5/27/25
I’ve been dreaming dreams that I remember bits of. I have decided to just never, really never, touch meat again. Nothing raw. I may touch or even eat canned tuna, or deli meat, bacon, sushi. But I refuse to touch any raw-raw flesh again. And then, in a dream, I was preparing a huge slab of salmon for the oven and the salmon turned into a chicken. I am most disturbed by chicken, but that was all of the dream.
Sunday I did up taco/burrito night. Sautéed peppers and onions, refried beans, guacamole, lettuce, all the fixings. It was so so good and the leftovers are super easy.
I want to write poem after poem, or slide down a long hill and crash land inside an essay that’s all greeny and green darkness and purple things hanging all over the place, maybe a giant bed or bower.
I want to write and attend to Substack, but it feels a bit daunting. I had so many plans, I wanted to really get going with workshops, etc., but these migraines are stopping me in my tracks.
I am trying to address the migraine with sinus meds and meditation. I had no cigs yesterday, no alcohol. A bit of sugar, but nothing lavish. I actually went out a little bit ago, and it was okay, though sinus med is making me extra groggy.
I want to cook and cook and cook, do food prep, top off bottles and jars, organize, clean. I can do none of these things. My goal is to simply read, maybe draw, finish Downtown Abby. I want to be ready for the water (PT) tomorrow morning.
And Food Coach got in touch. I will see her Thursday at noon, which is a relief. There is this thing that happens with food, rather it’s happened twice. I will be mired up in food talk and then it is as though something fresh and clear like watery wind just blows straight through my brain and everything calms down.
This happened a few months ago and I honestly thought all the food talk was gone but then it came back. My brain really wants to have as much sugar as it can possibly get but I have found ways to deal with that and seeing food coach again will help greatly.
Then the other day after giving a lot of thought to going vegan/vegetarian/flexitarian again, I found myself very calm and the food noise had calmed down again. Restricting what I eat, i.e. cutting out things that are bad for me and then I don’t even like, gives me a container. I like containers, I like things that hold me, that’s why I like being in the water so much because the water holds me like I’m a baby.
But the problem with food noise is that my brain will figure out ways to get sugar even when there is no food noise. When I went out to the drugstore earlier I thought ohh Krispy Kreme Krispy Kreme Krispy Kreme but then I asked do you really really want that?
Then my cagy brain moved on to ohh you can get McDonald’s because that would be soothing because you feel so bad and I thought well yes I could do that and I almost did but then I decided not to. I asked, is this really a craving, do I even want this, and the thought went away.
Then when I was leaving the drugstore I thought oh oh what about the Krispy Kreme what about the Krispy Kreme what about the Krispy Kreme and then I thought ohh well McDonald’s then. McDonald’s. Just get the apple pies get two apple pies do it do it do it. But it wasn’t desperate enough for me to go through on any of those impulses/compulsions.
And that is really the game—turning away the thoughts, calming the food chatter down. Just now, I feel like my migraine is gone because I am concentrating on writing. I did a meditation earlier wherein one focuses the brain’s attention from the migraine, to another part of the body that is not in pain. I think with time I will get rather good at this.
But all of it, food therapy, DBT, is about mindfulness. Which isn’t easy. But I show up every day. And I find my breath often enough for it to make a difference.
~r.
