And so the days continue to pass, I pretending not to but secretly stealing glances at the calendar, the clock, the minute and secondhands. I return to Boise in 72 hours, give or take, and though feeling somewhat guilty I know my return occurs just in time.
I often encounter this feeling with/against family members. Back in the 2002-2003 holiday season, while trying frantically to repair my VW to head for warmer southern climates, I spent an entire month living with my mother and Bob. For a couple weeks, maybe fifteen days, I absorbed the hospitality and felt like a guest in their home. Sure, I had a bed and a room and even my own pair of slippers by the door, but the house was not mine. Soon I felt that I was a burden, that some unspoken tension existed between Bob and I and that I was cramping his style and consuming his resources.
The shift always occurs, but is this shift my mental hang-up or a change in the host's attitude? One of the main nettles here in Texas is my lifestyle versus theirs; but am I worrying more than necessary about my habits and characteristics? The fact that I eat differently, sleep differently, exercise... I fear they feel me disapproving of their differences. I do not, do I? Consequently I begin to feel like a quirky pest, a guest that has overstayed the welcome and unknowingly comes across as pompously oblivious to their feelings.
Now imagine, if you will, this emotional preoccupation thrown in with a raging eating disorder. Thank God that is out of the way. I literally was consuming Bob's resources, and the perpetual scramble to cover my tracks and hide my vice further exacerbated the guilt. This is the first duration in years I have spent with family/friends and been fully up-front and healthy, thus I am surprised that my feeling of impedance, of molestance, is still an issue.
Though we find little diversions each day to 'mix up the routine', my daily schedule consists of: a poopy six hours of sleep, breakfast/coffee, 1.0 hour ride on the indoor recumbent, breakfast, read, lunch, read, nap, read, solitaire, blog, dinner, 1.5 hour ride on the indoor recumbent, read. Repeat. The aforementioned diversion usually slips in somewhere between the afternoon read-read session.
Yesterday, por ejemplo, we made it out on the boat. 67 casts later I managed to hook a 3-inch lunker that wrapped itself around a nylon rope buoy. We barely got him off in time, and I almost had to explain tears to my grandfather over a baby cold-blooded pisces. To continue this nylon train of thought, that afternoon we stripped the house of all Christmas decorations. It's been years since I've participated in decorating the tenanbaum, so de-decorating (corating, then?) the artificial nylon-baum was in the same ballpark. There's always something melancholic yet refreshing gained from stripping the house of its holiday essence.
Tonight at dinner, whilst scraping the fried breading off of my flounder, my grandfather took the opportunity to express his disagreement with my diet. I explained that my loathing of fried foods was both mental and palatal: I know their nutritional (de)value and also think they taste bad. Although it did not seem heated, he soon left the table and retreated to his 'den', feigning interest in the news or some OLN duck-hunting show. That, I suppose, is my motivation for writing tonight. My motivation for voicing my feelings. Am I inadvertently holding those around me to a standard, do my actions create guilt in those I love? Do I seem judgmental? Time to go home.
