Full Plate

One more minute and then I could pull out my TV tray, pour a nice glass of wine, and click on some form of reality nonsense that made me feel like my day wasn’t all that bad.  But I wasn’t sure if even  Nene could convince me I was rich today.  Ding!  Dinner was ready.  I pulled the pipping hot tray out the oven, ripped back that sticky plastic film, and put my feet up.  Due to our complete opposite work schedules my husband wouldn’t be home for hours.  This was indeed the most relaxing part of my day; my phone got silenced, the pants were unbuttoned, and the fork that I had turned into a shoveling mechanism was unleashed.

I had accepted that plate given to me in Life was beyond my control, but when I was home I ran my destiny…or so I thought.  I always started with a gulp of “day eraser”, or sometimes two.  After having the work day from hell, I decided that the “screw my job” TV dinner was the best choice for the evening and boy did it smell good.  Before I could even finish flipping through the channels half the plate was gone.  I plowed through the rest with no regret and moved on to dessert: a nice heaping of “built up anger” with ice cream on top.  But I didn’t stop there.  Throughout the night I snacked on a box of “take home work”, pieces of “resentment”, and even popped a bottle of “shame”.  You could stick a fork in me and I would have popped, but that didn’t  stop me from having the last bite of “who gives a …”.

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: the stomach ache of “guilt”.  I went to reach for a “pity party” phone call with a loved one, but for some reason just couldn’t dial the numbers.  I took a deep breath and attempted to fix this like I do all my other problems: with logic.  The amount of degrees I earned was valued at nearly half a million dollars, I clearly could solve a  problem.  I would just not eat all day tomorrow…clearly that wasn’t going to work.  Ok, maybe I would work out in the morning, but that would only leave me with about three hours of sleep after completing work at home.  I know, I would just take a pill, that always worked.  What pill do you take for overeating?…even google didn’t have a suggestion.

Then finally logic kicked in: there was no pill, no quick fix…only admittance.  I wasn’t one that was good at admitting flaws.  I was a doer, a fixer, a by any means “necessary-er”.  But humility, unfortunately, wasn’t a discriminator.   So I stood in front of the mirror, looked myself in the eyes, and confessed “I am an emotional eater”.  And then I laughed.  This was absured!  I had a Masters degree from USC there was no way food controlled me.  I walked out the bathroom, brushed my shoulders off, and tripped over a box of empty “embarrassment”.

Always with love,

Modo