The Bubble
Not too long ago I had inadvertently insulted a friend of mine. I was regaling him with tales of my absolutely la vida loca lately which has included some absolutely awesome sex, mind blowing drunken stupors, roof raising karaoke renditions of old Tracy Bonham songs, a few actually sweet and endearing dates and a couple of inebriated make out sessions with some dudes whose status of being drag queens and/or porn stars wasn’t realized until much later after I sobered up. My friend sat and listened with a curious look of a dam waiting to burst. I told him to just let me have it, say what he needs to say, "LET THE RIVER RUN!" He basically said that I have so much talent and that I could better use my time than acting like a frat boy on Viagra and that quite frankly I am a bit too old to be acting like a frat boy on Viagra. My response was basically that everyone could technically better manage their time and work on their resume and that I felt that he was judging me by patronizing what I do on my free time. I went on to say that I don’t judge him on what he does on his free time and I don’t think it’s fair of him to judge me. The insult part, incidentally, was my raw and unedited description of his past time activities which I won’t repeat here but after repeating it in my head (and to my sister) it suddenly dawned on me… oh yeah, that was a little harsh. It didn’t help matters that later on in the evening when asked about my weight loss I confessed the truth and said I was starting to gain again and I was thinking of cutting back on some of my frat boy antics. He replied, “Oh no! You are not going to sit here and say that when you damn near cursed me out when I said the same exact thing earlier!” To my defense I’ll just say that I mentioned that I might be cutting back on some of my extracurricular activities to concentrate on other things. What my friend basically said was, “Breeze, it sounds like you are having just a ton of fun and having a really great time. Have you ever thought about… not doing that?” …which has a little different connotation.
Needless to say, I have been a tad bit out of control lately. I do have to say I get in these extended periods of bliss and I just grab them for all their worth. I have, however, been obsessed with… my life, the future, the reality of it. I don’t think anybody who has been around me lately would ever think that I have been in a perpetual state of existential thought (it’s hard to convey that while slovenly sucking some strange dude’s nipple in a bear bar during a beer bust) but the truth of the matter is that there is a palatable level of middle aged angst/desperation that by far fuels my “Animal House”-like actions. I recently went out on a date and this guy said, “You are most definitely single for a purpose. You are very sweet, you are very kind and you are very attractive. I can tell some of the people in this bar, the people here that you know, they like you. They like you like that. And you know it too. But you don’t want that do you?” I pled the 5th. I am consistently praying to couple up with somebody but, God also knows… me love me bachelordom. What I can tell you is that it is mucking up my weight loss process. I’m realizing that this is quite a solitary process. It’s great to have sponsors and buddies and the Weight Watchers meetings themselves are an invaluable tool to commonwealth and share your struggles but on a day to day basis… it’s just you and the refrigerator, you and the McDonald’s staring at you when you get off of work and are famished, you and the gym that you are making a million and one excuses to not go to… it’s just you. And I guess for me it’s a weird conundrum because… one of the main reasons why I am “acting out” lately is because I don’t want to be alone. I am doing these wild and crazy things to get more people in my world and this weight loss process almost demands that you have a pretty stable bubble that should only accommodate just one.
Well somehow, some way, I dropped 1.8 lbs of weight that I put on lately. I’ve been trying to stay focused get back on track and still incorporate a little fun in the process. I’ve slowed down, just a little bit, trying to get some more sleep in my life. I’ve been getting in that bubble all by myself. But damn… how great it would be if somebody was there with me…
Weigh-in: 288.2
