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Saturday Night Fever


Do people get married, in part, so that they don't have to fret out the weekends quite so alone? Is that why they go on to have children?
I'm sure I've written about the challenges of weekend nights before but I have to take another swing at it, I'm afraid.
I am writing a book. It is a painful book. I have "finished" plumbing my story of the triggers of relapse & it sent me into relapse. It's time to start the new chapter, the focus of which will not be me.
For once.
The problem is, I don't wanna. I don't want to live any more in this pain of food, eating, weight, belly flab, self-esteem & lack thereof. I don't care if it's my pain or yours, I want out.
But I can't go out until I make more solid progress on the book. In fact, when offered ballet tickets for Friday evening, I had to turn them down because a) the three people I'd have liked to see it with were unavailable, & b) I couldn't think of anyone else I wanted to make conversation with during the intermission.
I went to my 12-step meeting yesterday after some weeks' absence, an absence I'm not proud of & which helped trip me up in reliving parts of my life. The only excuse I can offer for my snottiness at the meeting is that I had a lot to ponder from the reading & the guest speaker's story. Other than that, there is no excuse for why I sat in my chair during the break, brushing off the one or two people who approached me. I told myself I didn't want to be disturbed by people I frankly don't like very much. Some of the truth is that the people I like were talking to other people -- & I was afraid to approach them & too snotty to try. A couple of people are in that Room because of my book, & that gives me pause as well. Everybody knows me as much as I know myself, or more because they have the objectivity to interpret what I can only report &/or feel.
I left the meeting full of shame & was met by a glorious day. I took my camera, Daisy & her currycomb out & ran into acquaintances from the dog world on our way to the Promenade. They had just returned from buying cocoa mulch & plants for their garden & chatted about their low-key birthday plans of only two dinners. That tete-a-tete broke up & Daisy permitted me to feathers a bird's nest with her shedding coat a bit before we went home & had lunch.
At which time it was time to write.
Only I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn'tcouldn'tcouldn't. So I crawled into bed & finished an ancient NYer & napped the afternoon away. At 6.30 I took Daisy out for some fetch & then it was time to think about winding up the day.
The day?
What day?
I had zip for shit to say of having accomplished anything, & my attitude had, unwittingly, turned to envy & snottiness & envy & then hiding in sleep & a magazine & the book I'm reading. Hiding = food. I ate too much of the wrong stuff for dinner & got to wake up yet more ashamed this morning.
I'm coming here this cool windy morning that reminds me of Montana simply to prove to myself that I can string some sentences together. I'm laying it out here that I've GOT to get a life & for whatever reason, I don't have the energy to do so right now. When I finish this post, in not very many minutes, I'm going to have some coffee & a cigarette, then put on The Doors for the sake of "Break on Through," which is what I must do today if I'm going to get to tomorrow morning with any self-respect.
On Saturday nights, I just don't like myself at all.