Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Not quite fully-opened okra flower. As you can see, it is part of the mallow family, like hibiscus and rose of sharon. Also, cacao and cotton and I did not know that. 

Today has been tough. Part of it was lovely and I did enjoy that but the rest of it has been rather dark for me. I woke up from more stupid, stupid dreams with all of the themes in them. Themes of taking care of children, of taking care of grown-ups, of being surrounded by filthy laundry and many washing machines, none of them any good at all. Kitchens that are also filthy with many ovens that are horrendous, most of them non-functioning, and never, ever enough food to feed all the people I need to feed. Trying to find something to wear and not being able to. This morning's dreams took me all the way back to the closet in my brother's and my room in Roseland. 
And then there is the other recurring theme of my husband not loving me, of having another true love for whom he is leaving me. The hussy who loves to hunt and fish.
I wake up exhausted and fighting to find reality in the daylight. 

But. I got up and got on with it. I knew we were meeting Hank and Rachel and a few others at 11:30 for lunch and so I needed to get the sheets in the washing machine and and do all the other self-determined necessary things for a Friday. This includes weighing and injecting myself with another dose of Zepbound. 
The scale showed no progress and like I talked about in my post concerning weighing and scales, I was ready to start stripping off clothes and wondering how much extra weight my swollen knee was responsible for and all that bullshit. Even knowing what I know from personal experience and from Weight Watcher member experience about how weight loss goes, I fall right back into the thinking that no weight loss means that whatever I'm doing isn't working, no matter what the other evidence shows. 
And the last week on the low dose of Zepbound, the starting dose, has been hard. The magical silencing of the voices in my head reminding me that I should eat, that I'm hungry, that just a little bite of this or a little bite of that certainly can't hurt anything, and blah, blah, blah, had mostly disappeared. I wanted that silence back. And I have become afraid that I won't ever get it back which is another example of faulty thinking. 
Today I started on the second level of dosage and I am waiting to see if that kicks into gear. So far, it has not. I cannot stress enough that I still have not been eating nearly as much as I was before I started taking the drug, and the choices I've made have been far healthier. I do not eat between meals except for my afternoon snack of cottage cheese (protein!) and fruit. And that has been very satisfactory. But still, it's not been the same as when I first started and it was as if I had been given the keys to a magical kingdom where food was not my boss, my tyrant, one of the main focuses of my life. 
I know that I will feel that again as so many others report that they have. Many people don't experience that at all the first month. I was a rapid reactor. So I'm just being paranoid and pessimistic and worried, once again, that somehow I don't deserve to have the keys to that magical kingdom. 

But on I go and I wore a dress today that I simply could not fit into last summer and that is after one month. I've had to move a ring that was getting too large for the finger I wore it on. I see many small changes already, ones that are not based on the scale but on the reality of the size of my body. I am certain no one looking at me could tell any change at all but I can. 

Still, all of that negativity had hold of me when I drove into town to the restaurant that used to be El Patron where our family has spent so many birthdays and just plain get-togethers. There's a porch where the children could run around without disturbing anyone and the food was always good and reasonable and they knew us. Not unlike Japanica, El Patron closed for a good long while and we feared it was gone forever. But no, ownership just changed hands but still within the same family. It is now San Marcos Mexican Grill. The restaurant has been spiffed up but still has some of its funky charms. There are new chairs which impressed us all. Very comfortable. The porch has been remodeled and is now more inviting. They're going to start having live music there a few nights a week. 
So it was fun to see all of this but mostly it was good to see not only Hank and Rachel, but also our beloved Melissa, she of the hair salon where all of us go, and beloved Lindsey who gives quite possibly the best hugs in the world and makes tiny origami birds that she leaves for the server.

Glen was there too and that was sweet. I love how easy things are between us and the kids. I'm sure there are things we don't talk about but those subjects are few and far between. 

I stopped at a Goodwill on my way home but wasn't there long. My knee has been hurting all day when I walk and I'm sorry but Goodwill just isn't worth the pain. 

Since I've been home I've done little. Made up the bed, swept the kitchen, fretted over stupid, little, selfish things, despaired over huge frightening things, and tried to fix a buckle on a pair of overalls which felt to me like I was attempting a magic trick with no instruction book. I've never been good at things like that and now, I am even worse. Mr. Moon has fixed them for me. Bless him. 

Forgive me for talking so much about such frivolous stuff that really doesn't offer anything to anyone. I simply cannot talk about the big stuff right now. You know- how the world as we know it has been erased by wars and tyrants. 

Let's see how this martini works. 

Happy Friday, y'all. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Oh, to be as wise as Frida.