Formerly Fat Me

So the kids are off for their very late Spring Break this year which, because they go to a Jewish Day School, coincides with Passover, and I should be going nuts because I'm getting NOTHING done, right? I mean, my days normally have a structure which involves writing and chores and Jazzercise and my meetings and lunch with friends and then picking them up and taking my son to tutoring, and so this week everything is backwards. Writing? Still waiting to do that today and it's 11 PM. Jazzercise I do every morning at 9:15 like a robot. Chores? My children actually sorted their own laundry today and put it away. Whether it actually made it into their drawers I guess I'll have to go and find out. My meetings I'm attending at night and I'm going to lunch with the kids.

But I guess what's so weird is that I'm kind of happy in a goofy kind of way. I know I had that horrible health scare last week and maybe that's what did it but I just feel so happy this week. I've just been so happy that things are kind of falling into place. The house is getting back together and I have this breathtakingly lovely new office space with wood floors and a great desk and privacy, which is still, somehow, a living room too. I get to write, which is amazing and I'm finishing up my second Gotham on-line class and feel that I've learned a lot about freelancing and am ready to start submitting queries to magazines.

But most of all I feel like I finally, at age 49, look exactly the way I'm supposed to look, like the inside of me is perfectly reflected on the outside. And I know that because I'm a compulsive overeater, that because I found my 12-step program nearly 9 years ago, I dodged a high speed train. Every day that I wake up a normal-sized person, a thin person, is an amazing miracle. I was a 211 pound person; overweight for 25 years, from 15 to 40. I can't believe how lucky I am that I was touched in such a way by such an amazing program; that I didn't have to keep gaining and gaining until - who knows how heavy I would have been by now?

So happy? Yeah. Up alone and writing at 11:20? Yeah. Hopeful? Yeah. And abstinent? One day at a time, for 8 years 37 weeks and 4 days today.