I struggled with what word to use. Deficit is a heavy-hitter.
I will take you to where I started, and then we can decide together what word belongs.
I was a beautifully round child, placed in Weight Watchers at 10. I learned to track my points and treat Yoplait whipped mouse as desert. My body was discussed, criticized, and analyzed by family, friends, and the strangers I did public weigh-ins in front of before school. I’m sure it won’t shock you to know that what followed was a lifetime of disordered eating patterns, calorie tracking, pendulum swings, the works. I was sure I’d slowed my metabolism irredeemably.
Last week, I took a test that measured my metabolism and learned I have a very fast metabolism. Somewhat shockingly fast, after all this time. I’ve been underfed and over punished for decades. I eat far less than I need in a day.
I am currently sitting backwards on a train from Penn Station to Middlebury. I moved to Vermont from Brooklyn, and spent the last week in the city recording my audio book and seeing my all time faves. I had a good cry on a stoop on Saturday night, realizing I need to live on the side of a mountain, and I also need to live in a giant, sprawling city. Yet here I am, with only have one body. I am hoping someone in the city needs 2 months a year on the side of the mountain and wants to swap homes. Matching deficits, if you will.
Last night, I stood in downtown Brooklyn and watched the Knicks recover from a 29 point deficit and win the game of games. The largest comeback in NBA finals history. Pure magic.
I’ve been home for 3 days since May 10th. My partner has traveled for 3 days since May 10th. They were the same 3 days. An overlap deficit. A hangout deficit.
When I am on the road, I am less likely to practice my practices. I carry my journal everywhere and never, ever open it. I buy a few cans of beans and eat one.1 Do 2/3 of my usual work output. A connection deficit.
My Oura ring app estimates I have a 7.5 hour sleep deficit and 46% cortisol surplus.
In my cute little recording box this week, I re-read a book I haven’t looked at since I sent in the final draft 16 months ago. I was reminded of how my life was when I first wrote it, and all that has changed since then. Holes that have been filled, somewhat or otherwise changed shape.
Student loan repayments begin soon, for those of us enrolled in the now canceled SAVE plan. That’s a deficit I haven’t thought much about since 2020. Yikes.
My partner and I are going to visit my dad’s wife’s dad after 15 years of estrangement. He is dying, and I feel more compelled to say goodbye than I do by the fear of what will happen when his wife sees us walk in the door. You know, one of those deficits. Not knowing where the guns are in that house, or if she’ll be hungover enough to miss our visit all together.
I keep getting sad about the metabolism thing. What would my life have been like, had I been nourished? Surely, I’d have still met thousands of other deficits, but at least I would have had what I needed to meet them. What might have been possible, had I not been so tired and inflamed? What am I supposed to do now, with this fear of what will happen once I am fed? What else did I silence not to notice it? Will my body forgive me?
We’re going to plant sunflowers in these little trenches I dug. We will need to buy compost for them. A nutrient deficit. In that vein, I am co-gardening with my partner’s 85 year old mother and am being reminded, sharply, of my many knowledge deficits.
Where do we fill deficits from? How do we know when we meet them? Does tending to one create another? Maybe. Is life a series of tended to, accepted, and over compensated for deficits? How do we know what to fill them with. Like, for example, the shallow hole of a strained relationship can’t be addressed by creating other relationships.
I’ve reached out to local book stores to have events for my book launch. 3 of them said no. One said I had a follower deficit that doesn’t promise filled seats.
I’ve never launched a book before = knowledge deficit.
I decided to pay someone to help me = bank account deficit.
Are deficits neutral until I make a story otherwise? What about our shared deficits?
There are programs where you can buy other people’s medical debt for pennies on the dollar. There are programs where you can buy seeds for 1/5 the cost and then donate them at full cost for a larger tax write off.
I love that meme that says: “the earth is $324 trillion dollars in debt. Who tf do we owe? Aliens?”
These deficits teach me to sit with unknown, possibility, and fake math. They ask me to wonder about then and wonder about now. They are, ultimately, a tool not of deprivation but of attention.
I otherwise try to eat beans 3 times a day.
Thanks for sharing this! It’s exactly what I needed to read today.