It's really over

I just got back from my bankruptcy trustee hearing. It's over. I'm officially bankrupt. I don't really feel great about it, but it is a relief to have it all over and it's nice that I was able to file chapter 7 instead of chapter 13 and therefore I don't have to pay it all back. I was telling T that it felt like the first time you buy a house, when you sit down in the lawyer's office, not sure if everything is actually going to go through or if something is going to screw things up at the last minute. You sign your papers, then it's over and you feel this immense relief and euphoria because omygod! We just bought a house!

Okay, so it's like that, except instead of euphoria I feel this lingering sense of guilt. It's not rational, but it's there. I think it's going to take some time for my brain to actually register that it's over and start to let go of the huge anxiety monkey that has been sitting on my back since this whole process began.

In other news, I've joined a group on flickr called 365days. Basically everyone takes a self-portrait of themselves every day for a whole year. So far I've only posted one, but eventually I will have a whole mess o' self-portraits in there. I'm interested to see what effect it might have to view a year of me. I'm hoping it will help loosen some of my steadfast body image issues.

That is all, my friends. Chicago in 18 days!

An uneasy peace of mind

As I was riding the train home today, I had an interesting thought: I am doing okay. I am happy with the status quo, everything is chugging along pretty well for me and I really can't complain. You would expect thoughts like these to be accompanied by a feeling of ease or relief, but honestly I felt a little stressed out by them. The thing is, I tend to constantly have an evaluative process going on in my head that has one job: to figure out what is going wrong in my life so I can fix it. So this evening when I realized that nothing was going wrong, my brain didn't quite know how to process that. Some time later when I had the unusual thoughts again, I was able to set aside the stress and unease and really appreciate the fact that there is nothing to fix. This feeling of relative contentment is new to me, so I'm not sure how long it will last. While it's here, though, I'm going to try to enjoy it.

In other news, I am going to Chicago at the end of the month to attend the second think tank for the Coalition of Fat Rights Activists (details). It will be my first time traveling by myself in at least ten years and my first time in Chicago. I'm plenty nervous but also pretty excited! I have been thinking about going for a few weeks now, but the whole Mississippi legislation issue from my last entry was what prompted me to go ahead and get my plane tickets. I have no doubt that there will be more obesity regulation bills coming eventually and I will be damned if I will stand idly by while some politician decides to legislate my free will.

No fatties allowed!

This article from Junkfood Science is just shocking. If you needed any evidence that fat prejudice was a dangerous thing, there you go. Never mind that the bill won't pass because the restaurant lobby in Mississippi is too powerful, the fact that someone sat down in a room and wrote this bill out, proofread it, revised it, discussed it in a committee, and submitted it for actual consideration is just unbelievable to me. As a commenter on BigFatBlog noted, this kind of thing just serves as the distraction for the real legislation. So the next bill that's introduced that's slightly less extreme will be taken more seriously because at least it's not as crazy as Mississippi! The whole thing is a slippery slope and a very distressing precedent.

Even if you buy into the whole idea that fat people would just not be fat if they ate differently (which I don't, btw), is it really the kind of thing that the government should be involved in? Should politicians have the right to decide whether someone can go out to dinner with their families based on how fat they are? It blows my mind that anyone can look at that and think it's a good idea. What a fucked up world.