I Wish I were Special
Today I was thinking about clover, as I do more often than I should I suppose. For the past few years I have been seeing friends posting pictures of their four-leaf clovers that they have found, some friends finding them so often I have to wonder, how are they so lucky? We are told these harmless superstitions when we are young, if you find a four leaf clover, or a penny on heads, you are lucky, if you break a mirror or kill a spider inside your house you are not. But today I was wondering, what is so lucky about a four leaf clover? It is a mishap of nature, as it were, a mistake, a mutant of the norm. In judging those unique mutants of nature desirable I deemed all other clovers ordinary, not worth examining. Not special.
It got me thinking about one of the major triggers for my compulsive eating, the idea of "special." I have caught myself buying junk food when I am already in a decent mood, not stressed out, or even when I am happy and celebrating something. Why? Because I am afraid that the moment, event or day won't feel special enough and I have to somehow make it more magical and special. I have been particularly more aware of what I'm doing this week while I have been off of work, hanging out with my sons, and really felt the red flags flying up yesterday, when my husband flew out of state and it was just me and the boys to figure out what to do. Even though I had been with my boys all week, and my husband has been working long days and running errands so I feel like I haven't seen much of him, I still felt that we needed to fill his absence yesterday with some heaping doses of 'special;. One of the things my husband mentioned as I drove him to the airport, is hoping I could convince them to get out and do something this weekend because they would be home alone most of the week. I did get them out briefly, it was in the 90's with roughly 70% humidity so the nature place I took them to was loaded with horseflies, which is a huge anxiety trigger for one of my sons. We did see some pretty amazing things from inside the care though, a cardinal, a flock of yellow finches, a beautiful deer trotting on the path in front of us ,and our first ever sighting of a real Oriel. It felt pretty magical. So much more magical than anything we put in our mouths that day or any other day tht I can remember or compare. I made mental not of that.
During the on-season, when my husband has masonic events that he does, the kids and I usually make the night more special (in his absence) by eating out or ordering pizza or at very least, cooking something we love, like spaghetti. The food is the event, entertainment for the senses, soothing for the heart. In all honesty, it doesn't bother me when my husband is gone a few hours, I usually indulge in stuff that I alone am into, like watching genealogy shows, doing family research or maybe reading a book. But, the food makes the night feel more special, if only for a short while. I wish it was more fulfilling, but I know that food cannot fulfill me on a "soul" level. Yet I still keep trying to use it, just in case. So maybe this sensation I have been having is not so much boredom or lack but more the emptiness of not being fulfilled on a deeper level. I am great at imagining myself doing things that fulfill me, and in my imagination I always know what they are, working out to the point of dripping sweat, yoga, meditation, writing and being out in nature surrounded by a sea of green. On a spiritual level I could take these imaginings as a sign that these are what my soul needs to be fulfilled, but I always ignore it. Why? Maybe I don't trust it, maybe because it takes effort, because they are 'shoulds' which automatically makes me feel like rebelling against them (no one is going to tell me what to do)! I am also really great at telling myself the story of I don't have time, but in reality, if I made these things a priority, I could make the time and I think my days would be much more fulfilling and the hope of food doing that for me would seem absurd.
I think one of the things that reeled me into the diet drama from early on in life is that I felt invisible, un-special, worthless, as if the thighs my mother had disdain about defined me to my core. Those things I wanted from her were unavailable. She didn't love herself, how could I expect her to be nurturing to me? I could put a pretty bow on the good memories, because they do still feel special, but I have been living in the shadow of the bad stuff for 40+ years, hoping that someone or something outside of myself would somehow swoop in and give me back what I needed back then. Maybe the best way to overcome that is to realize that I'm not that child anymore, and that who and what I am now is way more capable of giving those missing things back to me than she or anyone or thing outside of myself ever could be. Maybe I can't fix the past but I can very much repatch the holes in the earth of what has been done, and in doing so, I not only become whole, but new, green life can sprout.
So with newly learned information that plants respond to not just our voices but also in the positivity or negativity of the message, when I saw some 'ordinary' three leafed clovers on my walk this morning I did what felt natural to me, I re-wrote their story, redefined their worth and leaned in close to touch them and whispered, "You're beautiful!"
It got me thinking about one of the major triggers for my compulsive eating, the idea of "special." I have caught myself buying junk food when I am already in a decent mood, not stressed out, or even when I am happy and celebrating something. Why? Because I am afraid that the moment, event or day won't feel special enough and I have to somehow make it more magical and special. I have been particularly more aware of what I'm doing this week while I have been off of work, hanging out with my sons, and really felt the red flags flying up yesterday, when my husband flew out of state and it was just me and the boys to figure out what to do. Even though I had been with my boys all week, and my husband has been working long days and running errands so I feel like I haven't seen much of him, I still felt that we needed to fill his absence yesterday with some heaping doses of 'special;. One of the things my husband mentioned as I drove him to the airport, is hoping I could convince them to get out and do something this weekend because they would be home alone most of the week. I did get them out briefly, it was in the 90's with roughly 70% humidity so the nature place I took them to was loaded with horseflies, which is a huge anxiety trigger for one of my sons. We did see some pretty amazing things from inside the care though, a cardinal, a flock of yellow finches, a beautiful deer trotting on the path in front of us ,and our first ever sighting of a real Oriel. It felt pretty magical. So much more magical than anything we put in our mouths that day or any other day tht I can remember or compare. I made mental not of that.
During the on-season, when my husband has masonic events that he does, the kids and I usually make the night more special (in his absence) by eating out or ordering pizza or at very least, cooking something we love, like spaghetti. The food is the event, entertainment for the senses, soothing for the heart. In all honesty, it doesn't bother me when my husband is gone a few hours, I usually indulge in stuff that I alone am into, like watching genealogy shows, doing family research or maybe reading a book. But, the food makes the night feel more special, if only for a short while. I wish it was more fulfilling, but I know that food cannot fulfill me on a "soul" level. Yet I still keep trying to use it, just in case. So maybe this sensation I have been having is not so much boredom or lack but more the emptiness of not being fulfilled on a deeper level. I am great at imagining myself doing things that fulfill me, and in my imagination I always know what they are, working out to the point of dripping sweat, yoga, meditation, writing and being out in nature surrounded by a sea of green. On a spiritual level I could take these imaginings as a sign that these are what my soul needs to be fulfilled, but I always ignore it. Why? Maybe I don't trust it, maybe because it takes effort, because they are 'shoulds' which automatically makes me feel like rebelling against them (no one is going to tell me what to do)! I am also really great at telling myself the story of I don't have time, but in reality, if I made these things a priority, I could make the time and I think my days would be much more fulfilling and the hope of food doing that for me would seem absurd.
I think one of the things that reeled me into the diet drama from early on in life is that I felt invisible, un-special, worthless, as if the thighs my mother had disdain about defined me to my core. Those things I wanted from her were unavailable. She didn't love herself, how could I expect her to be nurturing to me? I could put a pretty bow on the good memories, because they do still feel special, but I have been living in the shadow of the bad stuff for 40+ years, hoping that someone or something outside of myself would somehow swoop in and give me back what I needed back then. Maybe the best way to overcome that is to realize that I'm not that child anymore, and that who and what I am now is way more capable of giving those missing things back to me than she or anyone or thing outside of myself ever could be. Maybe I can't fix the past but I can very much repatch the holes in the earth of what has been done, and in doing so, I not only become whole, but new, green life can sprout.
So with newly learned information that plants respond to not just our voices but also in the positivity or negativity of the message, when I saw some 'ordinary' three leafed clovers on my walk this morning I did what felt natural to me, I re-wrote their story, redefined their worth and leaned in close to touch them and whispered, "You're beautiful!"
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