Emma-Liza's Journal

I had a little trouble last night with wanting to eat even though I wasn't hungry. I gave in, a little. A couple hours after a supper of 1/2 recipe of raw pea and spinach soup (I ate 1/2 lb of peas, people!) and some rawritos, I started snacking. I ate some raw banana bread and some cashews. I also ate a piece of non raw white chocolate. I thought about going up to the study and making some art, but I couldn't quite get myself to do it. And why, you might ask, did this occur?

Well, I talked to my mother yesterday. I have such a weird relationship with her. My mother can be sweet and loving one minute and saying the most cruel or odd things the next. I know she loves me, she really makes it clear. But some of the stuff she says to me just sounds psychotic and besides being creeped out, I worry that I'll inherit this disorder--whatever it is.

I look so much like her, actually, not as pretty as she was/is, but enough that now, when I look in the mirror, I often see her and it just upsets me so much. That's the face that yelled at me all the time, the face that said things that made no sense, the face that now goes off on religious rants that I am forced to simply listen to, because there is no arguing with that face. It's illogical, unpredictable, and capable of great tenderness or great meanness. And minute to minute, you never know what you're going to get.

Once I even asked my dad if it bothered him that I look so much like her. He was really surprised and said (of course) no. Because this is really about my issues with her and not the ancient history of his (they've been divorced for 32 years).

I was making one of my little grandmother scrapbooks for her, even though it's my dad's side of the family because I thought she would like to have some of my art and because all those recipes...are our recipes, too. She cooked them all for us and continued to even after the divorce. She doesn't know about the books, but she spent a huge amount of time on the phone yesterday telling me how horrible she thought my grandmother was, how she had ruined my father's and grandfather's lives and how glad she is that my grandmother is gone.

This was not, by far, the ugliest or most self-aggrandizing thing she said. But, as usual, I got off the phone thinking, how can I be related to that woman?

What does all this have to do with raw food? It is sort of embarrassing, but it's always been true that the less I weigh, the less my face resembles hers. I actually start looking a lot more like my sister, who takes after a different relative, we're not sure who--maybe the mailman . Right now, that wouldn't bother me.