It’s not often I flay myself for folks to read, though I’m not exactly known for aiming kindness my own way.  Anyway.  My lovely husband and I are attending FogCon at the moment, which is a charming little literary sf/f convention.  Highly recommended, well organized.

So, the tale.  We decided tonight to get room service for dinner.  Now, we had lunch at …11:30ish?  It’s 7 now.  And I was hungry!  So we ordered a glomp of food, a true glomp.  Or what I saw as a glomp because I’m completely disordered about food and appropriateness.  So when the nice young waiter brought our food and it was on a special table due to so many plates, I immediately slipped into a sort of humiliation fugue state.  With every perfectly reasonable dish he uncovered, I grew more and more wretched.

Finally, at the end of the recitation, I heard myself telling this bullshit story about how we hadn’t eaten all day, and wow, and it was going to feel good to finally have food, and …I just lied.  I straight up lied to a young man I’ll never see again because I was so horrified with the amount of food we ordered.  (for the record, we each had chicken tenders and fries, and an appetizer, and split a dessert.  not that it matters)  He walked out after mumbling some reassurance that really meant “I-don’t-care-lady.”  My husband looked at me and said, “Oh honey,” and I burst into tears.

There are days I wish I could cut off my stomach with a knife.  There are days when I wish I really could live on air and water, rather than ever put any food into my mouth ever again.  There are days when I want so badly to not be in the body I’m in that I can barely stand it.

I mean…I’m doing good things for myself.  I think I’ve lost a little weight lately, I’ve been working out, I’ve been eating better.  But seriously, one imagined case of side-eye from a hotel waiter, and I was nearly hysterical.  I put myself in jails, and food is just one more set of bars.

I can hear my husband at the front of the apartment.  He’s assembling a complicated Lego building, which means little plastic pieces are rattling together in the Tupperware he’s scavenged from the kitchen for sorting.  He’s playing Kacey Musgraves; he’s been going through a country-girl sort of phase (with my full support).

All three cats are lounging in sunspots in the bedroom.  When all the shades are pulled high, a nearly solid wall of sunlight shoves into the room.  I can hear the tinny growl of a tiny airplane engine, and beyond that, construction, and beyond that, the waves of the Pacific and the trolley’s occasional bell.  Pretty good day.

My husband has already posted it in several other locations (king of social media that he is), but I should declare it in my own voice too.  I’ve sold my first poem, and it was just published.  I’m humbled and thrilled.  It’s a short work about an AI who just wants to make you happy.