Fat = Pain

I believe that there are possibly many fat and happy people out there. I just know I was never one of them. My experiences with food have led me to believe that for every 50 pounds of excess weight most people carry, they have that much emotional pain that they are carrying around inside them. Or, on them, as it were. Some day we may have such sophisticated imaging equipment that we will be able to see the pain inside that inch of fat, and say, "oh, look, there on the left lateral abdomen, there is that incident from 1983 when your father slapped you and called you a lazy slut!"

Of course it's more complicated than that, because even when you dig down and see the suspected source of the pain, it doesn't mean you will immediately feel better. I believe then you have to try to counteract all the little distortions in thinking that followed that. Self knowledge then has to be followed by a massive change in mental habits of thinking, and behaviour. It's not enough for me to distract myself with a crossword puzzle when I feel hungry. I need to challenge the black dog of the soul and affirm that all is not lost, and I do not need comfort and oblivion in food.

I could become the fairy queen of the beautiful cupcake, but all the admiration of my fans will not help my pain. It's too hard wired. I cannot earn my own self love.

This may seem oblique to many, but if you've suffered from the black rottweiler of the binge, you'll probably understand.

Busy Being Me

Things happen. I sunk into a funk. The toxic thoughts got the best of me. I stopped going to OA meetings because even they seemed toxic to me. I got too deeply enmeshed with some people without even trying, but by being unable to say "no". Tried a new antidepressant which initially REALLY knocked the stuffing out of me. The depression itself didn't get worse, but I slept a LOT. And I had the cold that would never end, so I wasn't able to exercise much, which was the loss of a major mood elevator. But after a month I finally started to feel better.

The most amazing thing then happened: In early January I got back into the studio. Recovery sometimes is so subtle, you don't even notice it's happening, and in this case it was nothing dramatic. A couple of days after New Years', I got Fuzz to help me put up some blinds in the studio and I unpacked a few boxes that had been sitting in the basement. Then it was just a few hours a day, working on a Van Dyck copy I had started years ago when I was studying in New York. Before I knew it, I had spent more time in the studio in January than I had during the whole fall!

Unfortunately, some old habits resurfaced: The toxic thinking, the isolation, and last to come, I had a food issue. Aka, a binge. It happened in the first week of the New Year, and my eating had gotten kind of sloppy over Christmas, you know, the usual, a little bit of this and that, a bite of that and the other thing, more dessert more often, and it got harder and harder to stop with a healthy portion. Then there was one night when I just didn't want to stop eating. So, I didn't. I ate until my stomach felt like I had swallowed a bowling ball.

Luckily, it only lasted one day, and I was back to sane eating again, but I have some emotional work to do.