Days 224 - 229

I think as I move forward through time it becomes easier to see that people love me.

My cat, Good Girl, is skinny. She was a stray. Her neck is long and she reminds me of a big furry snake with extra bits like legs and ears. C once told me that cats are psychic. Not that they're really psychic, but that their minds are so quiet it becomes easier for them to know you. This makes sense to me - As I get older and I become better at making my mind quiet I feel like it becomes easier to see people, and to know them. To listen to a person's story and to know a little bit more than what they have told you and to know it with warm, comfortable certainty (this is handy in a job where your clients do not want to tell you everything you need to know to help them).

Good Girl comes to my window in the morning and wakes me up to let her in and then she lays in bed with me. If I leave her inside when I leave the house she will be there, sitting on the edge of the couch, waiting for me when I return. When I hang out the washing she follows me outside and then comes back inside with me when I am done. She sits on my bathmat and sings her worry to me while I'm in the shower. She knows I go to the bathroom just before bed and when she sees me in there she jumps into bed to wait for me. She loves me.

There was a time in my life where my mind was so noisy. I was so preoccupied with my concerns that it was hard for me to understand what was going on around me. I was worried about uni, and work, and the gym, and a boy, and my relationship with my housemates, and my relationship with my friends, and getting work experience, and whether I would get a job when I finished my degree, and whether my doctor would prescribe me more duromine, and whether the weight would come back, and whether I looked any good, and whether I was any good, and whether something terrible would happen and I would have to quit uni and go back to Caboolture. I wasn't able to name this anxiety at the time. I think I just really thought everything was on the brink of falling apart and that I was holding everything together by tenuous threads. I was racing towards the end of my degree because I thought education and a good job would keep me safe from all the things I was afraid of. With a good job I could buy all the duromine in the world and I wouldn't have to worry about my fat either.

I got a call from the clinical nurse. Out of the blue, so my mind is racing.

They're sending me for an MRI. The clinical nurse doesn't tell me why and I don't ask. But I understand that she is worried by a throwaway comment I made a fortnight ago about having a cramp while sitting in a movie theatre. It didn't go away straight away and by the time I went to bed I had intellectualised it as the implant moving around in my body, pushing on my organs. I lay, and meditated and told myself that if I relaxed enough everything would rearrange itself into the correct configuration by morning. I woke up feeling fine.

I know they hope that this is why I haven't been losing that much weight - if the implant is simply in the wrong spot then they can put it back in the right place and lash it down with occy straps and I will start losing 3 kilos each week and 5 every third. Not really. I'm sure it works out slightly different as they imagine it. I would be at goal weight in 9 weeks, imagine that.

I will go, after fasting for 6 hours, and I will eat creamed rice out of a tin before I insert myself into the machine. So they can see the shape of my stomach with the implant sitting on top. Or maybe it's somewhere else.

Do you remember those terrible fucking kids' shows? Old mate wants to ice skate but he can't, he's too scared and also he's shit. But then someone gives him magic sunglasses that help you skate. But really they don't. And everyone learns the value of friendship? Maybe that's what the implant is like. It's really just chilling on top of my ovaries and not doing a goddamn thing but I think it's there and it is so I can get to the end of the day with a balance of 1100 - 1300 calories whereas I had trouble keeping it down around 1700 before.

If it has detached am I willing to let them go back in and reattach it and continue on with the trial? Or do I make them take it out and go back to begging GPs for duromine? Or do I take money out of my savings and get some other surgery? I'll have been with my health fund for 12 months and be covered for obesity surgery this March. Maybe the timing of all of this is serendipitous. Or do I take it out and just see what happens. If you suspect that I'm not going to take the last option, I'd say you know me pretty well already.

What is life if not an adventure?

I should meditate more.

You can ask me anything.