Oh the places in your dreams, are they fiction, or memory?

 TW/CW: mentions of abuse and disordered eating. Please take care of yourself and do what is best for you, which may not include reading this post. xo. ♡

A few years ago, I very foolishly thought I was going to marry someone. Spoiler Alert: I absolutely did not and my life is much happier for it. One of the things that I was going to do to prepare myself for being this person's wife was the learn how to cook. I experience a great deal of cooking-related anxiety, as no one has ever shown me how to cook, they've just mocked me for not being able to do things.  (This would be my mother.) Every instance in which I had a recipe I was going to try out, I was immediately mocked, belittled and shamed. Instead of trying to help me like a decent person, let alone parent, would, she crows at my inability to do things. Especially cooking. I gave a recipe or two the Old College Try when I thought I was going to marry that person, and when that dissolved, so did my desire to put myself through the humiliation of cooking-related anxiety. 

My love language is taking care of other people, and feeding them. I love feeding other people. When my friends and I used to all hang out together, we'd all cook one big meal together as a friend-family. Those days are long gone; we've all gone separate ways now, or see each other rarely (not just because of Covid), but when we all used to hang out, I would love making meals with my friends. Mostly simple and hearty pasta-based dishes, but it's amazing to look back and think about how there were periods of my life when my executive function wasn't utter and absolute trashed and I could create semi-elaborate meals for my friends. I wanted to cook for this person, to take care of them. I am so, so grateful that this did not happen. Not having this person in my life anymore in any capacity is truly the greatest gift.

Unfortunately, this gift, which didn't seem like much of a gift at the time, brought back a lot of body and food-related anxieties. I thought that my body wasn't good enough for this person--before, and after, so I wasn't eating properly. A lot of old fears about my body started to creep back in.

This is a picture of me as a teenager. I would have been about 14 here. This was right during my disordered eating height, and even though you can clearly see I am too thin, in this picture, according to the BMI, I was considered "overweight." Take all the time you need to process this, hahahaha.

As a teenager, I suffered from an eating disorder that almost killed me. Not only was the BMI (which is absolute horseshit and has no scientific basis whatsoever) pushed very heavily when I was in high school (I'll talk about that at a later date), but I had stopped eating to try to stop myself from developing because men had started noticing my body and I did not want male attention. I am in eating disorder recovery, and will consider myself as thus for the rest of my life. My relationship with food is incredibly rocky. Even though I don't count calories, do not weigh myself, I still have strange and secretive eating habits. I have to hide in my room and to sit on the floor to eat instead of sitting at a table. I have difficulties eating around other people. I eat too fast like I am never going to eat again (part of this may also be rooted in not having a lot of food growing up). I cannot be around people who are talking about calories and weight loss. Of course, now my body is also messed up and there are only so many things that I can eat that my body doesn't reject. I spent all those years not allowing myself to eat anything, and now my body has decided to punish me by rejecting food. (Hahahahahahaha, sigh.)

Most of what I eat now is very raw and/or basic. Every work day I have an arugula salad with  crumbled blue and or goat cheese and bacon bits with a blue cheese yogurt dressing (sometimes with a hard boiled egg), with some Mini Babybels, yogurt, fresh fruit, and Goldfish crackers throughout the day. Apples and bananas are my go-to fruits. I also keep Amy's vegetarian bean and cheese burritos or vegan pad thai in my mini fridge in the freezer section for the proteins boost. I drink lots of water and peppermint teas. I also really like coffee, but I do try to limit the amount I drink so I am not up until 3am. I eat almost the same thing every day, which is fine. I am a creature of habit, that's for sure. 

Something happened to me in the last few months that really shook me to my core, like a bolt of lightening. My great uncle and our cat of 20 years died within weeks of each other. It wasn't that I took either of them for granted, it was just that they were both so ubiquitous, so central to my life that  I could not even begin to imagine a life without them. It was this very scary and very sad feeling of, "oh wow, I guess we don't live forever." 

I feel tremendously blessed that I have taken good care of myself and look as young as I do, and, for the most part, this is the youngest and the lightest I have ever felt in my entire life. Covid really stole the last 2+ years, though. I feel as though all of a sudden, my entire life as just trained away and I have grown  far too complacent. I also have what I realize is a fear of success because I can't handle the unknown.

I've been reading a lot lately about intentional living, and it really struck a chord with me. I live intentionally and with purpose, more ardently. I spend lots of time with my cats. I am still trying to break the habit of being on my phone so much. I spend an embarrassing amount of time on other people's Instagrams and living vicariously through their beautiful photos (because disability life, ammirite?!). Dreaming of travel. Dreaming of mobility freedom. Dreaming of friends who will actually send you the pictures they take when they hang out with you, FFS. I am, by no means, a devotee of slæwaz, but I am trying, okay?

As part of my more intentional living and to feel like I am making more of my time in this world, I've been trying to get up earlier and just have a bit of time to decompress before leaving for the day. So far I've mostly only been able to get up about 15-20 minutes before I leave, but it's a start! I also need to have enough sleep, which is the other thing. :/ To get up every morning with intention and gratitude. Or, at least try to. Because, you know, chronic pain and shit.

This morning, I got up at 6am like I said I was going to. I was rudely awakened at 4am and then got a little bit more sleep (but not enough sleep!!!!). But I got up right at 6:05 without having to hit snooze, even with my denied sleep, which is impressive for me (I promise). I recently this discovered this channel, and Julia (the creator) has this lovely video on her making her mindful and "slow" breakfast with a toad in the hole. Even though I have crippling and legitimately debilitating anxiety (and before you start in, I am not being "ableist," I am literally disabled, STFU, Tumblerinas), especially related to food, I thought this seemed... manageable.

I realized that this entry is going to come off like one of those cooking blogs where you get pages of some story no one asked for and this a little blip of recipe, but I assure you, it's not that LMAOOOOO.

As someone who usually eats just fruit and cheese for breakfast, this was very involved. 

Doing that aforementioned this where I have to sit on my floor and eat because of food-related anxiety.

My outfit for today which was supposed to be sure cute feels considerably less cute now that I spilled coffee all over myself on the bus, but we can take time out to at least appreciate my hair lol.

Two years ago, I switched to this brand (which, quite admittedly, has a pretty terrible name lol).  Other than the name, it's a great brand. One of things that I wanted to do is switch over to natural and plastic free as much as possible, and this brand not only works, but all the different varieties really smell nice. This is my fave. I smell like frosting (my nephew asks me to pick up him when I wear this one so his can sniff me. Hahahahaha little kids are so weird). It also doesn't ruin my clothes! It's the first and only brand to both work (even after some heavy work outs) and to not ruin my clothes! It's the first thing I do when I get up in the morning. I feel like I can really  jump start my day when I put it on.

Unfortunately, I spilled coffee on myself and don't feel particularly cute (which makes me very sad, because I coordinated this outfit so well, but here are my shoes at least. My hair wasn't as cute as I wanted and I slept on my face wrong so now I have a puffy and lumpy eye, but tomorrow is another day and I can try again tomorrow!