confession

once upon a time, i never told anyone my problems. not my family, not my friends. i didn't even write about them in my diary. there are lengthy gaps in my journals during the more trying times of my adolescence—when my mom was having brain surgery, for example. the most dramatic things i wrote about were meaningless misunderstandings with friends and how i would go about meeting Joe McIntyre so that he could fall in love with me.

then sometime during high school, i think, or maybe college, my dad told me that people like people with problems. not, you know, massive mental problems...just people who aren't perfect. by keeping my worries and fears and dilemmas to myself, i was apparently projecting an air of perfection (ha! if they only knew...) whereby making me less relatable.

so, somehow—i don't quite remember the process, or the moment when it all changed—i changed my ways. i opened up. it was great. a relief. and my friends, it turned out, had a lot of the same problems!

since then, i have probably blabbed too much about my issues. i probably don't keep enough to myself. but that's what friends are for, right? right.

lately i've been wondering if that's what blogs are for. a friend at work told me the other day that she started a blog, and i balked at the fact that she hadn't told me about it, since she reads mine. that's when she said it was anonymous and private—only people she personally invites can read it. she forwarded me links to various entries and i was sucked in and slightly jealous. she was free to write whatever she wanted about whoever she wanted because it was utterly anonymous. such freedom!

sometimes i get a little frustrated with this blog because on any given day, i can't write about what i most want to write about without betraying someone's trust. wait, that sounds worse than it should. i just mean that, due to the nature of this blog, i can't exactly treat it as a diary, type freely. which is probably a good thing, except that i have this compulsion to spill my guts sometimes. OK, most of the time.

but i can scratch that itch right now by confessing something i can barely acknowledge to myself.

that strawberry cake i made on Sunday? it's all gone.

and by "gone" i don't mean "vanished into thin air" or "got stolen from my kitchen." i mean, it went down the hatch, all of it, and its pink spongy goodness is—as i type this—arranging itself as unflatteringly as possible around my hips and tush.

this is what happened:

i worked out for a long time on Sunday morning and then didn't each much during the day, so when i went back for a second piece that night i told myself i earned it, it was fine, no guilt necessary. plus, it was making me happy. nauseous, but happy.

then Monday night, after eating a Lean Cuisine for dinner (hey, the economy, man), i had another piece of cake while watching Brothers & Sisters on DVR. it was such a damn good episode that i had to go back for a second piece (somehow, in my brain, this logic made total sense).

then, last night, after another Lean Cuisine for dinner, i cut myself a piece of cake for dessert. which left one piece left in the pan. i rationalized that i was expecting company for dinner Wednesday night and i couldn't very well have one piece of cake left for two people to share.

so, yeah. into the belly it went. and as i put the empty pan into the sink to soak i said, out loud, to myself, "it's only Tuesday." as in, i ate an entire cake between Sunday night and Tuesday night. i cringed and then laughed and then cringed.

(i also spent an extra twenty minutes at the gym this morning.)

so there. a deep, dark secret off my chest. thank god.

i don't think my dad realized how much i'd revel in being imperfect when we had that chat many years ago.

mb