Waaaay Down in the Dumps

Yesterday I ate six donuts...and I don't even like donuts!

This binging. It's like an anger thing, a childish thing, a fu** you thing. And then the next morning I get on the scale to see how badly I've screwed myself and ask, will today be the day I snap out of this thing?

I'm obviously very depressed.

This morning I asked myself to go back and trace the descent. Is this the kind of thing where one itty bitty bad decision escalates, snowballs? Or is it the weather? Or is it karma? Or is it that I stepped on a crack and broke my mother's back? Or is it that the moon is in retrograde of Venus? Unfortunately, I think it is it just what it is. The unknowable.

Some of my friends find it admirable that I can go so long and do so well. How do you do it? they ask. Hell, I don't know. Just like I don't know how I CAN'T do it when I can't. I DO know it has nothing to do with "willpower." Please don't give me any credit. Certainly it's not an act of will. I loathe the word "willpower." Totally don't believe in it.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the key here is acceptance. I'll let go of the anger and stop binging when I accept. Accept what? Accept that life is what it is, not fair, not good, not bad, not a novel, not logical, not purposeful, not ordained, not...anything. (I guess I'm an existentialist.) The problem with that, acceptance, is that--and as I recall, such is also the problem with existentialism--if I do 'accept,' I'll find no reason to continue to endure life. For me a purposeless existence is painful.

Actually my life is not entirely purposeless. Yesterday and the day before I spent a number of hours in 'purposeful' activities--I put in many hours creating my friend Paula's "best Christmas in years" by teaching/supervising/facilitating/assisting her in creating CDs of her mother's recipes and photographs as presents for her relatives.

I also put in an hour or so doing computer stuff for my friend Pat. I set her up on my laptop so that with just a touch of the up/down arrows she could page through her son's Facebook pages. And I took photos of some of her rock memorabilia and placed an ad in Craigslist for her to sell them, and browsed Ebay to show her competitive prices of the stuff.

And probably most 'purposeful' of all, I took Obi to visit my friend Karen at The Terraces. And I took her a Jamba Juice too!

That should be enough, don't you think? Apparently not.

Humm, just realized. THEY came to me. Paula asked for my help...well, no. She told me about the problem, and I volunteered the solution. Pat DID ask for my help. So, ok, the universe SENT me the purpose. The solution is that I need to find the purpose within myself.

The only thing going on there is Eldercize, my newly created nonprofit to deliver exercise classes to the elderly in the facilities where they live. No wonder I'm depressed. What a challenge that is: no one helps me, no one funds me, no one responds to me. I KNOW this is a correct thing to do. In 10 years (just like the strollers for running mothers were), this will be mainstream.

Oh well. Maybe tomorrow I'll get out of bed.