So as expected I wasn’t exactly beating the crowds away this morning as I opened my eyes on St Valentine’s day. My letterbox remains decidedly empty (get your mind out of the gutter right now y’hear?) and there will be no cards displayed on my mantlepiece this year, along with no flowers and no heart-shaped chocolates.
But you know what, I’m kind of okay with that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it would be lovely to have someone to adore me and spoil me rotten…I lived for many years wishing and hoping that the one bloke who was one hundred percent right for me would hurry the fuck up and make himself known whilst I’ve still got all my own teeth.
Thing is, he didn’t. So I sort of checked out, you know? After three false starts and an endless stream of also-rans in between, I eventually decided I was safer on my own. With one or two notable exceptions, my relationship history is a car crash of the highest order and all the people in my life who give a damn just find it easier to sleep at night when I’m single.
If you read the blog post Magic Me Skinny Please you’ll know that for a while I saw a therapist who did her level best to poke around in the corners of my head. I was hoping she might hand me some answers to the question of why I couldn’t seem to get a grip on my lifelong habit of yo-yo dieting. And somehow in the middle of all that we took a detour to the subject of relationships and how they had affected, or been affected by my broken relationship with food.
What I realised for the first time ever, was that there is definitely a clear connection between those two things. With only a couple of minor deviations it sort of went like this: Single –> get skinny –> get a bloke –> stop dieting whoop whoop –> get fat –> relationship on skids –> single again –> get skinny…and repeat, on an endless loop.
Now, I’m not saying that all my relationships ended because I got fat, that’s not true. The fact that I have a habit of being attracted to blokes with…let’s just say ‘their own issues’ is a major factor, as is my tendency to believe everything in life has the potential to be a fairy tale despite glaringly obvious clues to the contrary.
But I don’t think I’ve ever exited a relationship wearing the same size clothes that I was wearing when cupid’s arrow first struck, so that tells me a lot. Mind you, hands up who’s ever hit Friday unable to get into the pants that fitted on Monday? Not just me then.
Days like this, when I wake up to an endless roll-call of Facebook updates showing off cards and flowers and quirky gestures from people who’ve nailed the whole spouseville thing make me wistful. But I also know I need to be fiercely protective of this food sobriety. It has to remain my utter focus until I reach Skinny Town and beyond...I can’t take my heart off the shelf until I’ve earned my staying there stripes. No room in my life for St Valentine, not this year and probably not next.
My dog loves me, and my boy and my mum and my friends love me. And I love them all back, in spades. I love you guys too. Best of all I’m starting to love me. That’s a lot of love. No hearts and flowers necessary, right? I’ve got the important stuff down 🙂
ps…have you noticed that we’ve had our first guest spot blog post..? You can read it here…
