Of course, after writing that I had to write in order to survive, I didn't do it for four days! The perfectionist in me wants to don the hair shirt, but I'll stifle that. It's just life.
I had a really busy day on Monday teaching the art classes, and then was out the door early Tuesday for my dental appointment. Yesterday, I had to get at it fairly quickly to do what I had to do, making photocopies and working out at the Y, as a big storm bared down on us and I was wondering if we would even have power later in the day. The power held, and in the evening I was on deck for our community choir post-concert debrief/coffee house. I ended up MC-ing and also helped to provide a suitable ambience through several living room lamps and a few dozen votive candles that turned the cavernous church hall into a cozy cafe. The individual talents in our choir that we don't get to see most of the time is truly amazing... Plus I had a lot of paperwork to distribute and collect for the debrief. I really did A LOT last night. Next year it might be a little different. No, next year it WILL be a little different. I'll leave the paperwork for someone else. And work on the ambient lighting more. I liked the mood. I enjoy hosting the party, particularly because it's not at my house!
The teaching on Monday, eeehhhhh... it wasn't so much fun. Nothing bad happened. We had some kids that needed reining in during the afternoon session, but their teacher arrived and she basically sat on them. I don't know. It is something I am slowly digesting. I was surprised at the student's lack of skill in some respects, but I guess that was bound to happen. I've spent a lot of time in an ivory tower, and so to see what kids are doing (more like aren't doing) in schools where the arts have been really given short shrift was a bit of a shock. I would like to work with small groups (ie 6 kids) on the finer points of art, but I'm not sure that is going to happen. I can talk with my friend the organizer when she returns from a trip. But not another large group. Too much crowd control while I'm trying to give them an intensive dose of art.
Too much activity, too little thought. Now I'm talking about me. I watch my mood slowly sour when I do this. Plus my sponsor has been away in Mexico, so I'm missing our weekly talks... And my sponsee has been sick so I didn't see her either. Yow! I'm in a dangerous place here! I'm amazed that my food hasn't been worse than it has been. If I don't change something, I'm going to crash.
How has the food been? Not too bad, but I'm still struggling with the nibblies. Nightime nibblies, a bit of ham or a few strands of the spaghetti I'm putting in the fridge in after dinner cleanup. And it bugs me. I would like to be about 5 pounds less so my size 8s are more comfortable, and I've seen the nibbling as the best place to make a change in my behaviour. And yet I haven't really committed to changing that, ie putting it as part of my abstinence definition. I guess I wonder if I'm becoming too much of a weight control monk. How big an issue is this? I'm not sure. It's hard not to be too much of a nazi about this. I'm also wondering if I need to weigh and measure more. Again, it's a question of degree with this.
Or do I just need to keep a more conscious contact with my higher power and let the food fall where it may? Will the obsession be lifted from me? I know I'm powerless over the food, but where does my higher power want me to go with this? I think I need to do some more reading, listening, and talking with my fellow sufferers on this point.
Interesting that while I often collapse on the couch in the late evening and I think of myself as a night owl I rarely write at that time. Just now I think that before making any big changes in my food plan I should write down what I have been eating. When I'm aware of what I've been doing, maybe I can see more clearly if & where changes could be made. Ok, that I can commit to. Write it down for a week.
In other parts of my life, I'm working on Photoshopping some of my photos for a new painting. However, learning to use the program I've selected is often like, well, picking up my laptop and whacking myself on the forehead with it! It took an hour of playing around to simply stitch a couple of background shots together. (One of the less successful attempts can be seen to the left...)
Hm. Since there is such nice light today, I could try taking some more reference shots. I have a rather ambitious plan for one, but I'm not sure that I'm not biting off a little more than I can chew here....akkk, always the food!!!!
I have to write if I'm not going to eat compulsively. But I can't write if I don't stop, and sit down at the computer. I can get so caught up in my daily schedule that I can let it slide more or less completely, but when I do that, within a short period of time I can find other things sliding until I may find myself in a desperate place with my emotions. I get pissy, pessimistic. That inevitably ends up with me craving more food. It's like a black hole in my psyche opens and starts sucking my optimism into it. And the food is like a branch that I have always clutched at when I feel myself even slightly slipping over the brink.
That branch reminds me of a book I read a long time ago at the suggestion of my doctor, Eating in the Light of the Moon, and the author likened eating disorders to a log that you might have clung on to, floating in a flooded river, in order to survive a challenging time in your life. Yeah, I guess my childhood, even with its nice middle class veneer could fit that metaphor. Whatever happened, I seemed to need a crutch, that log. And eventually, in order to get to the shore from the flood, you have to let go of that log and step out on to the shore. I guess that's what you would call getting grounded. My problem was, I had latched on to that log for way too long, and the attachment to my log was threatening to drown me in physical and emotional problems.
I don't remember anything else much about the book, it didn't really seem to help with my binging problem at the time, but I come back to that log metaphor often.
So, I have to stop and write in the middle of my day in order take some stock of what is going on in my savage breast, or more likely, my fevered cranium. Lately I've been noticing people in 12 step meetings talking about all the chatter that goes on in their head --- you know, the committee that never takes a coffee break, just goes on and on and on, so much so that you can't hear much of what's going on around you. The committee is quite happy to construct an alternate reality for you, with very little input from what's actually out there, a rehash of past events. Of course, everyone's reality is subjective. But I think my reality is sometimes so subjective, it's unhealthily distorted. I think it's just a question of degree, where I fall in that continuum between being very aware of my surroundings to off living somewhere in my la la land head. I guess that's what the weather is like on Fatgrrl. And Planet Fatgrrl often ain't exactly a happy place. Well, some bits are, but there seem to be a few too many sketchy neighbourhoods for my taste!
Sorry for the maelstrom of metaphors here, the planet with neighbourhoods, and logs, and rivers and committees, but it's interesting to see all this gushing out of my brain. I think it's just a small sample of what's constantly swirling around there. It's one of those planets with a very thick atmosphere that threatens to obscure the sun. Speaking of obscure, hooboy...
ANYWAY... it's got to all work together. Understanding why I eat is not enough. Reading good books is not enough. Going to meetings is not enough. Talking to others is not enough. Telling myself I am not going to eat something is not enough. Writing is not enough. Praying is not enough. I need all of it. And still I am tempted. I have to work my butt off working my program. And I also have to literally work my butt off because the physical exercise has to come into it too because I want to feel physically good in my skin and not have to eat only lettuce sandwiches. Reading all this is daunting, but if I have anything to share with you , it's that doing all this stuff? ---- it's thrilling.
Well, I think I got another gift from working the steps this week: I was able to try teaching again. This is pretty big. I used to teach, but badly, and well over ten years ago. I didn't think I was cut out for it, but I've been thinking that maybe I just wasn't ready for it. I don't actually want to be a regular classroom teacher, I don't have the drive for it that you need to be a good one, and despite the fact it pays lousy, I still want to be an artist. But I might be able to do some art teaching, possibly in a school or at my own studio, or a combination of the above.
How do the steps help me with this? Well, it's helping me deal with the maelstrom of emotions that teaching conjure up, particularly the big FEAR that has been enveloping my mind when considering it. I can't eat over it any more, I know where that sad storyline goes, and I want to try to pass on some of that information I've collected through twenty years of being an art student. Unlike the studio, teaching is, duh, not a solitary occupation, and that's a nice change. I think I can see that if I can make this work, it could be very rewarding.
In some respects, I think I've been allowed to mature, develop some skills that weren't possible for that scared little kid inside me. Working through the fear, I can start seeing the joy. I used to eat to suppress that fear. Note to self: doesn't work. It might make it easier to nap for an hour but then the fear returns, refreshed by the food, and being stuffed to the gills makes it even harder to deal with it.
The other thing that working my program has shown me is that sharing my fears with some people that I trust (which, BTW, I have learned is not necessarily everyone I meet in the rooms) in OA helps me to work through the fears. They may or may not have suggestions, but by just sharing it, I feel some support, and sometimes while sharing, an idea will leap to mind, or I'll gain a fuller perspective. This is all new stuff for me --- I didn't get it growing up, although I'm sure that if my parents themselves possessed these skills, they would have passed them on to me. It's not their fault nobody told them.
I guess it's true that this way of life is not just about the food. In fact, the more I practice this stuff, the more the food retreats into being a part of my life, not my whole life.
My mind is like a clam. If I don't open it up and look at it regularly, it slams shut and threatens to never open, not even if I take a sharp knife to it. In order to keep it opening, I have to practice doing so regularly.
This morning I didn't write. I napped, I unloaded and loaded the dishwasher. I even bagged up the recycling for tonight. If that isn't a sign of procrastination, I don't know what is. Why do I even try opening the clam? Well, for the simple reason that I have to. If I don't want to slide into compulsive eating. It took me a long time to make that association, sure, my OA meetings are full of people who say that literature, meditation and prayer on a daily basis are what keeps them sane, but I really didn't believe it would work for me. Or I didn't believe that I could keep it up for a long period of time. After all, I was Miss Try Anything Once, but ask me to keep doing it, fuggeddaboutit.
But at some point I was tired of the craziness. Tired enough to try doing it differently at least. They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Then sanity is going, ok, maybe I should try doing it differently if I want my life to be different. I don't think I'm that unlike the majority of people who can be told something by people about a million times before it actually takes, and only really believe it when seeing and feeling it ourselves. Well, I've found a couple of things that I used to enjoy aren't so enjoyable, and in some cases, I now prefer the sane behviour/substance. I'm just do it because told it's good for me, the sane choice actually feels better.
For instance, some junk foods I rarely eat any more because they are so damn unsatisfying. Donuts are one of them. Like Louie Anderson says, you don't even taste that first one, it's chomp, chomp, and slurrph, you've inhaled it and aren't even sure you actually ate it. Not positive my teeth actually made contact on the way down. It just paved the way for the next one. Ones. All one doughnut does for me is set up the craving for more. On its own, its particularly unsatisfying. I'd much rather have an ounce of really dark chocolate and a nice cup of a very good decaf coffee or chai. It takes as long to eat, actually longer because the chocolate demands savouring, and I can stop with one.
It's kind of like that with the writing. Invariably, I will feel better after doing this. And that feeling better sets up the craving to repeat those good feelings. No, it's not the same as a good binge (an oxymoron if I ever heard one), but I'm starting to savour the long term benefits of emotional sanity. And I'm talking beyond the obvious pleasures of being able to fit into the same normal sized clothes year after year that I don't have to go to the fat people ghettos to buy.
Less obvious is the sheer pleasure of physical exercise. For a while was I just did it because 1) I was "skeerd" of dying and bad health and 2) it would help me lose weight faster. I really disliked it at first. Initially, all I could do was take a hour's walk at night (less people who would see me) with Fuzz before bed. Now, this has taken over five years, but I have to say that now exercise gives me a high. In addition, I'm now fit enough that physical challenges like moving house, walking a distance to explore someplace on a trip, sprinting through the airport to catch a connection, or setting up a campsite when the weather suddenly turns really hot won't throw me for the loop it used to.
Of course, none of this on its own is what keeps me out of the food. But it helps. It all adds up. If I can do the footwork, shore up my dykes, it can help me from being swamped when I'm having a bad time and I can feel the clammy wet fingers of a food flood threatening at my toes and my tastebuds, when my mouth says, more, and I know it's not because I actually need more food. The thing is, those moments can come upon me so suddenly, when things seem to be going well, and suddenly taking an extra bite seems like a good idea.
Like last night. After choir practice a bunch of us go for a "postlude" at the pub across from the cathedral we're performing at on the weekend. The fact that I don't drink isn't much of a problem, I easily order my diet coke, and they nicely give me an extra large one with a slice of lime. The hard part is the pub grub, for this is a very traditional pub that specializes in deep fried everything--- with a side of mayo! I was so glad that the guy in our group that ordered those hand cut fries was sitting at the opposite end of a long table and that when he offered to send them down our way, there were two of us (one a man who I know is battling some weight and health issues) who were able to wave it back the other way. But it was that close. I could have had a few. Maybe. Or I would have had a few then ordered another basket "for the table". But I know damn well who would claim the lion's share. Or should I say "what" would claim its share. My disease, my gremlin, my freakin' starvin' inner child. Whatever lives within and always needs more.
Oh, I saw my optometrist this morning re: the floater, which I can't even see any more. He did all the stuff: dialation, photos, etc etc, and nothing seems amiss. Then he showed me retinal photos of his floaters. Awesome!
Well there's a newsflash for you... don't you just love all these boomers who act as if nobody ever got old before? I think it has something due to being hippies, delaying maturity, so it's such a shock when you start experiencing all the aches and pains of your parents.
Last night after going running with my faithful friends in a snowstorm I was feeling so strong, so like a green beret able to brave sleet and cold, so alive, so... smug. I loved running, and I hoped I could keep it up for many years. Maybe I could be one of those people still running in their seventies.
This morning I was staring at my computer screen in the very bright, sundrenched kitchen--- the storm of last night had turned into a very cold, white, sparkling bright morning. And what did I discover floating across my computer screen, no, not my screen, not my very dirty and scratched glasses, no... it was my eye. Rats. I have a floater. A tiny one, a mere speck, but there it was in the field of vision in my left eye, moving every time I moved my eye. Yes, no, maybe, yes, there it was again. And I panic. "STROKE! ANEURYISM! BLINDNESS! DETACHED RETINA! OH GOD HOW CAN I BE A BLIND PAINTER???"
All that stuff went through my brain in the space of oh, 10 seconds. Surf medical sites, google it, wiki it... ah, likely just another symptom of middle age. Oh great. Reminded again. Not a joy filled kid, but an occasionally joy filled middle aged woman. I started feeling creaky. I made an appointment with my optometrist just to check it out. Had another cup of coffee. Phoned Fuzz. He made comforting noises, said he had one a while back. He did??? Why didn't he say anything? Just didn't think to. He is so unangstful at being 51 it makes me feel sheepish, when it doesn't frustrate me completely at his unflappableness. That's him. God, I'm hungry. It's an hour to lunch. What's up with that?
Aw fuck it. I'm going to the gym. Enough retina gazing.
I'm having a hard time writing today. I hadn't written since last week because the last few days have been pretty busy. Some of my friends in OA get up before dawn to do their writing and meditation. One of them, a teacher, actually complained this week that she had slept in to 7 am and so wasn't able to get her regular writing done. Well. As an inveterate night owl, I'm still struggling to come to at 8 am most mornings and am quite proud that I am now in bed before midnight most nights, so I'm not quite up with the dawn league yet. And when life demands that I show up before 9 am, the writing usually doesn't get done.
So, here I am, but it's like the hinge on my psyche has rusted shut and doesn't want to open. I think there's something in me that is screaming "I don't wanna, there's things in here that are gonna huuurrrrt!" I think that's my problem in a nutshell. Growing up I was told, keep it in, keep it in, don't show, don't share, it's not what ladies do, it's not what adults do, stop being so damn emotional, we don't want to see it. My mother would tell me I was too sensitive. So I learned how to keep it in, shut it down. What better to shut it down but with the food?
Writing the last two paragraphs has been like applying some oil to that hinge. Slowly the pandora's box of my brain opens a crack, and I catch a whiff of the sulfur of fear. I'm afraid. Tomorrow I go to a school where a friend is teaching to talk to her students about what it's like to be an artist. Wow, that brings up big issues, like: self confidence! I've got to spend some time today amassing some images from the web, like artists I really like and some drawing examples... And I have to go to the studio and get some materials to show them what I work with.
I think I also have to work my 12 step programme too, to deal with this fear, and my flippy ego. I have to take my ego out of this equation: I am going to this school not to talk about me, but about my experiences with art. Can you see the difference? These kids do not want to know about me, they want to know about what it's like being an artist. Taking my ego out of the equation defuses a lot of the fear. I'm a conduit, not the subject. I've got lots of really cool pictures I can use, and cool stuff I can show them. I think I'll pick up some vine charcoal today and a leather chamois that can be used for erasing. Maybe I can talk about creating the finished product starting from sketches. Sketchbooks! I'll take my sketchbooks, and some of my preparatory drawings for my final project. Now the juices are really starting to flow!!! Okay, now I'm feeling better. The whole thing starts to look do-able.
This stuff doesn't look like it should have anything to do with my eating. But it SO does, because so much of my eating is emotional! I had a dust up with the food, albeit a minor one, on Saturday. It was after another tiring pre-concert rehearsal with my choir. A lot of standing around while the technical issues of dealing with an unfamiliar performance venue got worked out. I had lunch with Fuzz and a couple of friends from the choir. At the end of the meal, something in my brain had decided it wasn't sated, that I have somehow been deprived. When Fuzz and I went to the health food store to pick up some steel cut oats for my world's best oatmeal, they had some of those baked "healthy" Guiltless Gourmet tortilla chips on the sample table. Something in my prehensile brain (stem?) decided these were fair game. So I went back not two, not three, but four times to the table to sample all four varieties. I went so many times I'm surprised I didn't get the hairy eyeball from the clerk when we finally got to the cash. I felt bewildered and ashamed when I got home. And amazingly, still hungry. I grabbed a handful of baby carrots from the fridge, thinking maybe my hunger was because the lunch was a little light on veggies. The hunger stayed.
Finally, I took a nap with Fuzz. He was tired from work and fighting a bit of a cold, and it had felt way too early when I dragged myself out of bed early that morning to hurtle off in a snow squall to the church for the rehearsal. It was a delicious nap! One of those ones that make you feel a little guilty, but very refreshed. Then I gathered my gym clothes up and went for a workout. And that felt really good. Somewhere during the nap, my attitude switch got reset. And then, the workout really flipped it into a good zone. The food was quiet the rest of the day, and then yesterday it was fine. I'm not so good at this self care stuff, my first reaction when feeling like I need some comfort is to eat. The good thing, is when I discover that I have other options in the self-nurturing department, it's a new discovery. New discoveries in middle age are a good thing.
Last Wednesday was one of those days that slowly but surely grated on my nerves by the end of the day. It was subtle, but by nearly 10 pm when I was driving home from choir practice, I felt as if my emotions had been rubbed raw. I felt really “crabbyassed” as my friend calls her 9 year old when she's having a bad day. As I passed the 7-11 on the corner I felt the old temptation to grab a very large bag of chips and do some serious eating with the molars that were clenched in a rigor mortis-like grimace. Invariably I have this craving driving home from choir. It’s something about the stress of a choir director who is talented and trying in equal measure and the other (I kid you not) 120 people in the room! Instead, I kept my hands tight on the wheel (do I have a car that magically wants to turn into the 7-11?) and when I got home five minutes later grumped about my day to Fuzz, but not too much to because he was still doing work on his laptop. He works so hard I don’t feel like I can lay too much on his plate. So I started brewing some chai for us. It's still consuming something, but I substitute the urge to eat into a more benign track.
I like it done chai-wallah style, where the tea is boiled with the milk, making a strong, spicy, sweet brew where the milk mysteriously never seems to curdle despite if I forget it and let it boil too hard. Stick to the bottom of the pot, maybe, but doesn’t curdle. I wonder if there’s something in the tea, like the tannins, that does it?
Then I started folding the laundry Fuzz had started,while I called my friend M just to talk about the new policeman on Law & Order. I caught the chai before it had boiled down too much, added more water, fetched us our usual two small bars of dark chocolate, and watched the rest of the show with Fuzz. By the time I hauled my very tired butt to bed, I felt better, likely due to a combination of being able to vent a bit to Fuzz and M, make the chai, watch one of my favorite shows, and make up a basket of well folded laundry. Self comforting, my shrink calls it. In ways other than consuming that party sized bag of chips.
Another thing that got to me was a meeting earlier in the day with my OA sponsee. I’m very worried about her. She’s white knuckling it through a week of abstinence, but boy, it’s a tough slog. Her health is really bad and she has to lose a significant amount of weight for it to improve. But she’s not making it any easier on herself, isolating big time and while she can make it to the minimum amount of work necessary and to church, she isn’t going to meetings. Her recovery is tenuous. But then, it may have to be this. She’s lonely and unhappy. Maybe it's a good thing that she’s freaking miserable. That makes a good bottom, and maybe this is the one that is going to make the recovery start to stick. She’s talking a lot of rubbish, but I don't try to interject with advice. I’m not one of those sponsors who “save” their sponsees from their self made prisons just to live in one of my construction. I’ve seen sponsors do this and frankly, while it may work temporarily, I don’t think it usually has a lasting benefit. They may seem like our children, but they are not. They are thinking adults who have a streak of self-destructive insanity. Despite my best co-dependent adult child of alcoholic intentions, I have to let her follow her own path. That's not easy. It's wearing, frankly.
Rats rats rats, where does the time go! I've got so much on my plate today...
Yesterday was a great day, despite the worries that plague me. I think this teaching opportunity has dredged up a lot of old ghouls, but it's interesting in that I am reminded of a similar frame of mind when I was in Grad School in New York, around the turn of the millenium (creeeak, sound of wheels in time moving)... It was damn hard work, I was worried I wasn't going to be able to do it. I would wake up early in the morning so I could walk for a half hour or so just to clear my head before heading down into the bowels of Manhattan to catch the 2 or 3 express to school . I guess you could call it a buzz. I feel challenged and it makes me a little squirrelly but alive. It also makes me think, that just like grad school, it's a really good thing to do. There were a lot of other less constructive behaviours that I indulged in during grad school, so in order to avoid lapsing into those very familiar and seductive patterns I have to work a different one, not white knuckle my way through the very large hole that is created when I stop the destructive behaviours. That's where working the steps come in: creating constructive coping mechanisms that actually encourage growth rather than retreating into fear.
I am so grateful for the Tuesday night OA meeting I go to. There are some women there who are really working the 12 steps in their lives to change the old negative patterns and create new and fulfilling ones. They are making new lives for themselves that have surprising amounts of joy rather than deadening, enveloping fear self abuse. And I think that this is how I have to work these challenges that I've taken on now: How do I approach them in a healthy way leading to joy, rather than with the old stunted (fear suffused, self-flagellating) approach I learned from, well, who knows, my family, the culture, the ether, whatever. Doesn't matter. Work the steps. Acknowledge that I am filled with fear and ask for help from a higher power and my friends. Spread it around, gather strength to me, not try to work it in a fear-created vacuum which only supports the growth of more fear. Look at my expectations, tone them down, start small and build.
I've just had an idea of a visual aid I can use. It seems really simple, but I think it will work. I've got a good friend who wants me to work with her class, so we'll try it with them. I've also got an idea about a buddy exercise. Things are starting to flow. It seems slow, but I've still got prep time.
Ok, despite the fact that I am luxuriating in bed with a furry purring lead weight between my ankles, it's time to get to the gym and move my body, see what other positive energy I can stir up. Man o man. I can't believe this is me some days.
I've got a dear friend who appears to be dealing with a fairly major depression. The usual symptoms, or at least the ones that I've had: an inability to get out of bed many days, listlessness, pessimism, basic self care is an effort. I just went through one of those last year and I feel for her, but I know I can't do much more than be her cheering section when she can't.
One of her favorite sayings is "This too shall pass", but she says it with a heavy sigh implying that she is suffering and maybe doesn't believe it. I felt that. But I think I was driving somewhere the other day, between a couple of errands, and I realized that not only will trying times usually pass, but we have to go through them in order to develop any level of maturity. As a food addict, daughter of an alcoholic, my emotional maturation got frozen at some point. In order to catch up, I think it's gotta hurt, or at the least life has gotta be felt, and then you add in the rest of the big and small dings you get in the parking lot of life.
I've been through some biggies and also the usual ones: parental illness and death, my diabetes and hypertension, the depression, relationship issues, career brick walls and u-turns is what comes to mind. But I've come through them and I'm still standing, and some days I feel like I've been left standing taller and stronger, not worn down. I find my place is someplace I'm rather amazed to be.
I think of the plants at the greenhouse I worked at for a couple of years: the proverbial hot house flowers. In order to toughen them up, we had to subject them to some stress before they were planted. It's common to run a fan across seedlings to toughen up and thicken their stems, or before planting them outside to gradually introduce them to the climate. The plants suffer little cellular micro tears to ther stems when the breeze hits them. Just as when you lift weights, and not big honking ones, but something a little heavier than you may do daily, your muscles are subjected to microtears that heal and strengthen the bone and thicken the muscle.
I think that the stuff that "too will pass" does for my emotional strength what weights do for the body: I get the opportunity to grow from these things. For instance: I'm still all riled up over my upcoming choir concert and the classes I'm going to teach. I woke up from a lovely sexy dream way too early by the worrying. So I spent all this morning doing stuff to prepare for the things that are weighing on my mind. When I do that, the load seems to lessen.
I couldn't have done this, or it would have been much harder if my first action this morning was to take something to suppress the anxiety, run away from it. Even with all my supports, I still wanted to eat a piece of cheese after breakfast this morning, likely due to the anxiety. I didn't, because I knew it was insane after a very hearty breakfast, but I'd been down this road so many times before: I have fear, then eat something to smother the fear, fear returns. Fear has to be dealt with with in a variety of ways: doing what I fear or changing the scenario, or I go into a hole and eat to forget the world exists. The eating doesn't make it easier. I still have to face what I fear or choose to drop into oblivion. After 1 piece of cheese or a half pound of 4 different cheeses, plus bread, plus chips, plus chocolate... the same hard choice is still there for me to make. I used to not make the choices and instead bury it in an endless round of food.
It seems that life did conspire early on to stunt my growth, but I can still do a lot to recover from that, and have a pretty good life in the meantime.
There's no way this blog is ever going to make me famous, but I've found over and over again that daily writing here seems to keep me more even. Maybe it lets out some of the sourness that tends to build up in my soul. Rather disturbing to think of internal sourness, in our society we don't want to acknowledge the darker feelings. In fact I used to think I was aberrant in that I have those feelings, but I have come to believe that everyone does, it just differs on how we deal with them or don't. I think that my aberrant behaviour that came out in my overeating and my inability to work without crushing anxiety had something to do with my inability to face these hard feelings, the anger, the fear in particular. Everyone has those feelings, and you can't just smother them. You have to deal with them. The longer I do 12 step work and therapy the more I see that there are many, many people who don't deal with them very well. We suppress them at our own peril, because they don't just go away, they can grow and explode in devastating ways, destroying lives and families. Slowly, or quickly, with a bang. Sometimes literally! Sometimes, as in my own case, slowly smothering the natural joy until life seemed no longer worth living.
Whoa. Heavy stuff this morning. Maybe because I hadn't posted for a few days, and I've got a lot on my mind. A lot has happened this week, the first one back in town since the Christmas holidays. A lot of fun with friends, and some hard stuff too, helping a sick friend, and witnessing another one spinning out of control. And I've got some stuff on my plate. A couple of classes I've committed to teaching over a couple of days. Oh man, my stomach just did a flip flop there. I've got to firm up what I'm teaching and talk with the coordinators of the classes. It's been a long time since I've attempted to teach, and frankly, it's scaring the willies out of me. I think I've got a deep vein of pessimism about it, mixed up with some hope and joy if I do manage to pass on the fun stuff. After lunch I'll spend some time in the studio and maybe ground myself a bit, maybe dredge the dollar stores for some visual aids. Oh man, my stomach is really churning up. Ok, first things first. They need a bio to give to parents and students, bleah...
Well, got that done, I think. Now I have to look at what I want the kids to do with their 90 minutes and how to do it. Easy peasy, huh? The irony is I used to teach for a living, but I'm out of practice and that was several lifetimes ago. There are a couple of real differences here: I'm a different person than I was then, and I am teaching something I really really want to pass on well, because I love the subject. So I have to do this in a way that conveys that. I love life drawing and painting, but it's really hard work, and as frequent readers of this blog know, I've had a lot of hangups about my art, having just gotten back in the studio after a block that kept me out of the studio for most of five years. Well, that's not true. I did do a couple of paintings during that time, but I did spend a lot of time running. Hm, well, looks like I've stopped running here. Good omen.
Yahoo! Lunch time! And tonight Fuzz and I will hit the gym, so the day looks good! Work, self care, and physical exercise.
I thought I should update my photo, so you would know what I look like now, as opposed to 2005 when I started writing this... So there I am. How do you like my airbrushed dark glasses? I got tired of the Dame Edna look, although you can still see them on my old photo from 1995. Maybe I'll modify that someday too.
I'm much calmer than I was when I wrote the previous post. Life has returned to normal, I'm back at work, choir is back in session as we prepare for our concert in a couple of weeks. A bunch of my OA friends are having birthdays (not OA anniversaries as such, what my friend M distinguishes as "bellybutton" birthdays) so there has been absolutely no post Christmas celebration come down. Just the opposite: it's kind of like, oh enough of the celebrations! But only because I am so aware how social eating and the portion/richness magnification can send me into a tizzy (See my previous post).
I wonder if there is a plan I can put into place to counteract this. I think I'll talk to my food buddy to see what she has to suggest. Or maybe, ooh boy, here's a concept!... Talk to my OA sponsor! What can I do about the food portion magnification? That craving for more...
When I eat a normal meal at home it is a discrete portion. There's just Fuzz and me (I don't know what I would do if I had to cook for a larger family) and yet I don't always just make enough for one meal, but the leftovers aren't generally a problem, usually because I can just save them for another meal. However, there is nibbling that goes on, I have to be honest. And I usually don't stress out over it. Maybe I have to be clear and tolerant of my emotions and behaviours and say that often I will eat a little more, whether it's while cleaning up or during preparation. And since my definition of food abstinence is to not binge, I'm ok.
On the other hand, I'd like to lose a few pounds because my size 8 jeans have been a little tight since the hernia/tummy tuck surgery last winter, and I've even bought a size 10 pair in the spring. So, if I want to lose weight, the nibbling is maybe the obvious thing I want to look at. On the other hand (how many hands do I need here? Maybe I should move onto feet!!!) it's not an easy habit to change. It's so easy to slip a little something into into my mouth while cooking, or say, hey, I want a little piece of cheese... It may be "just nibbles", but it will take work to change it. It's so automatic, I still find myself with the refrigerator door open in front of me before I know what I'm doing! This I do need to talk to my sponsor and other programme people about, because while I want to change this behaviour, I don't want to turn into a hair-shirt, self flagellating, weight loss nun.
I know my psyche is all in a tizzy about a couple of arts workshops I'm doing with kids in a couple of weeks. I have to do some prep for these and also prepare myself emotionally for it because kids care me silly. (Don't tell them, they can smell the fear!) Yesterday, I was freaked out enough about it, it woke me up before dawn. Today, having prepped a bit for it, and interestingly, discussing it with two friends who have spontaneously offered to help me with it, I'm feeling much calmer. I have to do the groundwork here, and it's amazing how the fear shrinks as I reach out for support!
I'm back after a hectic but fun Christmas vacation. For the most part. It had a less than soft ending as my host for a ski weekend ended up having to go to emerg after a fall, and we spent some not so tranquil hours waiting waiting waiting in the ER. Then 5 1/2 hours of driving in the dark to get home, racing the clock to beat the snow. The end result was I felt pretty exhausted and drained when I finally got home. But there were great times, with many highlights: hiking in a Nevada canyon (never been in the desert before), seeing a wonderful Cirque de Soleil show in Las Vegas, and hiking to the top of a small mountain in Quebec with my fancy new snowshoes, on a blindingly bright -15 degree day. That last one was done alone, and I might have given up if I was hiking with someone else, but since the trail was clearly marked and my friend knew where I was going, I was ok. It was amazing. After admiring the view from the top, I had to hightail it back down because I would soon run out of light, so I practically ran down the steep path. In snowshoes yet, who knew? They are made for it, though, they have these big mean looking crampons on the bottom for gripping slopes which certainly appeared to me to be at least 60 degrees! I couldn't have done this five years ago.
The eating went pretty well, considering we travelled a lot. Of course, when travelling, due to restaurant portion inflation it was hard to not eat more than usual, but Fuzz and I often split an entree, salad and an appetizer. And many times lunch was brown bagged because we were staying in a hotel room with a kitchen and a friend's house.
Actually, it wasn't until I got home that I ran into trouble. I was tired and a little depressed. That night was a friend's birthday party. Some of the people there were OA people, some were not. There was way too much food. And for whatever reason, I don't know why, it just seems to be the nature of my beast, my MORE monster came out roaring. I was full. But I wanted to keep eating anyway. Of course, because my OA friends were there, I didn't overeat in front of them, always careful to keep up the appearances, but once I got home with a package of leftovers, I began to pick at them after Fuzz went to bed (of course). It wasn't a binge as such, I stopped before that happened, but I still felt like an idiot the next day thinking that I had eaten too much in total that day. I felt overstuffed, and ashamed of myself.
The next day I was back to normal, but I was highly aware of the claws of the monster appearing out of the abyss wanting to drag me down. ARgh argh argh. The nature of my beast. I've had this before with eating with others. And I'm not sure what I should do about it, because it feels gross. That's the only word for it. I get too full and I'm mad at myself.
The out of control eating, that emerges is after social dining but it's definitely done in secret. And it feels out of whack. And I wasn't writing. I think all sorts of uncomfortable stuff was going on, and so the eating came out. Yet again. I have to learn these things over and over, at a deeper level I guess, so this time I got away by the skin of my teeth (no pun intended), but just barely. Grrrrr. Spit.
In other parts of my life, I'm working on Photoshopping some of my photos for a new painting. However, learning to use the program I've selected is often like, well, picking up my laptop and whacking myself on the forehead with it! It took an hour of playing around to simply stitch a couple of background shots together. (One of the less successful attempts can be seen to the left...)
