The Grad School Diet

          

LISALAND

THE GRAD SCHOOL DIET

Today I was driving down the street and it occurred to me that I haven't been eating. Sometimes I don't have any food here or any money for food or sometimes I have food, but it isn't what I WANT to have at the moment. But, that is not why I stopped eating or am now eating very little. I never eat A LOT unless I'm at a beautiful restaurant, but right now I'm on my cute but hard chair with no couch and feeling a bit depressed. This depression is chemical though---from antibiotics. They make me sick and feel twirly and have bad thoughts. They make me hate food and most people. They make me go: where the fuck is my couch and why did I pick that banned book to read when all it turned out to be was one dude touching other dudes but really really really badly written? I don’t need to read about cocks described in a million different ways and how some of them seem to be smiling.

         And standing in Trader Joes I tried to remember what it is I even like to eat. That was hard. Ever tried eating when all you feel is nauseas? Well... what I like turned out to be lemon yogurt and bread and water (jail comfort food) and mac and cheese (firestarter tendencies) and chips and Orangina. All these seemed like safe foods. I bought them with a hundred dollar gift card my mother gave me when she came to visit me last week.  I was happy for one second. Then, I had to come home and try to eat something. I tried. I made toast. But the butter was too cold and the toast not toasty enough. I tried. I really did. I ate one half of the cold butter violently mashed into the toast by the wrong kind of knife because I was too dizzy to look for something else and covered that non-toasty enough toast with cherry jam because I might like to have some fruit in what I refer to as the Grad School Lisa Diet. I don't recommend this diet, but in case you were wondering it goes like this:

1. Wake up shaking from lack of food and/or sleep and or love.  Be sad. Have sad memories. Realize my boyfriend is gone. My friend is gone. My dog died when I was a child.

2. Hear alarm (yes after) go off for 25 minutes until it shuts itself off--get up--make coffee with half and half and sugar.

3. Do homework and at the very last minute jump in the shower and find outfit--make it cute but not too revealing because there is a cute boy in your class and you know he's cute and he knows you know he knows and he thinks you're cute too or likes your brain and you say things to him on his paper like: do you need to suck a fat cock? I mean your character? And you make it funny and fun so he will think you are a genius. Make sure the outfit has sex appeal but no see-through tops. Save those for workshop.

4. Drive to Irvine---look at balance bar, other kind of healthy disgusting bar, luna or otherwise on the passenger seat and or at the bottom of your purse and turn your face away in disgust.

5. Get to Irvine--hit Peets and buy a tiny scone. Put that scone in your purse, but don't eat it. Just drink the coffee. Forget there is a scone until much much later in the day when you see it in your purse, maybe on the drive home, take it out and put it on the seat with the rest of the rejects. Think about eating it, but not know if you really want to eat it. Is it still good? Fresh and crumbly like it was at the beginning when it was born? You wonder, how many scones get to travel around in Lisa-Purse and wonder what it would be like if scone knew all that you know but never ever say. Not even to your own Lisa-self. The lies and stuff.

6.  Drive home and go to Starbucks to do coffee--I mean homework. Drink coffee with so much sugary goodness that it might just be the sugar keeping you alive. Have more. Try to read or think or write or whatever. Get distracted by every text message and human that passes through the door. Be grateful when someone comes to visit you to save you from your thoughts. Someone who really likes you and finds you to be entertaining and tells you---you just cheered me up so much now I don’t need coffee (yesterday). Say no when he asks for your number. Too much pressure.

7. Go home (this really includes eating) put something in the oven and sit on hard chair and wait for it to be something more than its frozen boxy previous self.  Know in your heart that this thing—this made up frozen thing will in no way be like food or delicious. Set the alarm on your phone to be sure you'll know when the non-delicious thing will be unfrozen and ready to for the experiment.

8. Call friend. Say ridiculous things to friend till both of you are laughing and crying from laughing at each other and the dumb same story you are both always trying to figure out but never will. Laugh at your ignorance. Realize your lack of intelligence in new and different ways.

9. Dinner is ready---stare at it and stay on phone so you can ignore that you basically are living like a kid without skills or even the desire for skills---take bite—make face no one can see, but pretend you didn’t make it so you can go on eating, hate it all the way through because you don't like TV dinners whether they are supposedly healthy or not. They disgust you, they make you wonder why the world exists at all and then you come to the sad realization that everything disappoints you, not just frozen TV dinner, but TV itself. How the people who are ordinary and boring and latching onto you or running away from you that they are all their exact predictable selves and know this and know you can’t change it and know it doesn’t matter we will all be dead in the deep earth one day where no one can run or hide or be annoying anyway. Not only that but also be greatly worried about the people who pretend to like you but don't really like you and then get mad and tell you things about "how once a girl did a thing and I hated her and made voodoo dolls and stood outside her house because I didn't have a car" but its the EXACT thing you did and you know "the girl" is really you and you worry if voodoo dolls are real. A guy last night really said the words: “Your pussy makes most guys crazy, but it just makes me angry.” Ask why but not really understand the answer about how you wouldn’t fuck him and then his girlfriend hated you and etc. etc. Remember the time he lifted you up at Swingers in a front of all your friends and ran you down the street and pushed you up against the wall saying this is your one last chance and you laughing at him and after that he didn’t talk to you for nine months enough time to make a baby only you didn’t make one and he didn’t make one—he just vanished from your life.  Be disappointed that you can’t tell when someone really likes you for you and wants to be your friend or just for your sex parts and know that if you are attracted to each other hanging out as friends will drive you both mad and that you are lying if you say you can.

10. Sometimes eat a snack of some kind of chip dipped in something too delicious---cheese spread, hummus in all its varieties, bruschetta sauce, etc. Sometimes eat ice cream that is still after all this time in the freezer---more likely look at it and know it was once delicious but you aren't really hungry at all just eating to stay on planet earth.

11. Think about why you are on planet earth to begin with: the food isn't very good anyway and the people are mean and shut down and not playful like they should be and you don't have any money and it makes you worry about if they will be kind when you are outside pushing a shopping cart but well dressed and hope you can still look cute when you get old and be cute and act retarded and make your friends laugh. Stare at computer screen. Make puppet show about a boy you like.

12. Think about a time you were happy, but that just creates longing and makes you feel like eating less. Remember the saying affection and attention are two different things. Remember that right now there is nothing that could be categorized by a brain that is being misled by all these antibiotics.

13. Bite something, chew it down. Swallow.

14. Remember that you are here at all because you mean something to someone even if they won't ever say it and people mean something to you even the ones you lie to and make sad. And writing. That might be the whole thing. I might only be here for that and never get what I want in any other way. 

I will have to be on these pills for the next few weeks: side effects are:

1. Alienate friends with rages similar to ones my father used to have. see the effect it has on people—say sorry but watch relationships destroyed. Scare myself.

2. Make up with enemies because now they seem suddenly just in whatever their initial hatred of me stemmed from.

3. Dislike everything I previously liked including whatever I have in my closet.

4. Feel nauseous and dizzy over and over and over and over and over

5. Lose sleep because I keep feeling like I’m falling into a dark deep ravine and can’t wake myself up because I’m already awake.

6. More stuff that isn’t very interesting except to say my always puffy stomach is now very flat and weirdly cute.

(omitted parts--real boys, action in cars, subways, stairwells)