{"id":2187,"date":"2011-10-30T21:54:47","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T01:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/?p=2187"},"modified":"2011-10-30T22:32:59","modified_gmt":"2011-10-31T02:32:59","slug":"getting-to-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/getting-to-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cake is a Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The concept of &#8220;enough&#8221; is one that I am going to learn about my entire life, I guess. This being October, the month of my birthday and Halloween, I have had many opportunities to consider why some things in life, to me, are never enough.<\/p>\n<p>All year I usually try to eat as few carbs as possible&#8211;I mean no bread, no sugar, no pasta, no rice, no potatoes.\u00a0 I do okay with that, but every so often I am around chocolate, and then: GORGE. Tonight, after a day of very low affect, lo carb, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.yiddishdictionaryonline.com\/\">shvakh<\/a> eating, my eye fell upon that beautiful brown bag of Fun Size <span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">M<\/span><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">&amp;<\/span><span style=\"color: #339966;\">M<\/span><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">s<\/span> for tomorrow night. My discipline dropped and I reached for the bag, saying out loud, &#8220;It&#8217;s tomorrow already.&#8221; I could not wait. There was nothing that would have held me back. I took one, tore open the pack, picked out a few of the bright colored discs, and popped them down, like vitamins. I hardly even tasted them. I had finished the bag before I knew it.<\/p>\n<p>So I had another bag, this time slower. That was a little better. Soon I knew what I should have already known: I was on a binge. I ripped open the tiny <span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">Ree<\/span><span style=\"color: #ffcc00;\">s<\/span><span style=\"color: #993366;\">es<\/span>. And the tiny Milky Ways. There I found some of the deep chocolate mouth I was looking for. Why hadn&#8217;t the M&amp;Ms worked? And then, once the Milky Ways were swallowed and swimming down my guts, I felt bereft once more.<\/p>\n<p>Then Ned and I sat down and skyped with Max. Staring at that long elegant face all I could feel was, &#8220;I want more.&#8221; I wanted Max here, I wanted to kiss him, cook for him, ride bikes with him, help him with some problem, experience his whole Maxie way. What do I mean, exactly? The skyping was good but not enough. I felt like I was playing a role, starring as Mom in the Skype movie, but not really having time with Max.<\/p>\n<p>And so I went and got more mini Milky Ways. And then they were gone. Just now I told Ned about my empty chocolate feeling. &#8220;There is no way for it to be enough, &#8221; I said. He nodded, understanding immediately. &#8220;You just need to keep eating it to get that <strong><span style=\"color: #993300;\">chocolate<\/span><\/strong> moment in your mouth, but then it is gone and all you can do is keep eating it until you&#8217;re sick of it. You have to be sick in order to stop.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As Max taught me, from one\u00a0 of his favorite video games, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Portal_%28video_game%29\">Portal, &#8220;The cake is a lie.&#8221;<br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<p>So I am wondering what is that? It seems like a cliche to say I am a chocolate addict, a stupid weak joke, but it is kind of that. But am I other kinds of addicts too? Like relationships? Where I need a certain kind of deep intense experience or it is not satisfying?<\/p>\n<p>I think I live my entire life that way, diving down for the richest of whatever it is I&#8217;m doing, and that takes a lot of oxygen. I have noticed that for months now I don&#8217;t want to make dinner. With just the three of us most of the time, it feels like a huge waste of energy to cook some <em><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Entree<\/span><\/em> and divide into three and then have the leftovers forever. A big production. My refrain at 7pm for months to Ned&#8217;s question of, &#8220;What&#8217;s for dinner?&#8221; is &#8220;I hate making dinner!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Last week I said that to Ned during the day when I had just made him a sandwich for lunch. He was so grateful for the sandwich, thanking me and stuff, that I said, &#8220;Sweetie, I love making you guys lunch.\u00a0 I love making you breakfast, too. It&#8217;s just dinner that I hate.&#8221;\u00a0 Because dinner is too big, too much!<\/p>\n<p>And he said, &#8220;So just make lunch for dinner.&#8221;\u00a0 And that&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve been doing. Just eggs and a little salad. Or tuna and a bagel and an apple and peanut butter. Lunch for dinner. Not a whole big production. But just enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The concept of &#8220;enough&#8221; is one that I am going to learn about my entire life, I guess. This being October, the month of my birthday and Halloween, I have had many opportunities to consider why some things in life, to me, are never enough. All year I usually try to eat as few carbs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-zh","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2187"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2194,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2187\/revisions\/2194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}