Yesterday felt like a great day. Now that's odd: I was about to write "Yesterday was a great day." but I immediately started questioning whether it really was a great day. Well, I can be subjective, it was MY day, and I can call it great. If it felt great, it WAS great.
Am I confusing you with this little dialogue? Welcome to my twisted world of second guessing myself. It took me a long time to see that in much of my life experience, it doesn't matter what "really" happens/happened to me, my perception of my life is the most important thing. I always prided myself on my empirical objectivity. Well, when it comes to life experience, the subjective is what we get. Objectivity is impossible. My life is not a mathematic algorithm.
That doesn't mean that I can't examine why I reacted in a certain way to an event or a person, but I now see that the only way I can feel less lonely and desperate in this world is by honoring my right to my unique experience. I'm a visual artist, a painter, and the only way I can function as one is to value what I have to say through my art. Otherwise, who will?
After my parents died my own health was a shambles, and I dealt with it by controlling my food strictly. After a year, I had lost over a hundred pounds and my diabetes and hypertension were under control, I used my inheritence to fund a Masters of Fine Art in New York. It was a great experience, but at the same time my eating was growing more and more unhealthy, and I was drinking like a 20 year old frat boy.
After graduation I returned to Canada. After two years of living in a closet (and painting in one) in one of the most vibrant and frustrating cities in the world, I returned to my beautiful, peaceful studio in a leafy bird and flower filled yard and panicked. I had felt the fear rising during my last year at the Academy and sought out a therapist because I could feel the chasm beckoning. But it didn't delay the inevitable return home. I wanted to return home, but then I was alone in the studio. The camraderie and competition of school was gone. It was just "little old me".
I didn't feel strong enough to survive just on my own agenda, I wanted someone else telling me what to do. I was not enough. Over the next few years I painted less and less, and ate more and more. Oh, the fear in the studio was so visceral! I remember running to the convenience store a couple of hours before supper for chips and dip and returning to the studio, turning on Oprah, and just stufffing it, that terror, down. I then would return home to cook dinner, not telling Fuzz what I had been up to. I tried visiting NYC as much as possible, even renting space from old schoolmates to try and hold onto the feeling of being a "real" artist, but that sense still slipped away as my hole seemed to get deeper and deeper. I had regained almost all the weight, save about 40 pounds, but if my previous trends held true, it would be back within a few more months, plus more.
I didn't go into Overeaters Anonymous willingly, the therapist, a woman who never tells me to do anything, actually gave me a shove in that direction, because she was at her wits end. I have a friend in OA, M, who I alternately love or pushes my buttons so that I want to slap her. She said, "I didn't want to be here!" Then she snorted,"Who does?!" She’s kept her weight off for four years.
The point of this tirade is that I am convinced that my obesity and disordered eating is little more than a symptom of the larger disease. When I look at the alcoholism and behaviour of my father, my bette noire, I shiver at the similarities. Some people may more triggered by certain foods, but in my experience, my behaviour around food is a reflection of the mental anguish, the warped thinking, leading to the desperation that makes it seem that food is the only friend, my only alternative. For me, the only way I am going to hold onto my physical health is by examining my thinking.
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