Good food day, in a weird way! We stopped at a local Chinese restaurant on the way home, where I ordered steamed pot stickers and lo mein. I ate about half of the lo mein, and three of the pot stickers. The RADish at 1/4, and beloved finished the rest. They split the rest of the pot stickers too.

I didn't get mad. I wasn't jealous...although that's not with right word either. Maybe I mean I wasn't deprived at watching them eat my food? Anyway, it was different.

I ate way too much at the night before and didn't make good choices either. The day did not start out that well this morning, with a few cinnasticks, but overall...there are small bits of improvement. Cleaning, sorting, and general picking up helped tremendously. There is a feeling of general discombobulation when the house is in too much disarray. I'm pretty sure that goes back to mom too. As she was less and less able to keep house, the knowledge that something was really wrong was nagging in the back of all of our brains. I did not yet have the word Huntington's in my vocabulary, but we knew something was wrong. The center--Mom---was falling apart, and with her, my center collapsed. The center is still being redefined, always with a bit of a hole that's her loss in my life. The coping mechanisms I developed were pretty unhealthy (eating, self denial), so the center is not real strong yet. Thank God for my Beloved!

It's no wonder with no one to pick up the pieces and hold us together that I ended up in such a crappy place. I tried to make things okay, by picking up the 'slack' and by desperate pleading with both God and Mom to just be okay. I tried to push my siblings and Dad to reassure me, but their attitude was "don't worry, it can always get worse!" So even back then cleaning was a solace, someway for me to trick myself into think that everythings just fine.

I think the feeling I get now, when I'm surrounded by a child-induced mess, is a reminder and reminiscent of the old feelings. It's not strong, more of an echo of the past. The clutter, the dirt, the 20,000 things that need to be done: It's a nagging reminder of the past when thing did come undone. When I'm done I feel like I've stuffed a monster back in the closet: My fear, that the mess is a 'symptom', and my painful memories. The therapist would ask "And what if it did come unglued?" My response is that it DID come unglued, but I did survive. But with so many scars. Even now, after all these years there is a gaping hole or I wouldn't end up with this icky feeling.

It's not all unhealthy. Some of it IS a girl thing, a mom thing, and a Lutheran German thinking (What will the neighbors say!). Some of it might even be a little bit perfectionism. It's also a distraction from eating, and an inability to sit and be still.

This is why it's so hard to untwist all of my feelings, there's a heck of a lot twisted together. Dang, I just had another thought on all of this and I lost it.

Oh yeah, the emotional eating stuff. I have an answer to one of the questions. When I let myself feel hunger, what I'm really feeling is a sense of control over my own body, and probably my life too. Hunger used to mean I was doing something right, until I started compulsively eating and binging. Then the hunger was not a good thing, I needed more to be comforted and this was my best option at the time. When I was dieting, the hunger meant I was in control of my eating and thereby in control of my universe. I saw it as a sign of power. It meant I was strong. So my real feelings when I want to get hungry (or when I am) is that I CAN be powerful, and I am an emotionally strong woman. It's a way to reaffirm that within myself. Especially if I'm having a fat-n-ugly attack. I don't want to need food to feel comfort. Hunger is a rejection of the relationship I have with food.