Challenge Date and Anticipating Absence

Major food challenge tomorrow.  J. and I are having lunch at a local restaurant, for which I have NO nutritional charts or calorie information.  My promise to myself is that I will not order just a salad, it has to be a Real Food day.  Plus, the menu there is pretty interesting, and I am reaching total disgust with the default "safe" meal I've been ordering in restaurants for years.  Is there anything in the world more boring than a grilled chicken salad, really?  At first it was a big achievement for me to be ordering anything beyond a pile of lettuce, but iceberg topped with reheated breast meat is finally starting to get old.

I can say that with bravado, but I still have anxiety.  It's not so much the number of calories I might eat, it's just that I don't know how many.  Considering the demands of my meal plan, I highly doubt that a reasonable order at this restaurant is going to exceed what I am supposed to be preparing at home anyway.  The nerve-wracking part is just not knowing what I've put into my body.  

So, facing that down.  And then we will catch a matinee showing of a movie. Thus, I can't come home and exercise right away.  J. and I haven't explicitly discussed this plan as a form of exposure therapy for me, but I know he's aware that it's a challenge.  

He is leaving next week, have I mentioned that?  As in moving forever.  He's starting his PhD in the fall and got funding to begin the research this summer.  I pride myself in being neither clingy or needy.  I take almost pathological precautions against this.  I won't claim that "I couldn't have made it this far without him," because truthfully (just a prediction from what I know about myself and my motivations) I'd probably be at about the same stage, albeit via a slightly different path.  I didn't start getting serious about recovery until about 2 years after we met.  But who knows.  I am trying to convince myself that his leaving is just like any other person moving away. I probably sound like the most ungrateful friend ever, just trying to paint things objectively.  This is what I do, according to H., when it comes to dealing with feelings.  I don't mean to deny he has helped me, the support he's given has been amazing.  But I am independent and stubborn enough to know that, realistically, I won't have a meltdown, depression, or relapse as soon as he leaves the state.  We have spent less time together this year than in the fall semester, so the transition won't be as huge as it could have been.  And it's not as though we'll never talk again,  about half of our current communication is via Facebook and texting even though we only live 1.5 miles apart.

Still, his absence will most definitely be an adjustment.  Knowing him has convinced me that, contrary to previous experiences, some guys are just good.  Much better than I deserve.