I think I used to mention my bed frequently when I began this blog. Even after I entered into twelve-step programs (yup, plural, I've been in a few different ones, although Overeaters Anonymous is still my main focus), I would spend a lot of time in a semi-depressed state where I wasn't binge-eating, but I was still spending a lot of time in bed either sleeping or reading, watching tv, hiding from the world, and hiding from my feelings which were usually some variation of "Ugh, I hate myself".
I still wake up some mornings with a variant of that thought. For a long time it would be expressed as "Ugh, morning. I want to die" or, "Just let me go back to sleep, God" or my favorite: "Ugh, I hate my life". Well, one morning it struck me that I didn't actually mean that last one. I like my spouse, my house, where it is, my friends, my pets, even my cramped little bedroom which is certainly cozy and warm on cold mornings unlike the drafty big one we had in our last house. I like my work as a painter. I even like my studio in a rather run-down building on a slightly seedy block. I like zipping around town on my scooter. Needless to say, I love my bed. It's just so comfy. So, what's left not to like? Basically, me. That's about the only significant thing left.
And that came floating back to me last week when I was attending the fourth in a cross-program 12 step study lecture a a local hospital auditorium. It was being conducted by a well spoken and charmingly self deprecating recovering alcoholic. We were looking at step 4, the "fearless moral inventory" step that strikes fear into the heart of almost every desperate searcher that ends up in those rooms. And it really is "ends up" isn't it? By the time we get to OA, AA, NA, any one of those A's, we're desperate. They call it "the last house on the block" because we've tried every diet, trick, every fad, every fix we could buy, and it hasn't worked.
Anyway, the AA guy was talking about warped thinking and how, in AA terms, being sober is about more than just not drinking, or not gambling, or not binge eating or not starving oneself. It's about, well, sanity. And I'm not sure how often I am truly sober, not running away from one uncomfortable thought or other. The last month or so, I think I have been running again. It's very uncomfortable, but at least I'm not back in the food --- yet. But I'm aware that I'm sort of miserable for a good chunk of my waking time, and even some of my non-awake time. I usually wake up for a bathroom break sometime after 4 am and I'm often aware that I'm in a fog of foreboding. The same foreboding I seem to develop a convenient amnesia about during the day when I might actually be able to deal with it.
I've got work to do about this, it's time to stop this before it, to put it bluntly, bites me in the ass. So, now I grab another cup of coffee, go offline, and deal with this bucket of crap. I'll eventually be back here to post what happens (in a nice distilled sanitized way, I'm sure) but I have to do the first part in private. However, before that, I have to contact my sponsor, who've I've been playing dead with. MIA. Or in other words, hiding from. Thank God I've got a local food buddy that I talk to 3 times a week.
She's got about 3 more times the years in the rooms than I have, and so she's been nudging me (ok, last time we talked it was a shove) about dealing with it.
Apropos of nothing except love and joy, please enjoy the photo of our new puppy (at present gently snoring beside me on the couch).
