Stuffed & Starved

I have an insatiable spirit. Whatever there is to experience, I want it. I want to try everything, learn about everything, do a little of everything. I always want my life to be bigger, my experiences broader, my time better—I will never have my fill, I will always want more. Historically, when I felt like I was lacking something, I would eat…and eat and eat—and when that didn’t work, I’d drink and drink and drink—and when that didn’t work, I would hook up with every girl who’d have me. Until one day I realized that my ultimate end-goal was not to be the fattest, drunkest whore in all of New York City. That’s what we Oprah-lovers call a “light-bulb moment.” In the mean-time, I learned a lot of lessons, accumulated a lot of great stories, and still have all my limbs in tact.

I read a poem recently (which is often credited to Maya Angelou, however, I believe the author is Pamela Redmond Satran) and it included the following quote:
“A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... 
a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to 
retelling it in her old age....”

Mission accomplished. But the problem is, I’ve got a lot of time to kill between now and old age. And I’m not sure my liver, nor my nerves can stand to rack up too many more “juicy” tales. Also, if I’m going to get to something that can respectfully be called “old age,” I’d better start growing up.

My goal is to satisfy these appetites with something other than nachos, beer, and sex (insert frustrated groan). Three weeks ago, I went out for Mexican food with a group of friends and we ate so much food, I virtually had to crawl out to the sidewalk where I got in a cab—there was no way I could fathom climbing the subway steps in such a state.

I hit guac-bottom.

Two weeks ago, I hopped off the sobriety band-wagon and woke up in a relationship. (For any lesbians reading, this should require no explanation. For everyone else, I’ll try and summarize… Sometimes we relate to women physically in a drunken evening and wake up feeling as though we should force the intellectual/emotional connection so that we don’t have to admit that we pulled a slutty move. It’s a girl thing. We insist that there was a certain j'nais c'est qua between the two of us in the magic of the night prior and then spend the next few weeks discovering that we have no basis for a relationship. It would be like trying to build a house with a bucket of paint and a few pretty windows. The things that make a house attractive don’t always provide the foundation for a good relationship. The next step is to then try separating amicably and maturely. **Which, yay for us, we were able to do…yesterday.**)

The difficulty comes in replacing the unhealthy habits with better ones and not losing friends. It’s much easier to find ten people heading to the bar than it is to find someone willing to take a yoga class. The same people who will gladly drink half a bottle of Scotch and sing karaoke with you are worried about looking stupid in yoga… I can always find people who want to go fill up on omelets & bacon on a Saturday morning, but when I want to volunteer at the soup kitchen across town, I’m on my own. How does one lead a healthy, fun, fulfilling lifestyle? It turns out my spirit cant be satiated by salsa con queso or sex on the beach (or in the bathroom of a gay bar for that matter).

I need to make my peace with the substances that are distracting me from being a woman of substance. At the end of the day, I’m going home with me, so I better like myself—and it’s hard to tell how I feel about anything when I’m stuffed full of food & booze. This is the first time in years—since I came out—that I’m not in love/obsessed with someone else. I’d really like to take this time to do that with myself. As it turns out, I’m actually starved for my own affection.