I got maybe an hour of sleep last night. I knew my insomnia would come back and clamp its teeth right on my ass at some point, and I guess the time is now. It started with finding a comfortable position to sleep in. I haven't purchased the foam mattress pad I've been meaning to get and the bed springs were poking me everywhere. I could feel them against my ribs, and my hipbones, and my elbows. Every new position caused me new annoyance. I fell asleep for a little while and then woke up again because I was too hot. I finally got the heat figured out in my apartment, but forgot that I don't need three blankets covering me and so I woke up sweating, thirsty, and pissed off. Once it was clear I wasn't falling asleep, every other thing that had been annoying me all day came out to tap me on the shoulder and say, "Hey, remember me?" It was, needless to say, a long night.
Another thing that I couldn't stop doing was pinching myself. It's a weird habit that I've only noticed recently. I sleep on my side, and for some reason, I lightly pinch myself, on my ribs, waist, and hips, all night long. This didn't happen when I was sleeping next to someone, it's only begun since I started sleeping alone consistently. It has to have something to do with that. It's another weird single-girl quirk I've developed, right up there with wedging a pillow against my back. That one started when I was staying at Tony's. I couldn't get used to not having something to lean against, to the point where I was afraid I would roll off the bed. I made do with an extra pillow. This one is more recent, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it must have something to do with me feeling butt-hurt over Mike, or just replicating something he did while I was sleeping. It's doubtful, since we only slept in the same bed a handful of times.
The bed springs touching me is also something recent, of course due to my losing a lot of weight. I don't lose weight like a normal, healthy person. I don't lose this much weight when I am at my best self. I lose weight through bad behaviors like forgetting to eat and running until I feel like I might die. I can't help enjoying it just a little, though. I was such a chubbster for most of my life, always the voluptuous girl with a story about how I ate freezer-burned ice cream for dinner the night before because I felt like it and oh god I'm so fat. Now I tell stories that start with crying in the shower and end with eating a teaspoon of peanut butter and a packet of Splenda for lunch. The fact that I think that it's funny doesn't reassure anyone of my mental stability.
Now that I'm thinner, everyone's congratulations over my weight loss are immediately followed by concern. I'm getting asked if I'm eating enough, if I'm exercising too much, if there is anything that might be "wrong" with me. I haven't dealt with this kind of body-focus since I was 21, when I was so anxious I couldn't swallow food and I shrank down to the size of a swizzle-stick. When you gain weight over a short period of time, people generally don't quiz you about your eating habits. It's considered rude. When you thin out over a short period of time, people take it upon themselves to make sure you're not on drugs or starving yourself. They need to take the piss out of it just to find out what you might be doing that is shameful. My sister drunkenly pestered me about my size for thirty minutes over the phone one night, saying that there is no way I can be a size 4. "Our bodies don't fit into a size 4. They're not supposed to. We have curves. I think you're lying. The tiniest I ever saw you was your wedding, and you were wearing a size 6."
This has more to do with her than with me. My sister and I are so close, and so close in age, that there is always some kind of competitiveness there. She was always one size smaller than me, able to fit into things I couldn't because although our bodies are similar, they aren't exactly the same. She got bigger tits, but I have a smaller waist. She got shorter legs, but I have wider hips. She can't fathom that I am a size she cannot fit into right now, but I wasn't bragging about it when I mentioned that I needed to go down a size. I was just amazed. I haven't been this tiny since, again, my early twenties.
I've kind of stopped taking so much joy in the amount of weight I have lost, only because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I am fitting into clothes I have never been able to wear and that I don't have to do an elaborate dance to get into my jeans. It doesn't matter that a lot of people are telling me I look great. The weight loss is just my consolation prize for having my heart crushed, and I doubt it will stay off. One day, I will meet a really great guy and start eating like a grown human instead of a five-year-old and I will put weight on and then he won't like me anymore because I'm not some sylph-like pixie dream girl anymore like I was when we first met. When I think about how disappointed Gino was when he looked at me and realized that, holy shit, the girl he married had the body of a woman, not a toothpick, I want to scratch his eyes out.
The only fortunate thing is that I do not have to work today. If I was at work right now, I would probably not be at work at all, actually. I would be in jail for murdering someone, because I am too tired to control my own actions.
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