Living with the Fear

I was finished running last night, on the way home with Fuzz and looking forward to having a dinner of excellent leftover curry, garlic broccoli and basmati rice. But I was in a funk. Why? Well, it was my non-dessert night. A while back, I decided I really did not need dessert (usually an ounce of 85% chocolate) every night, and since I'd like to be about five pounds lighter, Itried doing it just every second night. I realized I was bummed out about that. And then I thought, "How pitiful is that? Is my life so meaningless, that the highlight of my day is dessert?!" Turns out that was the least of my problems. Whether it's allergies or a cold, I spent all evening sneezing and going through wads of Kleenex. Not eating dessert was easy. Walking and talking, feeding the cats without banging into things quickly became less so. I went to bed early, comforted by reading about David Sedaris' boil.

I don't know why I'm surprised at my chocolate funk. I'm a compulsive overeater! Oh duh, that again. Someone has said that addiction (and I include food addiction in this) is the only disease whose primary symptom may be forgetting that you have the disease. Just look at my history: Food, at many, many times of my life, has been my primary occupation: getting it, making it, eating it, getting more, over and over, ad nauseum. It has only been the last five years, since being in Overeaters Anonymous and working damn hard in therapy and in support groups that I have been able to craft much of a life outside the food. So yeah, it figures that I'm bummed I'm not having dessert. As many times as I tell myself, this isn't my last supper, I will eat again, on some level I still don't believe it. I'm actually mildly surprised that for two weeks I've been able to survive every second day without it. Interestingly, there was a time I wasn't eating sweet stuff much at all, so how did chocolate become a daily thing again anyway? I think it was probably with the publication of those studies saying that extra dark chocolate might be good for you. But as a friend pointed out, if you're doing something daily, it goes from being a treat to being a lifestyle.

I've written here about my issues with the midnight nibblies. I think it becomes harder to escape the food in the evening when I'm supposed to be relaxing. During the day there's work, chores, a schedule. At night is when the greeblies come out to dance on my brain. I've been aware for sometime that I have this baseline level of unfocused fear that starts murmuring at the back of my consciousness even before I wake up. I think that has something to do with it. I talked about it to my therapist tomorrow and we discussed just being aware of it. I guess that's the first step, and therefore the first of the 12 steps could be easily applied to it: I admitted I was powerless over it and it's making my life unmanageable, or in other words, the fear makes me bummed out I'm not going to have dessert. Hm. More shall be revealed, I'm sure... My sponsor's back and there's gonna be writing...