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17 Weeks & Crossroads

Today it has been 17 weeks since my beloved mother passed away, That is a total of only 119 days. It is very strange how so very close the grief and pain feels, yet so very distant it seems at the same time. It seems almost as if it has been years and years since I have seen my mother and spoken to her in her physical form.

I am going to be turning in my course grades in just a few moments. With that, I shall have no schedule, no set times of required work, no imminent goals for the next 7 weeks. Typically, I find this prospect very exhilarating every Summer. This year, however, I am a bit apprehensive and a tinge fearful of the vast amounts of unstructured time. On the one hand, I can do, decide, or at the spur-of-the-moment decide to damn near anything I please. But on the other hand, I know I have a tendency to dwell on things a lot more when I have unstructured time. So I am a bit fearful I will end up falling more into the quagmire of despair that I have been prone to the last few months. I wish to avoid that.

I am considering going on what I call a "juice fast" for the next week. In this particular type of effort, I will, for the week only consume blended juices, once in the morning, once in the evening, and then supplement it with fiber and water the rest of the day. My typical blended juice cocktail consists of a glass of orange juice, with a banana, 1/2 cup of milk, various berries all blended together at a very high speed until a liquid.

I did this once before, about 10 years ago and found it very helpful in de-emphasizing food in my life. I found my focus was improved and when I returned to eating a week later, I felt very satisfied with smaller portions and actually felt I had broken the emotional eating I had been engaged in. Since my mother passed away, I have engaged in a great deal of emotional eating. And while, I have not gained any noticeable weight from this emotional eating, the healthiness of the foods I *have* eaten has gone down somewhat. Also, I do not feel as good physically with emotional eating. Basically I eat a boatload of "crap" late in the evenings and go to sleep with a distended stomach and sleep poorly. It is a horrible activity, but one that I am having difficulty controlling at the moment. I have to beat myself over the head and force myself beyond what I want to do in order to break this.

For me, it should be a physical and emotional cleansing for the next week. I shall begin on Monday morning. I am going to attempt a significant elevation in physical activity next week to occupy more of my time that I otherwise might consider filling by filling my gut.

I am still considering SSRI medications at the moment. The death this week of my cousin has brought back to the front of my mind, the tremendous sadness I feel for myself about my mother's passing. It is so hard to decide if what I am experiencing is simply normal grief or if it is something that would benefit from the SSRI.

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