Fine. Everything is fine.

 Stress Dreams I've Had Recently

• The key to my office door broke off and it was my fault and I couldn't fix it
• I got Covid-19 again, but, like, super Covid?
• My mom tried to pick me up from the post office but just ended up dragging my around the parking lot and running over me, and I tried to explain that she was driving poorly and hurting me, but she kept saying she couldn't use the break or she would cause it to rain.  I called her irrational and told her I would drive but she refused and left me in the parking lot
• My brother hates me
• My family hates me
• I am in Thailand with my brother, boyfriend, and son, and we're trying to check out of the hotel and leave the country but I can't get my son out of the hotel room and they're cleaning it around us and my brother and boyfriends are disappointed in me and going to leave without me.
• My mom is mad at me for not having another baby
• My son runs into a parking lot and is almost hit by a car driven by my cousin
• and I am still married to my ex-husband
• and he is a dick, and leaves us to wait in the parking lot
• I am responsible for 8 other 5 year olds and we are for some reason at a warehouse, and some kind of big gun deal is taking place and I get captured by the bad guys
• I am responsible for a bunch of kids and they want a snack, which I make, but then they won't eat it. 
• I'm traveling to Europe with my boyfriend and another friend, and halfway there my friend says I am a bad friend and we are stranded in an airport.
• basically, I am a bad person.
  

Bigger Isn't Better, Actually.

 I lost a bunch of weight.

I mean, I gained a bunch first.  During Covid, switching from running around campus lecturing all day to sitting in a desk chair on Zoom for 8 hours straight changed my body, as did finding comfort in meal time. 

But then, after a summer of trying to make good food choices and incorporate more movement into my daily life (which did nothing), the weight started melting off.

I think it was stress?  First I stopped eating and enjoying food, and beer started to upset my stomach.  Then I became anemic, which somehow made food even less appetizing, plus I began throwing up occasionally.  Stress?  Maybe?  Who knows. The weight melted off, quickly enough for the uninvited comments from older acquaintances to pile up in one week.

Here's the thing folks don't realize.  When you say, "Wow, you look great, you've lost weight!" what I hear is, "We noticed you got fat and we didn't like it.  So glad you are back on team-thin, where we want you.  You are a much better person now than you were when your pants size was bigger."

more or less.

 At least that's how I feel.  I had close family members insist I was getting healthier, even though I felt tired, stressed, fatigued.  The connection between thinness and health so strong they could imagine that I hadn't taken up a secret gym membership somehow, or stopped gobbling pints of ice cream to lose the weight.  I haven't.  No one seems to care.

What they care about is that my body is smaller, more acceptable.  "Buying clothes will be so much more fun!" my mother exclaims, as if we have identicle preferences.  The feedback is consistent and omnipresent; I am better for my smaller body.  Everyone is proud of it, prefers it.  It is a great way to make people I'm not particularly close to happy with by existence.

 So, it feeds into my codependency nicely.