Give Us A Sign, Oh Lord

Thanks to meds and lots of other things, I don't often have full-blown anxiety fits anymore.  Even when I do, they're mostly small affairs, remedied by a look at a bank statement (oh good, I didn't really do that) or a case file (oh good, I really did that).  Because, odd as it may seem, I know what I'm doing most of the time.  Especially at work, screw-ups are rare.  They happen, but they're rare, and they are usually fixable.  And in my personal life, such that it exists, I more or less Handle Things.  I'm the chief quartermistress in charge of wardrobing and laundry, the head chef, preparer of (most) meals, the balancer of budgets and the cleaner of things that need cleaning (or, to be fair, the director of persons to things that need cleaning.  We're in this marriage thing together.)  But then, it's not every day that I come home from a day-long OA meeting to a sign that looks like the one on the left here.

Yep, that's it.  The Sign, Oh Lord.  Our house is really on the market.  Somebody is really going to buy it and we are really going to have to go and live somewhere else.  Here's the MLS listing.  Below is a pic of our front door with the lock box, so that realtors can come and go (by appointment, only) to show our little Dallas palace to potential buyers.  I pulled into the driveway (so as not to block the sign from view; I don't think I can park on the street anymore) and just sat there for a few minutes trying not to cry.

And then, because of course this had to get worse, my idiot neighbor came out of his house.  (Warning:  If you buy this house, you will have an idiot neighbor.) He wanted to know how much and who was in charge.  I gave him the real estate agent's card and got inside as fast as I could.  I knew he was interested.  I just knew it.  From the second we started hauling boxes of books out of here and taking them to a storage unit, he's had his weird little eyeballs on us.  I think he wants to buy it to rent out, which is fine with us really, but I hate hate hate having to talk to him.  He kind of scares me.  

Why?  Because he's the male of the species.  Well, that and he's not safe around a chainsaw, but that's another story and shall be told another time.  At this day-long OA meeting, there was this workshop about sex and body images, and one of the speakers said something that I thought was very profound.  She said the whole time she was losing weight, and she's lost over a hundred pounds, there was this constant battle raging inside her head between wanting to be thinner, and thereby both healthier and more attractive to the opposite sex, and being scared of the opposite sex and not wanting to lose her layer of protection against looking too attractive.  She'd been molested when she was about four.  I have lost count of how many women I have heard at OA meetings say that they were molested or otherwise sexually abused when they were children.  Literally lost count.  I guess some women turn to drugs or alcohol to deal with this sort of thing, but it looks like an awful lot of us turn to excess food, and bulimia, and anorexia.  And when it was time for comments from the audience, I was waving my hand so I could say, "Me, too!  I got fat to keep men away, too!  I was molested, too!"  which is usually not something I'm terribly excited to tell people. 

Anyway.  I got inside, had my anxiety fit and went to the first thing that's guaranteed to calm me down a little: Food.  First I heated up some of the leftover enchilada casserole from the other night, and then I had a few graham crackers with Biscoff spread.  That's not really a binge--pretty close to a regular meal, in fact, and it was dinnertime--but figure this out:  Daylong OA meeting.  Brilliant insight about reasons for being fat.  And what do I do when something bothers me but come in here and eat.  Anyone who doubts the addictive power of food, particularly sugar, really needs to spend a few days with me when I'm trying to get off it. (Surprisingly, however, Biscoff spread doesn't have much sugar in it.  Only 5 grams a serving.  So I dodged a bullet, there.)  

In retrospect, it occurs to me that our idiot neighbor buying our house might indeed be the perfect solution.  He'd have himself for a neighbor, and no one else would have to put up with him.  And my anxiety fit's more or less over, so I can, I dunno, hide under a blanket with Caesar the Cat for the rest of the evening and just hope nobody wants to view the house past seven on a Saturday.

Or maybe watch a horror movie.  As if life isn't scary enough.