The People in the Park Who Sensed My Pain

I had to remove myself today.  I got in the car and drove to Yantacaw Brook Road in Montclair. The yellow caution tape marking the sweet park at the end of the road was gone. The little park was open, with its pond, running brook, rolling paths, flowering trees, ducks and meditative fountain.

This is what I think Heaven will look like, I told my family just two Sundays ago when we walked by the park.

This afternoon, I sat alone on a bench for a long time, waiting for my heart to stop beating so fast. Many people walked by; it was the first sunny day after a couple of dark ones. They tried to catch my eye. They tried to make me smile.

I think we can sense when someone is in pain.

Here are the people I remember smiling or saying hi. There were others, too.

I wanted to be alone and meditate and think and calm down, but they wanted to engage me in small talk, make me feel better. I understand that.

1. Older Indian woman. It's beautiful weather, she said.
2. Older Indian man [her companion, though lagging behind].
3. Pretty blonde mom around my age, walking with her pretty blonde twentysomething daughter.
4. Woman in hat with husband. Aren't they adorable? she said to me, pointing to two can-do little boys, maybe brothers, biking around the park again and again. I thought maybe she was a therapist.
5. Thirtysomething man who biked by.
6. Dad at park with wife and preteen daughter.

I don't know what else to say. I came home and took Sugar for a walk around the block and gave her a saucer of white-meat chicken scraps for dinner.

FOOD

• Breakfast, 8:30, test a lemon panna cotta. Also, 1 coffee with whole milk.
• 1 mini sugar-free Reese's PB cup.
• 3 oz. everything bagel seasoned cashews.
• Lunch, deli sliced chicken on roll with 2 slices reduced-fat Swiss and Grey Poupon.
• 2nd coffee with whole milk.
• Dinner, 6 pm, some steak, baked sweet potato w butter, 2 slices feta cheese.
• Dessert, Lemon Panna Cotta with All the Summer Berries--in a wedding china teacup.
• And here is where you meet the true compulsive overeater. I felt lonely and sad and P betrayed us in a big, hurtful way that I can’t get into. It hurts deeply, and that was her intent. So before I finally went to sleep at 11:15, I compulsively ate another small panna cotta w berries; rest of cashews; some cold pizza: cold steak P didn’t eat; Grape-nuts w whole milk and splash of cream; walnuts and raisins; last Cadbury egg from her basket; 2 glasses whole milk, one w NesQuik stirred in. Tomorrow is another day. Clean slate. It is hard to be honest here.

TCOY

1. Removed myself, sat on bench, thought.
2. Hot bubble bath.
3. Made the All the Summer Berries part of the dessert from the Prune cookbook. I did enjoy piling strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and a little sugar into a pan, letting them break down with little stirring for maybe 5 to 7 minutes and then putting the pan in an ice bath to stop the cooking.
4. Ate some of that fruit.

$ MONEY SPENT OUT OF POCKET

ZERO.