Gotcha

I’m fat. Like the rest of America, I think Fat is a pejorative. A character flaw. Nay—a sin!

And I want to be skinny. But more than I want to be skinny, at times I want chocolate. Or those macadamia nut cookies that cost $1.25 EACH, but then they are SO huge.

Recently my husband uncharacteristically commented on my pulchritude, but not way before I acknowledged to myself the results of cookie coddling was getting out of hand. “I’m trying,” I say. “No more sugar.”

And I avoided the peanut butter cups for over a week, until I felt I had stepped up to lead the brigade on the stress front, and there they were in their covered glass bowl, small and snackable and sweet. That was three days ago.

“We still have any of those little candies?” said my husband who smokes and eats honey buns for breakfast.

Of course not.

“Who ate them?” His smile was sly.

How I hated him. And he knew it.

“I wasn’t being mean,” he said.

Was to.

I thought I was over this. I sometimes encourage myself to believe if I had all those years to live over again, due to my sustained spiritual practice I wouldn’t be so sensitive, tearful, downright rageful. If I had it to do over again, I’d definitely do it better.

Wrong.

“You’re just feeling guilty, or this wouldn’t get you so upset,” said the smoke sucking, honey bun guzzling guru.

And he’s not guilty of a crime that no one other than some awful, catty woman who’s not your friend would commit?

But I knew if I was angry, I was wrong. So I prayed that prayer where I recognized God didn’t create my anger, and it was a mistake, and Love was my only Reality, and I was willing to let the anger go, only I didn’t know how, but I was willing to let it go, and be shown the truth.

And it went. It did. I realized he had done nothing to me, and I really did know him, he wasn’t trying to be mean, and I was even able to let go of putting it off to he was just a man which meant stupid, and I did get to the Love part, and the evening wasn’t ruined, and the willingness to let go and the willingness to receive a different answer worked again.

But why again? Why was I still going insane over something like five peanut butter cups (the little snack ones)?

Then it occurred to me: I had felt guilty.

And there was so much of it I was still lugging around.

Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.

What would happen if I let go of guilt? If the next time I was ready to go off on the cretins, instead of getting to the tears, the rage, the finger-pointing justifications and then praying to let them go, why not go for the jugular? Why not just let go of guilt…not theirs, mine.

Would I possibly be done then?