Thoughts while playing video games

My version of meditating is playing computer games. I play, zone out, and while I'm zoned out, I turn various things over in my mind. It's relaxing and I get things solved that way. I ruminate on relationships, or I solve design problems in my jewelry, or I think about the state of the world. One of the things I had been thinking about, but not so much in the last few days, is a very toxic relationship that ended at the beginning of the summer. It was with a woman I used to work with, who...is very messed up. She had, to be perfectly fair, a horrible family life--her parents regularly reminded her that she was a mistake. Not an accident, but a mistake. Okay. She ended up with borderline personality disorder (diagnosed by my therapist daughter) and she latched on to me as a secondary mother figure. I have issues of my own, so I let this go one, for far too long. I have ruminated on the details, and, as rumninants do, I think I've managed to shit most of it out, but that's one of the things I've been thinking about. Also, I should have ended it ten years ago, but sadly, I let it drag on longer. I think about my body, and how it seems to be changing. How my demand for food, my very hunger, is changing. I honestly never thought that I would be satisfied with a normal amount of food, but weirdly, that seems to be happening. Now, I'm not sure if it's because of the intermittent fasting, which I'm not really doing, but which does seem to have reset me somehow, or for some other reason, but there you are. Maybe it was ending the relationship. Maybe it's the ashwaganda gummies I've been taking every night to sleep. They have a laundry list of benefits, or alleged benefits, one of which is weight management. I didn't even think about that one, I had them, but I got serious about them when I read that they're called "Schlafbeeren" (sleep berries) in German, and that sounded good to me, since I'm always on the quest for sleep. In any case, I estimate that I've lost roughly ten pounds over the summer, which doesn't sound like a whole lot, but I have found that it builds on itself. Lose a little weight, you move a little better, so you move more, so you burn a few more calories, and on it goes. I prefer not to say that I'm losing weight, though. I prefer to say that I'm diminishing in size. It feels the most honest. But anyway, if I may harken back to the last post, well, wiping my ass is my new favorite thing these days. Mostly becasue it actually works. Also showering. That's a lot easier. And putting on my bra after my shower. That was torture. This is much better. So then I get thinking about some of the women I follow on Instagram, the body positivity girls. I am SO conflicted. I applaud them. I even agree with them. If there are naturally skinny people, why can't there be naturally unskinny people? Why is a larger body demonized? And I know that I can happily live in a larger body, and I'm getting back to place where the body I live in is one that's okay with me, and believe me, it's not a size 2. But then I look at them, and I wonder...well, being me, I wonder, how do you wipe your ass? You must have a bidet, I think. And hook your bra? Can you do that? Walk and not get winded? I'm not there, but that's next on my list. But what about them? I just don't know. Again, I'm terribly conflicted. Another thing I think about is the fact that my arm/shoulder is better. Again, at the beginning of the summer, but after the rupture with the toxic woman (the emotional vampire, I needed to get that in) I hurt my right arm/shoulder, and in the stupidest way you can imagine. I stumbled while feeding the outside cat, while holding on to the door handle of the screen door, and I hurt my shoulder, twice, two separate ways. I sat down and cried, it hurt so much. I was directed to a walk-in orthopedic clinic the next day, by my sister-in-law, and they gave me a cortisone shot which sort of fixed me, and I did a summer of physical therapy, which also sort of fixed me, but it wasn't until I got a second shot, a few weeks ago, that I felt like myself again. The pain was waking me up several times a night and so the days were a waste and it hurt all the time, and worst of all, I couldn't MAKE things. I had trouble cooking and baking. Among my specialities are pie crust, biscuits, scones, all those things that you use a pastry blender for. I have a nice touch with it, I can turn out light, delicious pastries at the drop of a hat. I couldn't do that. I used store-bought pastry. I hated that. I couldn't bead. I could barely put on my makeup. It was awful. Since my second shot, though, I am sleeping better, I am able to bake and bead and I'm a much happier person. And I'm also moving more, since I can do more things, and I wonder idly if that has anything to do with my...diminishing in size. And speaking of that, there's Adele. She's on the cover of Vogue, or will be. There are many pictures of her, with a small waist and a defined jaw line, which brings me back to....the other side of it. She was a big girl, but owned it, and dressed it, and seemed fine with it. She says she started working out to deal with depression and sometimes works out three times a day...which, honestly, is lovely if you can do it and I've had times when I could have done that too, but that's not real either. She looks good, though, and her features have settled to where she looks like herself again, not some terrifying, starved version of Adele. I thind about vaccinations, too. About Covid. About other things...what will become of me, will I ever attain my heart's desire....stuff like that.