Yesterday was my first outing since coming home from hospital a week ago. I got Fuzz to drive me to an Overeaters Anonymous 1 yr celebration and then we went out to lunch with some of the people from the meeting.
It still freaks me out a bit, going out to eat with people from my overeat disorder support group! I wonder if everyone is, like me, checking out what the others order? Likely, I should ask someone. Then Fuzz and I did some food shopping, but I opted for the motorized scooter the store provided because I was pretty tired by this point and just standing or walking slowly is surprisingly hard right now. It was good to have an OA event be my first time "out" - it is such a supportive atmosphere.
My stamina is pretty good for 10 days after abdominal surgery. I cooked some dinner (nothing elaborate) with very little pain and was able to forget for short periods that I was recovering. But then I would go, hmmm, time to sit down... still, that's a lot better than it was only a few days ago.
This morning I woke up, not exhausted like I thought I might be by my big day out, but feeling physically something close to normal with just a few extra aches and pains. I realized I was a little depressed. Sunday often depresses me. I realized how much a relief being sick over the past days has been. I had been given permission to be completely on a mental holiday, enforced by the pain killers and anaesthetic fogging my brain. It was no worries, be happy and stoned, just be, kind of like those little bunnies in Curse of the Ware Rabbit, my favorite movie this week. Hey, those bunnies too also eating machines albeit vegetarian ones... coincidence?
When I'm physically well, I feel deep shame that I can't control everything. No wonder I get into the food. I want to turn my brain off! Food is such a lovely relatively socially sanctioned pressure valve. Feeling stressed? An elegant dinner cooked or enjoyed at a restaurant. Also a cure for lonliness. Eat with a friend. No friend? The food can be my friend.
The obesity is just a symptom, it's not a disease on its own, but it can lead to other diseases and boy oh boy that killer shame.
Imagine, if I could just eat everything I want and not show it, I twould still be in the same crazy place, and I speculate that I would be dirt poor, having spent my last cent on food. Maybe even in jail. Take the fantasy to its logical conclusion.
I have this therapist. Much of the time he's a pain in the butt, but now he's been offered an appointment at a university in Calgary so I will miss him. It's a running joke with him how much his clients hate what he tells them but end up agreeing with him because he's right, and the thing he always seems to be parroting at me is the phrase "shame and control, shame and control" and I thnk that may be the key here. When I am sick I don't feel I have to control everything: my life, my loved one's life, that of my oa fellow sufferers (I got a call from one yesterday evening -- she was in pain and wanted to binge and I so badly wanted to FIX her!), and jeez everybody in the freakin world.
Yes, I am the center of the damn universe, get used to it. So when I'm physically sick, it's actually a relief from my fevered brain. I want to take a vacation from my it. That's where addictions come in so handy. How does one take a mental vacation healthily? Mediation? Ugh. That's so virtuous. Actually, and this makes me queasy just suggesting it because it sounds so pollyanna to me, but OA meetings often feel that way to me. Something to do with that feeling of being very understood by fellow sufferers. That terrible lonliness is relieved. And we even laugh at this shit, because it is so absurd and yet so true.
The trick is how does one find relief enough to have a life without becoming lost in the escape?
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