potato crisis, pill anguish, laughing at doctor, trust Ming

I was cooking soup--it's so hot now. I didn't realize that I was just barely comfortable and that the heat of cooking the soup would push me over into discomfort.


I was feeling very hot, chopping potatoes, frustrated also because many of the potatoes were black in the middle. I was chopping carefully to avoid the black parts and feeling pissed off about capitalism. The potatoes we got from Costco, and they're fresh. I mean, we bought them just recently. Why should we pay for a huge bag of potatoes, and then most of them have this problem I have to chop around, and half the potato I throw away.


The workers are exploited, but everyone suffers. Rather than sell decent potatoes, they have the worst quality they can get away with and make as much money as they can. It just seemed sad. The world doesn't have to be like this, but it is. It hurts to imagine something better and feel its possibility so real inside me, but then I'm not able to create that world.


The soup was supposed to be vegan potato corn chowder, but I don't have flour, so I skipped that, and it didn't get thick and creamy like a chowder. At first bite, I was turned off by the sweetness from the coconut milk and corn. But the more I ate it, the more I liked it. Ming loved it.


coconut oil

one onion, chopped

three carrots, chopped

garlic powder

better-than-b

water

potatoes, chopped

can of coconut milk

black pepper

nutritional yeast

a cup of frozen roasted corn


I used lite coconut milk because we had some in the pantry. It would have been better with regular, I'm sure. The frozen roasted corn I bought a long time ago, and it was good to finally use it. It had been in the freezer for months but was perfectly fine.


I was crying because I was really uncomfortable from my swelled up ankles. My period was hurting me with cramps, but I can't take ibuprofen anymore because of the ulcer. I'm feeling weird about pills, like I really don't want anymore. Like--let me go off into the forest and die, like the sad, ill animal that I am. I know that's an overreaction. But sometimes I feel that way.


Also, I was questioning the motives of a new friend who I was talking with, in a way that seemed paranoid. I had Mng read the exchange, and he said the lady was just being friendly. It hurts not to be able to trust my feelings. If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust? Ming, I suppose.


My doctor chastised me, the other day, for gaining a pound. I laughed at him. I told Ming afterward how it feels good to have an appetite again. I feel alive.


But I wish the doctor listened to me. It's fine if he wants to believe the propaganda and pretend dieting works. But the least he could do is listen to me when I say I'm not going there. It's like his "should" is so big he can't see around it. If his only solution is "lose weight," then he doesn't have much of a solution.


Thin people go to the doctor and get a diagnosis and help--fat people go to the doctor and get told "lose weight." Then years later a test shows they had such-and-such all along, all that pain for nothing. I'm tired of it.


At least I'm strong enough to laugh at him. I know a lot of people take that stupid chastisement in, and it affects them so deeply, they get medical phobias. Then they avoid doctors until they're in incredible pain or have a lot of damage, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that fat people are unhealthy. I have some insight about that--wonder how. Hmmm.


Not sure whether to try to find a doctor who will actually listen to me, try to educate this one, or just run away. Or keep smiling and put up with it. I only have so much energy.