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The cure for self-obsession: Bronchitis!

I woke up this morning, nose running, lungs itchy and swollen, and generally just feeling like shit on a stick. I got out of bed, topless, and turned to put on my robe, and there was my boyfriend, staring at me appreciatively. I was not in the mood, but all he said was “you’ve lost a lot of weight.”

Of course, being the bitchy, complicated female that I am, I replied: “I don’t know how to take that,” and walked off to the bathroom, covering up on my way.

He meant it as a compliment to how I look now, rather than an insult to how I looked before, and in his defense he’s never once in 3 1/2 years said anything but kind words about my body. But that doesn’t mean I don’t hear the unkind ones he doesn’t say. Those are delightfully provided by my own fucked-up psyche.

But the point here isn’t that I’m screwed up, because everybody already knows that. The point is, when he said that about my weight, I realized with a jolt that these past few days I’ve been so focused on hacking up my alveoli that I haven’t really thought about my body or my weight.

When we were in Italy, I marveled at the girls walking around in their bikinis so un-self-consciously; I was convinced, despite my boyfriend's disbelief, that never in my life have I not even been aware of how my body looks, good or bad. And I still believe that, on the whole. But the past few days have proven to me that, while I am unable to be unaware of my body, I do have the ability to be unaware of my fat/weight/ass/hips/boobs. I just have to be focusing on a more pressing bodily matter, like pneumonia!

So that’s my good news report for the day. Oh, and in other good news, I have in fact lost weight since moving here; I’m about 20 pounds lighter than I was this time last year. But I’ve already gained a few of those lost pounds back in the past couple of weeks, and given my recent obsession with baking anything and everything to assuage my homesickness, I doubt the miracle weight loss will last much longer.

Either way, though, I do promise to try to update more frequently. I think I should have plenty to write about– well, I hope so, since the book I’m going to write for my MA program is going to be a memoir of this whole ridiculous in-body experience!

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