I have a friend – a really good friend as it happens – who told me this weekend that she misses the old me. It took me a bit by surprise actually, and I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about what she meant. Don’t get me wrong, she sort of explained, and I sort of got it, but I guess it hit me again about the way my changing perspective on stuff is affecting those people around me.
So we were trying to arrange a shopping date, which is something we usually do a couple of times a year. January sales are fast approaching and we’re normally limbering up by now you know? The way those days normally go is this – we meet up and head straight for coffee, talking each other into some kind of badass cake whilst we’re at it, after all it would be rude not to. We then make a serious assault on the shops, talking each other into buying frivolous things we don’t need, before heading somewhere amazing for lunch or afternoon tea where we generally linger over a nice bottle of fizz. Or two.
The number of bags I stagger home with largely depends on how fat or skinny I am at the time, but whatever diet I’ve been on in the run up to our shopping date, I can’t ever remember a time when the diet of the hour wasn’t suspended in honour of the occasion. One of the things that we’ve laughed about most over the years is how easily we are persuaded by each other to be really wicked.
We egg each other on, you know? Find excuses as to why the other needs this or that, which removes all guilt associated with whatever the purchase happens to be.
We’ve all got friends in different buckets, right? I’ve got friends I go to who I’ll know will be on my side no matter what the situation, because…well they always are. They tell me what I want to hear. Then I’ve got friends who tell it me straight, and if I’m being a diva, or if I’m in the wrong, boy do they let me know. I’ve got friends who try to talk me out of stuff, and friends whose counsel will invariably be hell yeah, go for it.
I select who I’m asking the advice of depending on the answer I want to hear…if you’re smiling right now, you know exactly what I mean. And whilst very few of my actual friends know I write the blog, if you’re one of the ones who does, and you’re reading this, you’ll also know exactly which bucket you fall into 🙂
What I think my friend is struggling with is that the dynamic of what we do might be changed forever if I carve out a whole new set of rules. She’s used to me being the one telling her that the double chocolate fudge cake can’t have any calories in it because it’s laid on it’s side so obviously they’ve all leaked out. That if we want a second bottle of wine that’s perfectly fine, because after the first bottle your body is so busy processing the alcohol that anything we eat doesn’t count so let’s order a large portion of that and make the most of it…I’m that friend in her bucket.
I’m not the sensible friend, or the one who holds the mirror up and makes her accountable…I’m the one who knows the answer she’s looking for, and finds a way to make it ok. And she does the same for me. She’s responsible for a fair number of those black and white boxes on top of my wardrobe…always mad keen to give me a little push in the direction of a fuck it moment when I’m wavering, finding reasons why it would be a disaster if I walked away.
So she knows we’ll still laugh together, and shop together and there’s no chance in the world of us not getting up to mischief together…it’s what we do. But she was astute enough to know that this is more than just another diet. There’s a genuine step change in the way I’m trying to manage my relationship with food, and the days of us working our way through the cake menu in whichever coffee shop we land in are probably over. I’m glad she was honest enough to come right out and say how much she’s going to miss that.
So am I, as it happens.
