How sad is it that it’s 12am and I just got back from Wal-Mart? That’s really sad, right? No one should be buying groceries that late unless they’re having a party with friends and ran out of something. Me, friends? Nah, my only non-online friend is the dairy guy at Kroger (who is now also being curt).
Enough of the self pity though! Today’s post was supposed to be about perseverance, not pity. Basic recap of my food today (none of which I took pictures of because I was tied to the computer after my parents left…more on that later): “breakfast” (3pm) was the banana split I was supposed to have last night but without the banana, an eggplant parmesan frozen dinner, some hummus I picked up on my walk yesterday with half a flax wrap, a salad with fat-free italian, a south beach diet meal bar, some sf/ff ice cream from wal-mart and half a low-cal pita with whatever Naturally More pb was left from yesterday (hardly any). Wow, lots of little itty bitty things in there, hunh?
Total SO FAR: 1050-1000 calories
I discovered something last night: my perception of what I “need” is really skewed. I thought I hadn’t been eating much fruit, so I planned to have a bowl of fruit with my jell-o ice cream, which I ended up not eating. Later, at 3-4am I got up and had peanut butter and toast and something else I can’t remember but the calorie amount for the day was still about the same. SO, lesson learned for yesterday, stop worrying about what I NEED!
My plan to take melatonin to help me sleep so I would wake up at a fairly decent time (not 2pm!) was also an epic fail as, I took the melatonin, lay there for 3 hours (wasted study time), ate my “snack” and then finally fell asleep. AT THE EXACT SAME TIME I’VE BEEN SLEEPING AT WITHOUT SPENDING THE $7.50. Wonderful. Well, try again tonight, I guess.
About my family: last week (or was it sometime this week?) was the Indian festival of Rakhi, which celebrates the bond between a brother and a sister. Instead of performing the ceremony (tying of a string on the brother’s wrist) on the actual day, we decided that it would just be easier to do it on a day when it was more convenient for my dad to drive my brother here. So, today happened to be the day we chose.
Because my mother thought it would be a good idea to stand in the hall yelling bloody murder and demand I lock up my dear little kitty every time my cat came within 6 feet of her, looker at her, meowed or moved, my dad decided to keep him occupied with my kitty’s laser. Notice how my mother didn’t (despite several requests) stop yelling IN THE HALLWAY or just wait outside/in the car until I could go back down with them and talk to them (after we did the tying, etc). No. She made my DAD sit in the corner with my cat (who he doesn’t like but can tolerate) making him miss the tying himself. Whatever. That’s their problem. What really bugged me was that she continued to DEMAND that I lock up my kitty, which I never do unless it is a danger to him. For example, because there’s no door to my kitchen (it’s open), I put my kitty in my bedroom/bathroom when I go out for more than an hour or two. Although undesirable, an unhappy kitty is still better than a dead/hurt one. Her not being able to tolerate what my 10-year-old brother AND dad had learned to accept was not such a case.
I mention my dad a lot in the above little summary. Most of you are probably thinking That hypocrite! She was ranting about how mean her dad is yesterday! Before you judge me, let me explain: my dad often gets caught in the crossfire between my mother and I. When I was younger, I would get very upset when he supported her in the arguments saying he “loved her more”, but now it’s more like “well, duh he loves her more, she’s his freakin’ wife!” So I’ve learned to accept my father the way he is. The problem is: I can’t maintain a substantial relationship with him and not her. A catch-22 if there ever was one.
There’s a funny story about my dad that I like to share with everyone: before they even knew my mother was pregnant, my dad knew I was in there. He woke up in the middle of the night, screaming “It’s a girl! Honey, it’s a girl!” saying he “just knew”. He had prayed for a girl all his life because, while the Indian culture is strongly paternal, he had lacked (in his childhood) the “warmth from a woman’s good, good heart” that John Mayer so poignantly refers to in his song “Daughters”.
Growing up, my father was my life: I looked to him for guidance, support, intelligence, love, acceptance, validation and everything else in-between. Unfortunately, he looked to me for quite a bit too and I was always placed on a pedestal. He never criticized like my mother, but my dad rarely doled out exuberant praise. When I gave him a report card full of As, he shrugged and said “yeah, good job” and then tossed it aside like a piece of junk mail.
Are As not good enough? Do I need to do better? Am I not good enough? These were the questions that crossed my mind every day when I went to sleep. I still remember what he told me when I asked him if he thought I was working too hard (when I used to sleep at 3am and get up at 5am just to do homework): “You can never work too hard, Mehak.” Back then, I thought he meant me-I thought he meant I couldn’t work too hard. What he actually meant was that something along the lines of: one can never climb high enough because there is always something higher to reach for.
Despite the numerous years of internal suffering I endured because of his lack of praise, he was my rock. Throughout everything, he never broke, once. When my mother left for two weeks to go to India my senior year of high school, he read all my college application essays and then drove through a horrible blizzard to get it to the post office before they closed so it could be postmarked in time. When I hadn’t eaten for awhile and dropped a ceramic dish containing my meal of fat-free cottage cheese and egg whites while taking it out of the oven, he stood there like a statue while I beat on his chest with my fists screaming and crying and then, when I had finished, he quietly went and collected the remnants of both the dish and the meal. Looking at the recipe, he figured out how to make me another one and even obliged my demand that he measure the 1/2c of boiled peppers that went into it so that I may count the 25 calories. When Harvard University called saying that, although I was one of the best students, they couldn’t keep a health risk on campus because of the bad press if I passed out, my dad flew down to Boston overnight to retrieve me. He stayed up ALL NIGHT with me helping my review for my Higher Level Chemistry IB exam and, then, stayed up again the next night wiping away my tears because I had been so tired I didn’t read the directions on the exam and tried to do 25 sections instead of 1. Such is the love that my father has for me.
So, today, when he drew my cat away from my mother just to avoid a conflict, I was reminded that, although he has hurt me unconsciously on several occasions, he had given me the power to fight. He had made me strong, teaching me that something hurts only if you believe it does and the only way to achieve is to work to the death. He has been the wisdom and guiding light through everything, but, more importantly, he has given me strength.
After my family left today, I felt that I shouldn’t eat. I wanted to regress because I was so upset over everything that had happened. But then I thought about my dad: What would my he say to me? What would he tell me to do?
“Dreams are good, Realities are better, Accepting ones limitations and Recognizing ones potentials are best.
But what makes the dreams into realities is: working towards them with a clear vision within ones limitations and potentials.”
Those were his departing words to me (written in the scrapbook I made after high school) as he sent me off to Northwestern University: if have the potential to do it, you cannot give up, no matter what.
I knew all along that I had the potential to get better; Julie’s love told me that and my dad’s own internal belief in me to do everything under the sun added to it. I had made the decision. I had gained back some modicum of my own self-worth. I couldn’t go back now, not with my dad watching. If Julie was the one who believed I merited happiness, my father was the one who believed I had enough strength and courage to find it.
So, to you, dear dad, who had brought me so many tears and so many joys and so much love, I say this: you gave made sure I lived like the princess you believed I was and no expense was spared to show me just how MUCH you cared. But, know this: all that glitters is not gold and the things most important canNOT be bought or sold.
It took me 3 years to figure out what you meant in what you wrote, let’s see how long it takes you to figure out what I mean.
If you’re reading this dad, I went to Wal-Mart (after finishing my paper at TEN PM) and bought another jar of Naturally More and a box of Kashi GoLean Crunch. I plan to have one bowl (no more and no less) of it for breakfast tomorrow (or a snack). For anyone that doesn’t know, that particular cereal was on my list of “don’t touch that because you’ll binge” foods. I’ve gone 4 days with “unlimited peanut butter” and found that I can indeed stop at a decent amount. I’ve also realized that protein bars (after not having had artificial junk for a few days) make me feel really sick.
Asian Stir-Fry
Asian Stir-Fry
- Asian-style vegetable blend
- fresh chopped garlic and fresh grated ginger
- soy sauce or tamari
- vinegar (optional, add a very small amount)
- chili sauce (the hot stuff, not the ketchup-y stuff)
- brown rice (or white or sticky or whatever you want)
→Oil the pan or wok and stir-fry the garlic and ginger. Add the veggies. When veggies are cooked, turn the heat down to low and add the soy sauce and optional vinegar. Prepare the rice (boil or microwave) and toss this in to the veggie mix. Add as much chili sauce as you can handle. Enjoy!
Another good stir-fry I talk about earlier in Sweet and Sour would also be much better eaten this way (with normal rice) and using fresh garlic and ginger instead of the adding the powdered stuff to the sauces.
