The Secret Confessions of a Horny House Wife

I’ve never been a healthy eater.  Sometimes, it will be four o’clock in the afternoon and I’ll start to feel tired and dizzy and it will occur to me that I haven’t eaten all day.  So I eat, not because I feel hungry, but because I want to stop feeling tired and dizzy. 

If I’m not feeling especially self-nurturing, I will eat whatever is carby, sweet, and requires no preparation, save extraction from a crackly plastic wrapper with the image of a baked good with a face (sometimes a mustache) illustrated on it. 

If I am feeling self-nurturing, I might eat a salad that I buy at a supermarket or a meal I purchase from a restaurant, or a microwaved something I take out of a box.   Not good.  I have no defense for it. 

As you know, my hair’s been falling out.  Terribly scary.  I went to see a nutritionist, figuring that if what I put into my body improved in quality and quantity, then what my body put out (hair) might have a fighting chance. 

There is one fact I haven’t revealed here yet: my mother lost all her hair in her fifties and now wears a wig.  That’s right.  [The Horny Housewife takes a deep, cleansing, trying-to-self-nurture breath.]  Allow me to describe how I was feeling on the day of my appointment with the nutritionist: frail, overwhelmed, and terrified. 

At work that day, in an attempt to distract myself, I checked my blog e-mail and found a comment on my post Pooff from my dear friend Constance that included the following statements:

“at the risk of sounding…cruel…what is so special about you”

“…men, God love them, are attracted to the possibility that they might just find a way inside your pants. (With all due respect to the guys out there, and all due respect to HH’s wonderful writing and fascinating tales, but will someone have the balls to admit that part of HH’s appeal is that she lets you think that maybe, just maybe…?)”

“Hmm,” I thought, feeling like I’d been slapped (lovingly?) in the face and feeling significantly more frail as a result. 

That evening I arrived on time to my appointment with the nutritionist.  I waited an hour.  I was so tired, I fell asleep on the couch in the waiting room.  Finally, bleary-eyed, afraid I would soon be bald, and overwhelmed by the notion of taking better care of myself, I had my audience with her majesty, Supreme Goddess of Nutrition. 

I wish that I could describe her to you.  I could do a really good job.  In fact, with just one word I could convey everything about her looks and manner.  But I can’t.  Someone here in this town I live in would recognize her by just that one word and notify her of this post.  She knows people I know, and it would not be good.  If you want to know the word, e-mail me. 

What occurred in her office was not what I needed.  I needed support in devising a plan for nutritional self-nurturing.  Something like: “I’m really concerned about your terrible eating habits.  Let’s come up with a plan for how you are going to eat better.  Here are some recipes and vitamins.  Let’s see if we can figure this out together.” 

What I got instead was a sixty-minute diatribe on what a terrible person, mother, and human specimen I am.  Yes, I needed a wake-up call, but I didn’t need to be attacked.  She criticized my eating habits, my cooking (or lack there of), the way I was dressed (I’m not kidding.  I was coming from work, where I am a youngish person supervising a staff of older people, so I make a point of dressing well and professionally), my jewelry (it’s nice, but my mother gives it all to me.  I never spend money on myself), and, finally, my mothering. 

She basically told me I was a shitty mother because three-year-old Spencer eats a lot of microwaved chicken and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  She told me I was going to make him autistic from all the canned foods we eat. ”Uh…but we never eat canned foods.  I don’t know where you got that idea, but…”  My objections didn’t make a dent in her diatribe.  She went right on. 

She gave me a list of foods I would no longer be allowed to eat.  It included everything I do eat.  I cried.  I’m ashamed to type it, but I did.  I cried.  I foresaw what would happen.  Dutifully, I would attempt to avoid the foods she recommended I not eat.  As the list included the few healthy foods I do eat (eggs, cheese, bread, soy products) I would stop eating altogether.  I would munch on grapes, because they’re easy, and I would waste away to nothing.  And that made me cry. 

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It made me cry because Total Failure to Self-Nurture is what I am always naturally, dangerously drifting towards, with food, and with men. 

I’ve written about this before.  We all know the analogy well: when it comes to men, I am a junk food junkie.  I’ve written that married men, like in-between-meal snacks, are empty calories; they fill you up, but fail to nourish you.  (Lankrypt, hysterically, commented that, like junk food, married men go right to your hips.)  

I think somewhere here lies the answer to that eternal question, “What is the difference between hedonism and self-nurturing?”  (Okay.  It is not eternal.  I only asked it earlier today, but it has been on my mind a lot.)

Hedonism is not eating all day, and then consuming a ding dong for dinner.  Hedonism is having a relationship with your husband that does not include sex, and then sleeping with five married men in less than one year.  Hedonism is a commitment to pleasure, with a simaltaneous total failure to self-nourish.

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I left the nutritionist’s office still crying.  Why didn’t I say “You are a bitch and you are no good for me” and stand up and walk out of her office?  Here is how she got me: she was right about my bad nutrition.  She was right, but mean, and that wasn’t what I needed. 

I went home, discussed the whole experience on the phone with a friend, and proceeded to cry more.  (Oh, what a weepy day that was!)  Husband knew I was crying, but failed to ask me what was wrong, what had happened to me that day, or if I needed to talk. 

I went back to my blog e-mail and found a new comment from Constance.  I intended to quote from it here, but now that I read it again, I see that her second comment really wasn’t harsh at all.  It was apologetic and supportive.  But that day it felt like another attack and made me cry more.

I commented back that my day had been a “slap-in-the-face sandwich,” and Constance had been the bread.  Sassy, but not fair to Constance. 

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So what has changed?  I’ve been eating a little better.  I’ve been taking vitamins and protein supplements religiously.  Three-year old Spencer has been eating slightly more healthily.  But what about the married men?

Are they all just Twinkies, giving me the impression of a full tummy, while imparting no nutritional value?  I can’t quite believe that.  They feel good to me.  Isn’t allowing yourself the sensation of pleasure one form of self-nurturing? 

Perhaps my husband is the married man who has been my biggest source of empty calories.  After all, dessert isn’t supposed to be nutritious.  It’s supposed to be delicious.  The affairs have been delicious desserts. 

It is my marriage that is supposed to sustain me, nourish as well as please me.  Perhaps it is this marital main course I need to work on.  Or, maybe, I really am just a junk food junkie.  Maybe I’ll never eat right.  Perhaps I will always drift from man to man, malnourished, ever snacking, never satisfied, and always hungry. 

♥, HH