today.

it was 4 or 4:30 or something like that.

my mom and i had combed through every antique store this side of the mississippi for a desk for my apartment, and were feeling ready to move on to a new genre of errands.

her ancient cell phone rang and she flipped it open for a few seconds while she mostly listened to whomever it was on the other end.

her jawlike hands snapped the tiny phone closed and she turned to me with a possibility-filled glance and said, "your dad won't be home for dinner. what shall we do?"

on any of the other two hundred and something days of 2010 prior to this one, every fiber of my being would have cried out for my plentiful but safe plate of grilled chicken or fish, some veggies, some kind of fat, and a carb.

but a confidently foreign voice somewhere inside me said,

"mexican sounds really good"

the me that's in recovery, that's allowed to say whatever makes me feel comfortable regarding food, the me that's still not quite able to find anything outside the immediate needs of my meal plan enjoyable, suddenly became entranced by normalcy.

the old, old me- the one that had never had an eating disorder reached up and out of its buried place in my soul and said, "yes. i would like some mexican."

not, "oh. my friends want mexican so i'll just join along and yeah i guess i should challenge myself to stop eating the same stuff over and over"

but simply...

"i want mexican."

my mom looked at me with a shocked expression. "i've been wanting mexican all day," she said, "but i knew it'd make you uncomfortable and so i didn't say anything".

it was a monumental occasion.

and i think that yet another part of me, of life, (the part where you get to pick what you like to eat instead of what your not scared to eat) that i thought was lost forever, was just asleep inside me. it's awake now. it's yawning, stretching, and popping its knuckles, but it's there, and it's awake.

love,

EA