pass the light ranch dressing, please.

I feel invisible today.

I could test it out. Sneak into movies. Crash birthday parties and eat lots of birthday cake. Steal a present or two. Wander, undetected, into the mythological underground tunnel system that lies beneath the Fall of America. Test drive a VW bug convertible and never bring it back. Create chaos wherever I go.

OR

I could sit here and write what is already promising to be a lengthy journal entry while eating cherry tomatoes.

I am begrudgingly eating cherry tomatoes. What I really want are dozens upon dozens of the mini-bismarks M invented in a recent journal entry. Except I want the chocolate ones with the pudding inside and he is a fan of the white ones with the raspberry goo inside. A true mini-bismark stand at the fair would surely have both options and maybe even a third for variety. Like blueberry or lemon, with powdered sugar topping. But anyway, since, THANKFULLY, mini-bismarks have not really been invented yet and if they have, THANKFULLY, there is not a roaving mini-bismark truck that peruses area neighborhoods while playing a cheerful music-box ditty to draw all the housewives and couch potatoes out and into the street waving five dollar bills, I am safe from actually eating the mini-bismarks I wish these tomatoes were. Too bad cherry tomatoes aren’t more like turkey. Turkey can pretend to be almost anything.

I KNOW what this whole mini-bismark thing is. It’s my crutch rearing it’s ugly head again and my eating cherry tomatoes is my attempt to kick it’s ass.

A few months ago when my life was suddenly akin to an ant farm that had been violently shaken by a 3rd grader, I saw some stuff clearly for the first time. I got why I overate. I got why I was content watching TV for hours a day. I got why I was depressed. I got why I let my most important relationship deteriorate to near nothingness. I got why I was afraid of people. And once I got it, I couldn’t do it anymore. I wanted nothing to do with how my life had become. All the things that use to comfort me suddenly repulsed me. I ran full speed ahead away from everything my life had been.

And now, with a few months between me and that day, I find that I didn’t run as far away as I thought I did. While nothing is really different in the ant farm, I feel happier just because of time passing and just because I’m a happy person and you can’t really have that beat out of you forever. So with a slightly better mood, and the icky feelings that acted like Super Extra Strength Professional Edition Dexatrim for three months slowly making way for a new normal, here is this food thing that I thought I had left in May, and wow, it’s almost September.

I’m proud that I can see this now. That my habits are different enough where I can point out this new abnormality with sniper-like accuracy. But, even with that, I still don’t really know what to do, other than eat cherry tomatoes. And maybe that’s all there is to do. I want so badly to move my life along, to start rebuilding the tunnels and the little community that was my ant farm, but I am stuck here in this spot. The waiting spot. I am waiting for the store to sell. I am waiting for a job offer. I am waiting for M to make some kind of decision that is so fuzzy and out of focus that I can’t even articulate what decision I am even awaiting… but all those things, I feel powerless to. But I’m not. I know that. What I am choosing is to stay in this waiting spot because there is either no readily available alternative (…the store, the job) or because what I am waiting on means enough to me to wait some more (…M.)

Here is The Fear: Eventually, the waiting will become icky enough to make the things that I am so sure are worth it, not be worth it anymore. And my mini-bismark fetish is exactly how that would happen. I’m not willing to go back to my old life of Trading Spaces reruns, buckets of cookies and being terrified at the idea of going to see a band. I just can’t do that. Not that it was crazy hard to get to this new normal that I’m trying to make, but it was hard enough. And this new normal is the crowning jewel of all the weird and unsuspecting good that came from the mean 3rd grader who grabbed hold of my ant farm in May.

So what now?

Writing it down. Talking it over. Working tirelessly to prevent the invention of mini-bismarks with chocolate frosting and vanilla pudding inside. Being strong. Being a little brave. And being a lot patient.