What do we deserve?

Maybe if I’m very very good???

Image: Biddend kind, anonymous, 1852-1863, Rijksmuseum. Used with permission.

Hi friends and WOW THANK YOU. So many of you wrote in response to my question last week about the word "binge". Your responses varied quite a bit, with a healthy cluster around the opinion Yeah, eating meals fixed my issue, but my issue was NOT "binge eating", yikes.

FAIR! Okay, so I have some work to do. And I am also going to take a moment to say, when I talk about myself as a binge eater, oh I am not talking about a regrettable little gelato habit like some of you cited. I am talking about extreme quantities of food, even extremely gross food, extremely obsessive thinking, and extreme acts like theft. Of food. Even gross food.

So now if you have some minorly regrettable habits, eating meals at mealtimes is a real problem solver. But if you relate to the word "binge" because you are bingey like as described above, please know that 1. eating meals is a MASSIVE PROBLEM SOLVER for you too it will highkey SOLVE YOUR PROBLEM and 2. we, by which I mean all of us, including you, are very much in the right place.

Okay! So! As I say, lots for me to think about but I did want to say something about this one response I got, regarding the concept of deserving something, as in "I'm not bingeing! I DESERVE to eat this".

I share this because it's been helpful for me and I hope it will be helpful for you, too: I no longer believe that anyone DESERVES anything. I think you have to believe in Harsh Judge God to believe in the idea of "deserving" and, whew: I just do not.

If you believe that you deserve to have nice things, then you have to believe that bad things are equally deserved. That people deserve cancer, or poverty or violence, or that little babies are deserving of illness or pain. Because why? Maybe something they did in a past life? I mean, that's just a vicious idea and it makes no sense because nothing that happens in this life can ever be fully accounted for.

So for me, no deserving. I never let what remains of the binge machinery hook me with "you deserve it!" because I know that I don't, and I don't NEED to deserve it.

Because I don't have to earn anything I eat. I CAN eat anything I want. I MIGHT choose to eat something, or not.

If that sounds like liberation to you, too, help yourself!

And that's the week. Now it's time for me to see some family again, so next Tuesday I will be somewhere between Denver and Oakland on the California Zephyr. I'll be back in two weeks. Take care until then,

—Max

Other things are...

Writing: Just the above! Everything else I've done this week was revising. Man that shit is HARD! If you are a writer and you have ideas to make revision easier PLEASE HIT ME.

Listening: Sara Gran's Marigold: An Investigation of an American Haunting. Sara Gran is maybe my favorite living writer. Listened to this on a drive to Maine and it really chewed up the miles. It's only out on Audible now but it will be available in print later this summer, I believe.

(Btw Sara Gran has a very infrequent but very rewarding newsletter.)

Reading: Shape of a Woman, by Jen Elizabeth. I found this prison abolition / harm reduction activist (IG: resurrektion_of_me) via Clementine Morrigan. Her book is a brief memoir of abuse, addiction and recovery. IDK you guys. I am really losing interest in mainstream books. Apparently I LOVE me a little $5 self-pubbed book.

Making: Back to square one on Astrid. Just ... completely ripped it out and am starting fresh. I'm using some Dyed in the Wool: Midsommar, Ghost Ranch, End of Summer. I want it to be scrappy but I don't actually have scraps; I have skeins. So we'll see.