because I don’t feel very well.  I’m dizzy and have stomach cramps but I’ve got to be at work at 2:45 p.m. because if I take a sick day I’ll be half a point away from termination.  

 

I know I procrastinate and put off my job search because I’m afraid of being turned down and also of change but I’m also afraid of failing and having to return to my parents.  I had a nightmare about it last night.  I was packing up my apartment (which was also my dorm room from college) to go back to my parents house in Upstate New York.  I think it was partially influenced by a movie I recently watched, Everything is Illuminated which is about a Jewish American who goes to the Ukraine to search for his families roots.  There are many, many shots of driving through the remote Ukrainian countryside that reminded me of the rural landscape where I grew up-- beautiful in so many ways but also empty and desolate. 

 

The film version of Everything is Illuminated was, like the book on which it is based, deeply flawed but still vital and interesting.  Watching it I found that I identified not with the American, Jonathan, a compulsive collector who comes seeking his roots, but with Alex, the native Ukrainian, who wants nothing to do with history and embraces cheap contemporary pop culture.  I feel like that’s what I want to do and maybe that guarantees that sooner or later I’ll have to deal with where I come from.   My case is of course a bit  unique.  I know many people feel cut off from their heritage but both my parents want to live in 1800’s so I’ve had a version idealized of the past forced on me for as long as I can remember.  Spend enough of your childhood paying homage at he graves of various ancestors and you’re bound to resent them.  My mother in particular is very uncomfortable with sexuality and has created a safe haven in a chaste and pious past.  Among her prize processions are the journals of a relative who would faithfully report the weather and the chores performed each and everyday while never mentioning her pregnancies except to note that she had had a child and certainly never making mention of said child’s conception. 

Maybe because it’s cooled off and I’m sleeping more deeply I’ve been having some fairly strange, vivid dreams. 

 

On Saturday I had a dream where I was going to a party with Deli-boy.  Naturally I was beside myself with delight but when he came to pick me up (at my parent’s house in Upstate New York) I looked out my bedroom window and saw my former best friend Vivienne outside. 

 

Vivienne and I have a rather tangled history.  We met when I was a Junior in college and she was a Freshman.  We were extremely close for several years even through we were living quite a ways apart but we lost touch.  I was struggling with anorexia and working full-time, she had serious health problems, panic disorder and was going to school on and off…  Still, we had a lot of similar interest in politics and the arts so I always sent her a copy of the zine I put out between 1997 and 2002 and when I started my blog I e-mailed her a link.  Then in early December of last year I stumbled upon her myspace page, which led me to a blog she kept on yahoo 360 which contained entries from my blog slightly rewritten, articles from my zine and even a Beyond the Valley of the Dolls inspired poem I wrote in college.  All of these were presented as her own work.   She was also using my pen name, Bitterfig, as username on a World of Warcraft forum.  I e-mailed her and got no response though most of the content of her blog was taken down. 

 

I never got angry at Vivienne about these things, instead I’ve always felt like I did something wrong that made her cut me off so when I saw her in the dream I immediately went to her and found out she needed my help but then she sort of faded away as people do in dreams and I remembered the party I was supposed to go to and I had to get ready for the party.  By the time I got dressed and everything Deli-boy had gotten tired of waiting and left without me.

 

So I had to go to the party by myself.  It turned out it was in this huge building and even after I was inside it took a long time for me to find the party I was going to.  Along the way I got sidetracked by attending a yoga class after which someone gave me a glass of red wine, which I accepted.

 

I finally found the party just as Deli-boy was leaving.  He did pour me a glass of champagne, which I accepted and explain that he had only come to the party with me because his girlfriend (Sasha, an old classmate of mine who had dated a boy I had a crush on in high school).  After that everything sort of dissolved and it was the next day and I was reading on someone’s blog that I was the only one who had gotten drunk at the party. 

 

I’m sure this had to do with a conversation I had with my sister and brother-in-law back when my father was visiting.  Somehow my drinking habits came up and I was saying that I don’t drink often but when I do I tend to drink a lot and my brother-in-law, Dean,  suggested that maybe I ought not drink at all, because of my medication and my tendency to loss control.  He prefaced his statement with “I know you don’t want to hear this but…” and it’s true, I don’t want to hear it.  I don’t want to lose the option of getting drunk even though I realize I do abuse alcohol and that whenever I start drinking I’m seriously risking disaster.  To me never drinking again means never eating chocolate again, never feeling relaxed or sexually confident again.  It means the losing the small degree of adventure and spontaneity that exists in my life. 

 

Intellectually I realize that this is not true, that I can have these things without drinking but emotionally I connect them so strongly to being drunk that it feels like I’m going to lose them forever if I make the commitment to not drink anymore.  The irony is that it’s not at all difficult for me to not drink.  The last time I had a drink was at Renee’s show back on July, 11.  Drinking really plays no part in my daily life.  I’ve quite literally gone for years without a drink but it was always an option.  Still, I know Dean’s right.  I’ve come close to getting in trouble too many times and my binges take too much of a toll so I guess I have to get used to the idea that alcohol consumption is simply something I can’t do anymore.