Transformation

I woke up this morning feeling gross after consuming half a serving of chocolate chip cookie dough pancakes at my hometown diner last night. The pancakes were delicious, don't get me wrong. They were simply highly unnecessary, and horribly bad for me in every way.

Earlier I'd eaten delicious, relatively healthy hibachi while dining out with an old friend. Even though my meal was simply rice and vegetables, I ate until nothing remained on my plate, though I'd reached fullness well earlier on.

I've been going through a cycle during the last few months--well, years, actually: I'll eat myself to oblivion, get disgusted, and swear that I'm turning a new leaf. I'll follow Weight Watchers for a week, maybe two, get more exercise, lose a few pounds, and feel like I'm on my way towards permanent control over how I consume. Then I'll waver; I'll go overboard with free donut holes at the office, or eat the entire pot of pasta when I meant to have leftovers. I'll gain weight, feel disgusted with myself, and the cycle starts all over again.

Even my vegetarianism has wavered lately. It's never been about not eating cute, fuzzy animals to me. It's been about protesting inefficient land use for meat when plant-based foods feed so many more people using far fewer resources. I also prefer to place restrictions on myself in my own personal Kashrut: Though I am top of the food chain, I also have consciousness, and this consciousness leads me to believe that I do not, in spite of my superior intellect, have the right to run about Earth eating up whatever strikes my fancy. Since eating is the ultimate form of conquest (eating something turns that thing into more of you), I am not presuming to be lord over all living things. This is something that makes sense to me intellectually, and, I feel, is healthily humbling. But lately I want fish. I occasionally eat a piece of shrimp or two out of my partner's dish. And then I feel disgusted for something entirely different -- not just that I can't control how much I eat, but that I can't even control the kinds of things I eat when it really, seriously matters to me.

(Also, is eating more vegetable-based food than I need really an efficient way to protest grossly unequal food provision? Grabbing far more than my one body-machine needs?)

It occurs to me this morning that I really do need to transform the status quo -- it was more than a cute superheroine/blog name. The times in which I am in control of my consumption, in which food does not control me, and my body moves into a comfortable state, have been when I was either exceedingly happy (e.g. in 2006 when I had just moved into an amazing job and an amazing apartment and knew what I had and what I needed beyond what was on my dinner plate) or exceedingly sad (e.g. following a horrific breakup, after which I basically only ate dinner every day for a whole summer). Status quo is different.

Status quo is when I am not particularly happy but not particularly sad. They're the long, in-between stretches that I am old enough to realize will probably be the norm for life. A person can't maintain mania or depression for the long haul -- nor should they. Status quo for me is eating until there is nothing left to eat. It is eating until I feel a fullness that imitates the fulfillment that I know, intellectually, is the real thing I'm craving.

I still realize that I am not a huge woman. I realize that people have much bigger difficulties with food than I do. But that does not change the fact that, in this national moment of change, I crave my own. I want my status quo to be stability, even in the face of ennui. I want to find a way to separate myself from food so that, while it necessarily remains an important part of my life, it is not the starring role in every blessed performance of my normal, daily life.

There has to be a way, but right now I can't seem to see it. And in the meantime, I'm sick and tired of oblivion. I miss clarity, but keep forcing it down with excess.