Restaurant strife

I'm getting into more and more confrontations about restaurants. We used to go to restaurants several times a week, and I haven't done so since surgery, of course, but I have been asked to several times. Restaurants are scary for me. I don't eat normally and I am afraid to watch other people eat normally. It probably won't be as hard to deal with as I think it might be, but I don't want to take a chance and I don't want to be tempted to stray from my instructions. I also don't want people watching me eat and watching what I eat and maybe questioning my choices. I am not dead certain about the choices I make anyway. It's hard to explain, and I didn't exactly understand this before surgery, but the only difference in me between preop and post op is a small, loose piece of silicone around my stomach. I don't have any pain or any sensation different from preop. I seem to be able to eat the same amount of food if I try to. I don't have any warning signs that I might be doing the wrong thing. I feel *TOTALLY* normal. And my brain is the same too, of course. So it's just an exercise of willpower and the reminder that I had a pretty major surgery for this purpose that keeps me from eating whatever I feel like. The willpower is tested at home a lot, and I'm just not ready to take the show on the road, more psychologically than anything else. I don't want to do battle over this. It's just not something I'm ready for yet. That's hard for the people I spend the most time with, because either my presence is obviously lacking, or they don't go out either. Either way it impinges on their plans, too. I feel really, really badly that other people have to deal with this as much as I do, but I don't see a way around it.

I am PMSing, I have cabin fever, and I have a lot of food guilt and food grief. It's a gray mucky spring day in Portland. Bleh.