The Weight of Life

       
Ever have one of THOSE days?

You know what I’m talking about.  You wake up in the morning and you are already tired—the worst possible way to start the day.

One of THOSE days is a day when everything you touch experiences system failure.  You try to pay a bill that is due today.  You go on line and the computer freezes and the site goes down.  How you discover that the refrigerator quit working during the night is by pouring sour milk on top of the last bit of cereal and taking a rancid bite.  You go to your car in the pouring rain to find the tire pressure light is on.  Road construction is blocking your driveway, and you pull out into speeding traffic like a blind woman in a pedal car with wobbly wheels.

Each tiny cut of discouragement leaves you bleeding on the curb of life and you have to pretend you booked this location just to take in the view from below. I am not talking about a full blown state of clinical depression.  I am just talking about one of THOSE days.

On one of THOSE days, you lose all knowledge of how the world works, except this:  you know from experience that it is not a good day to weigh yourself.  You have been around long enough to know that there are things you should never do when under the influence, but adding insult to injury is what you do under the influence of one of THOSE days.  You try to talk yourself out of it.  You are long familiar with this particular brand of self-harm, this proof that you are a loser but not of pounds.  You know you should just get into your car and start driving to a Betty Ford Clinic to address this relapse in your addiction to self-hatred, but you don’t.  You step on the scale instead, and just as you knew would be the case, the needle moves up.  And then you chastise yourself for having been a fool when you should have known better, and you curse the gods that gave you a slow metabolism, a hefty bone structure, big feet, and a serious water retention problem.  You know the number on the scale can’t possibly reflect the portion-controlled few morsels you ate yesterday.  It is all more evidence of the cosmic injustice that is your life. 

You can never admit any of this inner drama to anyone, and so you try to act like a normal human being. The demands of life propel you forward into the day.  You dress and face the weather and the traffic.  You blast some old Motown hits from your playlist and sing along as you drive. You get to work and get busy.  You engage with people you like.  You solve problems. You make plans. You take a walk.  Slowly, you forget that you hate yourself and the world.  By lunch you convince yourself that your morning fast and the calories burned in the fire of angst make it safe to eat lunch.  And you do.  And you feel better still.  And the work day ends, and you realize that slowly, while you weren’t looking, one of THOSE days became a GOOD day.  You offer thanks to the Great Day Trader who gave you a better day than the one with which you began.

And you do not weigh yourself when you get home.
                                                                    

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