Showing up

Some days, like Woody Allen said (I think) 80% of success is just showing up. So, I'm here. I'm tired because I stayed up too late finishing off a pair of socks I was knitting, after staying late at the pub with some of my choirwhore pals. Ah, only days ago I was staying up too late finishing off a box of chocolates. Amazing the difference a few days of working the program can make: I forget how desperate I was, how I was lost in the grip of getting, eating, and getting more food. As can I forget, when I'm in the food, what it was like to be well.

Actually, that's not quite true. It's been said that being in OA really ruins a good binge, and they're right. When I have a binge, I keep seeing how crappy it really is, and after a day or two, really crave returning to sanity, so I get my ass to a meeting, or call someone, to get me out of the spiral. The real trick is not getting into that spiral. That's why I'm here. I'm really seeing these days how not dealing with my emotions leads me straight back into the food.

In one of the ironies of life, I have to go now to deliver 5 boxes of food and over two hundred dollars in cash that we collected for the local food bank at our choir friends and family event. That's the thing about food, it's not like alcohol. Unlike a recovering alcoholic whose mantra is No Matter What, Don't Drink, I don't have that option with food, that would be anorexic. Food is a basic part of life, so I need to learn how to deal with that part of living.

Bummer, dude. But it is what it is. I just have to keep believing that there is a point for my existence to give me strength to keep going.