When I feel this way, I wish I had someone to spank me.

It’s a strange thing, but I have somehow quit binge eating comfort food at night. Strange because I haven’t felt this way before. And because I never imagined I could do this in quite this way.

I’m not dieting. I’m just eating pretty healthy, fairly small meals, and then I’m not eating more. Maybe half an apple and some chocolate hummus for a snack. And I just feel different. When I think about eating more, like I did tonight, I can think about it without a fierce urge to mindlessly dive into it.

That’s led me to be more in touch with myself. I’ve said things like that before, but this time… I’ve faced some cold, hard truths. (Do truths come some other way? Are there warm, soft truths hidden away, waiting to be faced?)

I’m in a couple of situations that I can’t escape and can’t make better. I just can’t, no matter how much I want to. I noticed that I kept sharing with clients this part of the caregiver’s meditation by Kristin Neff:

Everyone is on their own life journey.  
I am not the cause of this person’s suffering, 
nor is it completely within my power to make it go away, 
even though I wish I could.  
Moments like these are difficult to bear.  
And yet, I will try to help if I  can.

Then I realized that whether or not my clients needed to hear that, I certainly did. I was the one who needed to keep that meditation close to my heart. (Don’t be surprised if I post that again a few times over time. I really need to remind myself of it.)

I noticed there are things that happen that make me intensely uncomfortable. Fidgety, like I can’t sit still. I would stand up – and forage for food. In the refrigerator, the cabinets, MP’s snack stash. Wanting to stuff those feelings back away.

I’m not doing that now. I really am sitting with the feelings. Breathing, putting a hand over my heart, letting it be. And it passes, along with the urge for pretzels and onion dip or Pepperidge Farm Chocolate Chunk cookies.

I’ve been using my rebounder, and enjoying it a lot. Just a minute, no more than three minutes at a time, but it’s energizing and I can feel my legs toning and gaining strength. I will need to do more, but that’s enough for this week.

I’m super aware of how stressed I am. Ridiculously stressed. Much more so than I need to be. I’ve signed up for a group on emotional regulation that I think will be helpful.

But that’s what makes me wish I had someone to spank me. Like Case Wintermute’s story, where the girl goes and gets spanked on Sunday afternoons by a very nice, pleasant man who knows that she needs a good, hard spanking, and who enjoys spanking her too. But I don’t have that person, and if I did, I guess I would just use that experience to avoid my feelings. Sigh…

ANYhow. All that sadness and angst is not what I came to talk about. I really just meant to pop in and share this, if you haven’t already seen it.

You may know that Angela Merckel, who was the Chancellor in Germany, has stepped down. In her closing ceremony, she was asked to choose three songs for the military band to play. I gather that two of them were pretty much what you might expect – but this one… this one is a delightful treat. Sadly, Youtube won’t let me post it here, you’ll have to go to Youtube to see it. The name of it is: Nina Hagen: Du Hast den Farbfilm Vergessen 1974. This is a picture of Nina Hagen, who was apparently quite popular in Germany in the 90’s.

You totally need to go find it and listen to it. And it has to be this version. If you do listen to it, scroll down through the comments or look up the lyrics (unless you speak German, of course.) 🙄

I’ve been looking at some of her other music videos – one of them calls her the grandmother of punk rock, and there’s another that shows her at a concert singing Spirit in the Sky, looking totally punk. In another, she’s in a cathedral singing Silent Nacht. Quite a mixed bag, our Nina Hagen.

And so am I really. I imagine you are too…