Choices

Every start is also an end.  Every choice made is the death of hundreds of other choices, some considered, some as yet undiscovered and now perhaps buried forever.  When it comes to some choices, the sheer variety of options is so staggering that I sometimes wonder how anyone manages to pick in the first place.

Have you ever thought about the mind-boggling glut of greeting cards in a drug store?  How is one supposed to pick the best one out of hundreds of equally appalling saccharine options?  I didn't get a card for J for an occasion I normally would have because the sheer number of available bits of dead trees depressed me beyond my ability to get over it and just pick a damn card.

So, how does anyone manage to decide in the face of a myriad of options? Of course, not all choices are as numerous as greeting cards.  Some choices are simple - what to have for lunch?  Maybe I feel like a salad or sushi.  Easy, I know exactly where to go to get it.  Some days though, everything sounds equally plausible and satisfying and as a result nothing does.  On days like that I'll usually force myself to settle for something that begins to lose its appeal the moment it lands on my plate.  And occasionally I'll decide that I just can't be bothered to spend the energy on this decision and go without.

I've been picking that latter option quite a bit lately.  I'd skip lunch or dinner.  And if it's dinner, then I'm so hungry the next morning that the idea of settling on a single item for breakfast is laughable and so I skip that too.  Then lunch comes and I am past being hungry.  I'm at a point where the mere thought of food makes me slightly nauseous.  And that's when it happens.

The power to just not eat is intoxicating.

I try not to abuse it, but it's so appealing that I'm afraid I don't try too hard.  I choose to exercise that bit of control that's normally so elusive.  Because to be honest, I love food.  I love eating, I love cooking, I love trying new foods.  I've never been good at setting limits in food or anything else.  If I actively try to not eat or eat less or avoid certain foods, I fail more spectacularly each time I try.  The surest way for me to gain weight is to go on a diet.  It's a daily struggle.

And then, in the face of those never ending battles, come these glorious, accidental days.  Days when the more hours tick by without food entering my mouth and feeding my insatiable hunger by sliding down my throat, the more elated I become.  It's less a countdown and more a game of stretching the rubber band; how much more before it snaps?

This high isn't one I can chase, though.  It doesn't come through effort.  It can't be gained on purpose or by design or by choice  The only choice I have is to enjoy it when it comes and I do enjoy it very much.

Of course as with any choice we make and any freedom we exercise, there comes a price.  The exhilaration of a stomach so devoid of food that you can feel its hollowness even without thinking about it is accompanied by the fear of loss of that pleasure.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not out to starve myself and frankly, while not overweight, I have plenty of padding to ensure that these occasional jaunts leave no lasting effects.  I know I have to eat and I know I will, but just in that bubble of momentary starvation, I really wish I didn't have to.  I wish I could prolong that sensation of emptiness, that slightest touch of lightheaded vertigo, the feeling of the waistband of my jeans shifting in ways it normally doesn't.  But most of all, I wish I could prolong the sensation of feeling the bones slide underneath the skin when I place my hand furtively just above the navel and let my fingers span across my side.

So, what is it about this experience that's so appealing?  In D/s, I would refer to this state as being in "headspace". This is a pale imitation of headspace, but it's the closest I can get to it at the moment.

Being in headspace has been compared to the endorphin rush of a runner's high.  It's an almost floaty feeling of straddling the world of reality and fantasy.  When I'm in headspace, I'm able to selectively focus some senses and shut off others.  Unless I am required to watch, my eyes close and vision is eliminated.  One distraction down, more to go.  Hearing is also usually muted or at least tuned to a very narrow frequency of sounds.  I hear things that directly relate to what I am experiencing, but music, sounds from others, anything not directly related to me is gone.  Touch is there, but smell often isn't.  And so it goes.

And when everything is off except for the raw physical sensations then it is as if the skin is scrubbed raw and every touch is magnified, the muscles are moving, twisting, and expanding in ways they normally don't, and the brain is floating, struggling to cope with the overload of sensations.  Breathing suddenly becomes something you have to think about and devote energy to, because it no longer happens on its own; because sometimes you can't breathe even if you want to.

Being in headspace is dangerous because there is always a chance that you'll come out of it a different person from the one who went in or you won't want to come out at all.  The re-balancing of senses, the return of missing ones and the dulling of the ones that were a focus, is like being woken up by having cold water thrown in your face and kicked to the floor.

It's traumatic and it's unwelcome. 

It's like taking the first bite of food after six, ten, twelve hours of going hungry and feeling your jaw clench and lock up because while your body has been waiting for that first bite, your mind has been dreading it and the loss of control that comes with it.