update

Three weeks no-ho, plus the recent weight loss, is having a strange effect on me physically. I like the way my stomach looks, which is the first time in a long time I can say that, and it's relieving and strangely comfortable, but it's something I'm watching nervously. The pants I bought a month and a half ago are loose, and I don't want to fall down that slippery, self negating and erasing slope. But from the front, I can see more of a waist, and a long, gentle taper that feels like...home? Only a home I've never really been to before.

My breasts, never much really, and not quite enough to fit whatever the idea or feeling in my head of what I feel like, or should feel like, or what makes my flesh habitable to me... anyway, they're smaller now, but I'm curiously much more aware of them. Though smaller, they're fuller, a better and more pleasing shape, both aesthetically and from the inside. It's an interesting, odd thing I hadn't expected. There is a... scaling down? going on internally in me, yet I find it even more interesting that even with that happening, I feel like I have to face the possibility of going under the knife, and everything that might mean. It's daunting, but I don't know that I can turn away because I'm scared. I am, though, scared.

I've got less hips, though less than not much probably isn't noticeable to anyone but me. Less ass, too, which I kind of miss. This is important, though, the information gathering, the reacquaintance of self with self. Whether physiological or psychological, some important things are coming back, and that feels good and important, like a second chance, a shot at learning things right, of burning through the bad, jumbled dark mess and opening something bright and wide and unfettered, only.... I'm not quite sure how to start, what to do. The old entry points, on ramps, don't take me where I want to go, or if they do, they take me by routes I don't think are good for me. I've got a new shot, but I don't want to fuck it up, and honestly, the entry point has tended to be through a narrow channel of barbed wire and jagged edges. I don't think cutting myself to get somewhere unsatisfyingly is really the best way for me to work any more. I'm just not sure how to start anew.

and also

I always knew I was running from things. My favorite part of decent horror movies is when the protagonists get fed up, or hit critical mass of fear and just stop, deciding it would be better to die fighting than to run any more. I always assumed I was working up to that point, of turning and facing my fear when there was still some fight in me. Instead, I'm finding that I'm just too tired to run any more. There doesn't seem to be a lot of heroism in exhaustion, but you don't always get to choose your hand (and seriously, what's up with all the damned poker metaphors?)

process

I feel like I'm being alchemically reduced, purified, stripped down to something essential, only I'm not sure what the final substance or form will be. It's an odd process, uncomfortable, but also almost heady, certainly disorienting. Are there implications to the final (for now) result? I don't know, but there's something active about it, I think. There's so much I don't know, but I don't think I could stop this if I wanted to.

food

Tried a black bean spread from the Tassajara cookbook today that was surprisingly complex, and went very well with cucumbers and baguette.

Dinner was my first shot of green lentils in wine sauce. I threw in some spinach at the last minute, and served it over rice, and it was tasty. Next time, maybe just a dash of balsamic vinegar, but overall not bad.

I might be up for cooking for people soon if this keeps up.