The UNIVERSE can expand if it likes, but I intend to contract - Operation Transformation

Sitting in my Mothers nursinghome  room on Wednesday night, 
the TV on low in the background, I catch  a glimpse of a man being weighed.
(A lot of the TV I manage to see  is in her room as Rte is always on.)

 It is how I am now aware of the shenanigans in Albert Square and how someone is always shouting

              "Fam- Leee, Fam - Leeeeeee !" -
             while they hurl clothing, errant spouses,wayward progeny and insults into the square. 
              (The writers must be distraught. )


I digress.
The man being weighed was poignant as he described how his weight gain, 
subsequent marraige breakdown, and sheer loneliness in an apartment where he was a "Weekend Dad",
 led him to stand on the balcony at night
 to hear the sound of traffic on the overpass
 and the cawing of crows for company. 

Even the crows have gone 

And of course his weight ballooned as he sat comfort eating and unconsciously watching TV.
I contemplated my own stomach as he spoke. 
It is the size of a full term pregnancy now and I almost hold it like such. 
I find at times I will have been cupping it, 
or absentmindedly stroking it,
 loving the fat squashy softness of it,
 the sheer size of it. 

I'll start my diet on Monday

As my Uncle Ollie would have said when teased about his paunch
 - "It cost a lot of money to put that there!"
Or as Siobhán would have said ( if she could ) - 
"That jersey would fit Finn McCool " 
or "She's as big as a Bishop".
It is my last hurrah as a pregnant wanna -be. 
The Universe has decided that the only thing I will give birth to will be a Novel.

A Big Bishop

 I made a snap decision and pressed the bell.
The tea girl pops her head in.
"You rang?"
"Yeah, where the Nurses at?"
She locates and returns with a pair.
Their eyebrows are up.
"Everything's grand, I just need you to take me to the room with the "weighchair"and tell me what I actually weigh now.
 And I need someone to write it down,
 and an audience."
They laugh and we set off merrily down the hall. 
(I interject only at this point to affirm that if I do not shine the light of honesty then nothin' gets done around here, which is why I double bluff the universe by saying I have loads written on a public forum which then means I have to write loads or be disgraced etc) 

In the room filled with Zimmer frames, sticks, crutches, walkers and wheelchairs is the chair the elderly infirm patients are weighed in. I sit down. It is in kilos.
"Just multiply by 2.2 " I tell the teagirl who is writing on a bandage wrapper, plucking this information from the ether.
Dear Reader, I will draw a veil over the actual amount.
 It caused much amusement to all and sundry. 
Put another way I appear to be as wide as I am long.
This simply cannot stand.
And either can I carrying this extra load.

Gynaecological Torture Implement aka Weighchair

This self- indulgent /self sabotage/seratonin dependancy must cease now and forthwith. 
The next day filled with plans to hibernate at a 5* detox retreat
 - emerging in summer unrecogniseable -
are shattered on meeting a friend.
She walks a Buddhist path, works as a psychologist , shaved her head and took a nuns veil until
 (in her own words ) "the lure of men and red wine proved too much " -
and on hearing me bemoan my stomach smiled, and said "Sure, aren't you beautiful?
 You're taking up more space in the world."

She drank the wine oh enlightened one and has been asleep for days

Like the man who eats to feel happy, who listens to a murder of crows, the woman I met yesterday who tells me she is so lonely at night she sits at the top of the stairs in Tesco to SEE and hear people, or the woman reading this grieving a loss so heartbreaking that she can only allow herself to feel it in stages, 
we are ALL carrying a heavy load. 
I have thrown the sweets into a plastic bag to be presented to Hewhomustnotnenamed

Ok, I ate a few, I'm not THAT enlightened, yet

Lucozade is off limits and I think myself and a pair of hefty photographers are going to do the Ben Ten or die trying.
And I think that secretly after all this time, and all these excuses, that I have no option BUT to transform, and turn and turn again into the seasons, and the ebb and flow of the particles of life, and imagine how it will be when I am as light as the free radicals that surround us,
 or the air we breathe,as bright and  high and blue as the stars we are composed of. 

.

Evolving and Transforming are our default settings

Watch this ever decreasing space - MDM Jan 2015