Toxic Either Or

I have a friend in Overeaters Anonymous that I call or am called by Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We are "food buddies", rather like co-sponsors, and we talk about our food, how it's been, any challenges we see coming up in the next few days. I think we are similar enough that our challenges often figure around social events. You know, parties or receptions, business lunches, that stuff. I know that in my case, and likely hers too, the anxiety that lies just under the surface in those situations can cause me to leap onto the nearest plate as if it were a life raft and I a drowning, starving shipwreck survivor.

We're both aware that the holidays (and face it, now that we're getting Christmas carols blared at us in the stores and the traffic is just short of gridlock as we herd in panic like plastic-laden lemmings: it's the holidays!!!) can present big problems for those of us with eating issues. She works in an office. Just as she has managed to get past Hallowe'en unscathed, the December treats/landmines start to pile up. As an artist, I don't have that problem, but there's still the parties, dinners, and generally, all that seasonal food that makes a reappearance whenever two or more people appear.

Last year just after Christmas it all got to me and I had one of those "what the hell" episodes, and it took most of this year for me to feel like I was recovering from fairly regular slips. I was never one for the black and white approach to my food, I said I could have almost anything in reasonable quantities, but the frequency of these exceptions to my usual plan of eating went up, and so did my weight. And one night I said, oh the hell with it, who am I kidding? And then I REALLY did some eating.

I had just set myself up for a big fall. And this is where I think I differ from other people. I had built up such a quantity of shame over how much I had eaten, I figured I might as well give myself a good binge to REALLY have something to be ashamed of! That little final kink in my thinking is what really sent myself over the edge.

So. I guess that I have some choices to make, to make this season o' merry landmines a little different. And maybe a little difference is all that is needed. I would dearly love to be the abstinent nun with the hair shirt, I've been playing that game off and on since I was just out of the single digits, and look where that got me. The messy nature of real life is much more difficult. How to handle this with a finesse I can't seem to manage on my own is the question, and I think I need the help of a power greater than myself with it. Whether that is my sponsor, my food buddy, my husband, and that nebulous higher power I'm not sure. It's almost certainly to be some combination of the above or other factors I haven't considered. What I'm doing here is putting the question out there and seeing what comes of it, because my best plans, well, they haven't worked out so well. This is a real challenge to one's creativity and needs a resourcefulness that I've never really considered before.