DAY 4 WATERFAST - EYEING THE LONG RUN

 Saturday - Good night sleep, stomach ache early this morning and sporadically throughout the day, pretty manageable. Casual relaxing day. 

My high school roommate leaves today at noon......

We spend the morning doing a puzzle, chatting about his life back home with his grandmother, mother, and two brothers. I ask about his culture as he looks hispanic, which he confirms “and some African American.” As we wait for his mother, they start cleaning out his room for the next person coming and I see him quietly standing there with his acoustic guitar. I tell him I brought an electric guitar with me and he reply’s “I have never held one before.”


 I bring mine out and set him up to play it through my ipad and headphones and he is thrilled. We talk about the feel of the strings and he try’s it out. As he is just starting to play it after about 10 minutes, he receives a phone call that his mother and brother were here to take him home. He gets up says his goodbyes and leaves. As I am putting the guitar away I am thinking that I should have given him my contact card, his phone is out of minutes and is a burner phone. I put on my face mask to head downstairs and try and catch them when he and is brother come bouncing up the stairs to get something he left behind. I give him my card and as him to drop me a line sometime and he replied “of course.” He says that he really appreciated the time we spend together and thanked me with using the guitar. I am touched and feel sadness as he leaves for his hot desert home. 



I attend an afternoon lecture with  a food coach. He is a self described food addict and describes his numerous falling off the wagon in regards to health eating and how he has been on 29 fasts at TrueNorth.We have a lively discussion about food addictions and his talk is sobering and very helpful. I am rethinking my relationship with food, and will be planning a different re-entry strategy upon my return in order to maintain my weight and be disease free of my medical challenges. 


Comments

Josette Cochrane-Lusk said…
I remember a coworker who was from Africa and he told me how surprised he was when he ate our food. He said, "Everything is too sweet." Sometimes I think the sweetness in our American diet tries to atone for the lack of "sweetness" we experience in our stressed out lives. Are we using our diet addictions to self-medicate? I suppose we are.
8:06 PM
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