So I woke up with a woozy head, but I had my customary Midweek lie-in to doze the majority of it away. It stayed there through the rest of the day, and I started to worry that either I was having a bad reaction or maybe cis women go their whole lives with this dull throbbing at the back of their heads. Or perhaps my body was trying to do things it just didn't have the fuel for.
Now my relationship with food has been very stormy, over the years. As a child, like most children, I was naturally a picky eater, not wanting to try new things. That was exacerbated by the fact my mother was an awful cook. I mean really, really awful. She burnt everything. Oh, except potatoes, which were always underdone, and a little crisp against the teeth. For years I thought the proper way to eat sausages was to find the strip of sausage that was unburnt and scoop out the insides, leaving a small row of black sausage canoes behind on the plate. I once announced I was going to be vegetarian, not for any moral reasons but because I couldn't face another crunchy burger. Lasted about four hours till the next mealtime, when I remembered I didn't actually like vegetables either.
When I was a teenager I'm ashamed to admit I used to pinch money from my mother's purse and use it to binge eat sweets for my lunch at school (school dinners were pretty much a reproduction of what I got at home), with the odd bacon sandwich for protein thrown in. I'm surprised, looking back, that I didn't make myself diabetic. The high sugar diet kept my weight down for a while as I was constantly active because of it, but when I left school and started cooking for myself it began to creep upwards. By the time of my divorce, five or so years ago, I was around five stone heavier than I should be (for you Americans, that's seventy pounds). Since then I've cut myself down to one main meal a day, and improved what I ate, and reduced that to put myself, if anything, slightly underweight.
Today, though, I decided my body needed a boost. I had Fish and Chips, for my lunch, and gave my body a treat with soup and sandwiches when I got back from work. May not sound like a big deal to you, but it's the first time I've eaten like that in about two years. I feel much better for it, the head has returned to normal and I feel back in control. A little too back to normal, if anything.
At work my manager had arranged another session with the woman that assesses our workstations, ostensibly to get me a second monitor to work from so I'm not flipping between programs trying to remember things so much. I'm dyslexic, and I can't remember much at a time, and it slows me down. She also reassessed my desk and decided I needed it raising (I'm 6'2"). She also gave me a boost by not remembering she'd assessed me before and I had to point out she'd have done it with me under another name. Took her a pleasingly long moment to twig. It is a small victory, but I shall cherish it for a while.
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