Still here... for now

Howdy, dudes.  Yes, I'm still alive!  Still fighting the good fight.  But most of my writing is elsewhere these days, and well, it's more private.  Since my career, painting, is growing and taking up much of my time, I still do daily writing in order to preserve and hopefully expand my sanity and spiritual life, but it really is not very entertaining reading, even for me.
      Last summer I had my first big gallery show in Toronto, and it did well.  So, I'm not here much any more and I have to spend my precious morning time doing stream of consciousness writing, similar to the "morning pages"  method prescribed by Julia Cameron in her useful if a bit misty-tinkly-woo-woo manual for blocked artists The Artist's Way.    Interestingly enough, she is a recovering alcoholic and addict, and her method of "artistic recovery" seems to mirror 12  step work. I'm not saying she stole it, but it does have a lot of parallels.  If it helps more people, more power to her.
     Yes,  I'm still active in OA (a twelve step program for those who have addictive habits of using food as a drug rather than a necessary substance).  I have to be, in order to keep my life. Not just healthy, perhaps keep my life period.  Who knows where I would be today if my therapist hadn't shoved me towards it?  Blocked?  Hermetic?  Dead?
   But I am spread pretty thin.  Even if it is much, much better, life is not all sunshine and roses.  I still have to "work my program".  I have to phone my sponsor weekly, I still have to pray every morning to whatever life force of the universe there is that can help me keep going.  I have to write, and I have to daily tell myself that I am powerless over food without the help I've been privileged to find. 
    Otherwise, on the net  I have a website and maintain a Facebook presence to promote my business.  And right now I'm doing a business tax form rather than my usual personal income tax form.  That's a step, with it's own headaches... I have issues with money which more and more seem to be emotionally and mentally linked to the unhealthy patterns I am compelled to with food.   I'm still going. I'm still a healthy weight, and amazingly enough, I'm in good physical shape, despite having started into some heavy menopausal symptoms over the last year.
       If you're reading this because you're struggling with weight and food or bulimia, keep going, find an Overeaters Anonymous meeting.  And be good enough to yourself to attend 6 meetings before you say it's not for you.  It could save your life.  What have you got to lose?  
     Pizza Hut will still be there next month.   Cheers. 
 

Fascinating...

Yeah, and I'm Spock too... hardly.

What I find interesting is that it is almost exactly a year since I last felt the compulsion to post.  And in almost exactly the same circumstances. Oh my, does that make me predictable?  I think it speaks to how our lives can run in seasonal patterns.  We haven't come that far since our medieval peasant ancestors...

One year later,  and the morning after another midwinter choral concert.  It was a great time, and I'm feeling the predictable letdown.  I was in a sextet created just for the evening and I miss it so already.  The studio after having a great fall, and so much progress in the last 2 years is feeling bleah again.  Winter blues.  I think I need to get out of town for a couple of days.  I'm considering going to TO to visit my gallery representative.

YES!!! I have a gallery rep! I'm working in the studio five days a week.  I was a featured artist on a national show in the fall, and I've got a gallery show in Toronto in the spring.  Life is still a fucking bitch sometimes but at least I have a life now, so much more than I had years ago when I started this project.  I was considering deleting this blog, but really, when I look back at how much my life has changed, I don't think I will. Even if nobody reads it, it reminds me of how much my life has changed since I joined Overeaters Anonymous almost 10 years ago (March 2002).  And yes, I am still a healthy weight.

I have to run, ironically to get groceries,  before the university students come to on the morning after and flood the market, but I will return soon, because I'm feeling the need to write.  Cheers!

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Typical drama queen... it's not that bad, but that phrase is in my head due to a beautiful arrangement of that old Paul Simon song by my friend Jack, the interim director of our community choir...

I am feeling a little dark. Last week I was very excited about my new work schedule in the studio. I'm not a morning person but I realized I would get more work done if I came in in the morning. Besides, our adolescent puppy gets me around 7 anyway, so why not? I pull myself together, and after a couple of cups of coffee me and Bela (the dog) are off to the decrepit 60's dentist's office that is my studio. Last week I was high on how much more time I was getting in here. This week, the feeling has retreated to "same old, same old".

And I'm on the downhill slope from a high. We had our big choir concert on Saturday, and the group show at a local gallery closed yesterday and the participants had a nice dinner at one of my favorite higher end restaurants. So of course today I'm bummed. And it's 1130 and I wish I was eating lunch. There is a piece of two day old anchovy pizza trilling its siren song from my fridge, a 20 minute walk away. Again, typical! I knew the slump was coming, but it doesn't make it hurt much less. What I can do it remind myself (one minute at a time) that it will pass.

And I had the most incredible rush of grudges and resentments as I was setting out my paints. I'm guessing they tend to flood into the "now what" vacuum in my brain. So, in the face of hating the entire world, I had to dredge up my gratitudes, for the second time today. They came a lot slower than they had when I said my 12-step prayers a few hours before.

A ray of hope has come as I see that my recent goals have been realized and I may be on the verge of achieving one that I had only hesitantly dared hope for. So I need some fresh ones. That is cool.

Sometimes walking the walk takes you through rough terrain. But for me it all comes back to the food. If I can't put the food down, I'm crippled. I was an artist with a block that had even come back to haunt me last year, and I had to really work my recovery to not binge after a really bad episode a year and a month ago. And the recommittment got me back into the studio, better than ever before. And that was one thing that I didn't figure on, one of the gifts that I couldn't predict, but it figures that the unmanagability of my life extends way beyond the food.

Ok, back to work. Cheers. Just watch out if you see me and the dog trotting toward you about 1 pm --- I've got a date with them anchovies!

Shocking Revelation!!! Recovery is MORE Than What I'm (Not) Eating...

You know, deep down in some part of my psyche this is still a shock. For over 40 years I equated my success in life with what I did, or didn't put in my mouth. I believed in the old saw that once I lost the weight, life would be perfect and I would be happy. As I look back now over the last seven years since I entered the planet of the thin and "perfect" (hoo boy, how thick am I???) I can see many times when I was still miserable, but I was thin, dammit. It continues today, but I think the misery is slowly, slowly thinning. No pun intended, but maybe it's apt. For the past 5-plus years, I've believed that the size of your weight problem is directly proportional to the depth of your pain. The only way I have been able to stay at a relatively stable and healthy weight seems to be by tackling the emotional misery I've been living with.

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).

Still Here, Still Trudging the Road to F'in Happy Destiny...

I haven't posted in so long I can't even figure out how to get the font right, but really, that's not important. The important thing is posting. Something. Period.

Gakkk, I'm falling into William Shatner-speak. You know. That. Self. Important. Cadence.

Jian Gomeshi (on CBC Radio) does the same. Thing.

Anywaaaayyyyyy.... I'm back. I know, it was before February that I last wrote here, but what an interesting 6 months it's been! I'm still abstinent from binge eating. I've lost a little weight, I'm at least 10 pounds lighter than I was in January, but I can't really remember current details because other than this morning, I can't remember when it was between now and then that I last weighed myself. It's ok to be free of that crazy compulsion to weigh myself often.

Another odd thing: I've been not eating desserts or candy now for something like 3 or 4 months, again a little on the fuzzy on the exact time period. All that, my friends, is a freakin', well, MIRACLE. And I'm pretty cool about it, most of the time. Ok, I did wonder this very evening if I was ever going to eat my favorite brownie again, but decided not to go there. This abstaining from eating sugary stuff wasn't caused by so much a crisis in my abstinence from bingeing, it was caused by a desire for some peace of mind.

I've got some friends in the Program (OA) that refrain from eating much sugar, and I always pooh poohed it as extreme. But there was one day in the spring that I realized I was obsessing most of the afternoon over an ice cream cone. Not a really special one, just an ordinary Dairy Queen medium (or small, even more mediocre) dipped cone. For whatever reason, realizing how obsessed I was made me decide to take one more step back from boarding, or perhaps "being run down by" is more appropriate, the train to Crazyville. One. Day. At. A. Time. For today, I'm not eating dessert. Maybe I will tomorrow. The first week was somewhat difficult, but not as difficult as I had feared, and most days it's been pretty easy. You know what keeps me doing it, or not doing it, as it were? It's another one of those things that has made my life simpler. No hemming and hawing over amounts and should I or shouldn't I....

Jeez I gotta go to bed, I'm swimming at 8 am and it's midnight. I'll write soon. It's good stuff. Honest.

WTF?!? This is Actually Working?

This has been as good a month as last month was bad. Well, December wasn't all bad, mostly just Christmas. Too much time in Crazytown, except Crazytown was me. "We have seen the enemy and they are us", isn't that the ancient quote from Pogo (don't bother trying to remember it if you're not a boomer)? But it did force me to actually go back to square one with my OA work.

Got myself a new sponsor, a young woman in another city hundreds of miles from me whom I have never met but found through --- get this, if this isn't going to some good lengths for sobriety --- the sister of a really strong sponsor of some people in the program I really respect. I had heard the inspiring sponsor speak at a celebration and met the sister at a retreat and they both had this look in their eyes. Really wide eyed, maybe enough to scare someone else, I dunno, maybe they were born with it, but their eyes looked so damn... clear. I wanted that. I didn't want to go back to Crazytown no more. I told Sister I needed a real Big Book thumper, I was desperate. Sister couldn't sponsor me, too many sponsorees already, but she found this other woman for me.

So, new sponsor (she just sounds so young and perky, tells me "no worries", I'll call her "Sponsorette") has got me starting the steps over with her. Yup, after 6 years of being in OA ---actually, it will be 6 years this week,yoiks --- she e-mails me step 1 questions. After a month, I'm not finished step 2 yet. But I don't feel like I'm really back at square one. I've received so many damn gifts in OA, that I don't regret... any of it? Is that true? Poking myself... hmmm... seems so. Sure, maybe I would like to take back some lunkheaded claims I've made in the rooms, but not much. It was just part of my process. And although I'm back on Step 2, I feel so great to be here, because I've got 37 days of the cleanest abstinence I've ever had. What's the big difference?

Oh shit, I don't know... desperation? I didn't hit a new bottom, but I possibly hit a better bottom, which forced me to really look at the spiritual foundation of my programme. I was tired of all the games I was playing with food. I realized a couple of weeks ago that I had been doing much more "white knuckling" over the last few years than I wanted to admit: agonizing, obsessing about food, playing little games, tweaking the food this that and the other way. To copy from someone in the rooms (all my best lines are plagarized from there...I plagarized that from someone there!), it is not possible to deal with the problem of food by playing with the food. The recovery has to come from another area of my psyche, or in other words, I really have to work on my emotional and spiritual recovery. Particularly the latter.

Here's what Sponsorette has me doing:

• Getting down on my knees and praying (serenity prayer and 3rd step prayer) EVERY FREAKING MORNING FOR TWO WEEKS!!!! Go figure, I'm still doing it after 5 weeks, don't plan to stop anytime soon, but it's one day at a time so I won't predict..
• e-mailling or calling her (leaving message etc) EVERY DAY! With the goal of actually talking once a weekActually that bit was my idea. My last sponsor was a wonderful woman but our relationship was too loosey goosey and I need more help.
• working on those step questions
• sent her a detailled plan of eating
• going to 2 meetings minimum a week. That was my idea, I've got 2 I really like, plus I tried a phone meeting for the first time this month. Not as good as F2F meeting but a reinforcement. It's in the early morning so I can listen via speakerphone as I try to wake up.

Anyway, it seems to be working. In spades. OH YEAH, I DID TWEAK MY FOOD PLAN ONE MORE TIME: no snacks. 3 meals a day. That's it except for beverages in between meals. That was a tough one to consider, but I tried it for a day, then another, then another... it has made my days so incredibly, stupidly simple. Have lunch. Then the kitchen is closed until dinner. Dinner happens, good dinner, maybe some dessert, and then, kitchen closed. I did not WANT to do this, I was forced to; Because I have had, particularly over the last year, such maddening trouble with shutting the refrigerator after supper. One little snack. A little nibble more. Oh just a taste, what the heck. Yes, all the hackneyed, cobwebby excuses came out of the closet. For the longest time i felt eliminating snacks was too draconian. But I simply got too desperate to hold out any longer. The late night snacks were getting bigger, leading to WTF binges. So. I had to. I was given no choice.

And the most amazing thing has been happening (well, you can easily guess, it's not that amazing): I have had the most peaceful month. Life has turned on a dime. I think it's the daily work, the reaching out to my sponsor, reading the daily readings from For Today and Voices of Recovery and considering that in order to have consistent recovery, I have to work on my spirituality, and look at placing my trust in a power greater than myself. This week it's called my higher power. Next week, who knows. Some days I call it God, but only in the vaguest terms. And I'm diving into the Big Book again, trying to glean new gold from those old pages.

So be skeptical. I would be. Damn, there is still half of my brain that is still skeptical, but maybe that's the sick half. For today, it seems to be working.

Oh yeah, just one more scary/spooky thing... I got back into the studio this month. Hadn't been there for months, I had been working on home reno, and it just wasn't coming. Now I've been there 4 & 5 days a week for the last 3 or 4 weeks. Suddenly it's flowing, and the fear is most times lifted, it seems easier, there's a new confidence, the old scary mean voices are much quieter. I think it's all related, oh who knows, I'm just going to ride this wave as long as I can.

Cheers.

Gotta Love this *&(^%$#@ Going to Any Lengths Stuff

The holidays were not very good for my food.

Cooked too much, ate too much. Actually, they weren't horrible, perhaps I'm just more aware of how weird my eating gets when given the slightest opportunity. It wasn't until the morning of the 26th when I was eating cake and pan rolls for breakfast with a chaser of jellybeans that I said to myself, "ok, this is nuts."

The book Alcoholics Anonymous calls the disease of alcoholism "cunning, baffling and powerful" , and I think it applies just as well to eating disorders, which in my case is binge eating. In this case, I think my disease uses the lamest most hackneyed excuses to get me to eat, like:

I'll have just one, and stop. (Since when have you been able to do that?)
I have to taste it to see if it needs more...something. (But why do you have to taste it 13 times?)
They'll be upset if I don't have one. (Will they even notice, and if they do, what does that say about them?)
It's not what I usually eat but they haven't got what I usually eat... (Heaven forbid you die of starvation before the next meal)

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.

Today's Gratitudes

I know it sounds pollyanna, but it does help me feel better. So here goes, 20 of the suckers, done in pure stream of consciousness mode:

1. Fuzz
2. warm blankets
3. sunshine
4. functioning car
5. pumpkin color walls
6. comfy kitchen chairs
7. good lunch with creative friend
8. my running group that gets me out even when cold
9. my oa group that helps me pick up and go on
10. skating buddy
11. dinner for tonight already cooked
12. good friend back from Mexico
13. her cleaning lady
14. a home mainly paid for
15. my stained glass supplies turning up
16. tolerant friends and family
17. still hangin on
18. a good therapist I've had now for over 5 years (a record)
19. crazy cats
20. a great neighbour and BF and her hubby and kid who keep her sane even if she doesn't think so...
    

Insidious Oblivion

Ok, it's painfully obvious that I will do many things to avoid writing about my feelings. This morning, for example, I've spent an hour on the computer tinkering with settings, browsing, reading and replying to e-mail and facebook posts, in short, anything but actually doing the kind of writing that will keep me away from the food. I was brought up short when, on the way back to the table from the loo I had a sudden urge to shave a sliver off of last night's tourtiere.

Purely for research purposes mind you, as I want to make some as christmas gifts, and had purchased a pricey boutique bakery version to study their technique (which besides the addition of a few nice spices seems to boil down to butter, butter everywhere...) Never mind the fact I had had plenty of opportunity to sample it as we had nice size slices for dinner last night. But maybe it would reveal some more secrets cold.... nope. No secrets, just guilt. But that's my disease, coming up with the most shameless hackneyed excuse for eating and then when I follow through on it, it's right there offering a heapin' helpin' o' shame.

But I'm not going to beat myself up over it. It wasn't a binge, it was a sliver. A small slip. I've got to avoid being so black and white in my thinking as in my food. Moderation. Gentleness. Tolerance. For myself and others. So... onward.

I'm feeling holiday pressure. In laws coming over on The Big Day. Eek eek EEEEEK. The last time that happened, which was jeez, over a decade ago, I panicked and cooked enough for at least 12 when there were actually only 5 of us. So this year, scaling down. I've even lucked into having my friend Carole's cleaning lady coming to clean two days before. But the house is a half painted, half renoed mess, but jeez it's so much nicer than it was. I'm paralysed trying to figure out what I should attack next, the crappy drywall in the bathroom, filling nail holes in the kitchen, trying to smooth out the kitchen ceiling... paint the stairs to cover the bare plywood, paint the front foyer and closet, the bathroom, the kitchen???? Aughhhhhhh! I went into a complete spin last week over this, went to bed, covered my head, and ate a ton. A bad binge. I'm just so lucky I had promised my buddy M a drive to the OA meeting that morning. It got me out of it.

So let's look at priorities:

1. Has to be being abstinent. Work my programme.
   
2. The house needs to be reasonably clean. Yay cleaning lady!
   
3. Work on my physical fitness this week, including running group, skating tomorrow and a trip to the gym on Friday.
   
4. I'd like to paint in the kitchen, maybe get the cupboards and ceiling painted for once. The rest can follow later
5. Put a tree up. No design questions, just put every freakin' ornament we own on the poor thing until it threatens to fall over.
   
6. Make some tourtiere to give friends as gifts.
7. Make a sensible Christmas meal, not the feast to end all feasts.
8. Un-stress. Enjoy the day. Cook the damn turkey the day before.

Ok, time to go work on more programme stuff. Do my daily readings, maybe look at some step work. Then lunch, and some spackle.

An Alien Amongst You

One of the things one of my OA mentors has suggested is to reread twice daily pages 30 & 31 of the book Alcoholics Anonymous (known in our rooms simply as the "Big Book", a reference to its large bible-like size when originally published over 80 years ago). In my book, I've crossed out the references to alcohol and substituted words referring to food and compulsive overeating. Basically, the purpose of the passage is to make us realize that for us compulsive eaters, for whatever reason, be it nature or nurture or both (after years of puzzling, searching and asking professionals and getting conflicting answers I finally realize it may not really matter what the root cause is) we are somehow made differently from other people and it makes us react to food in a dysfunctional manner. I've begun to form a disease model around this tendency.

I thought I had grasped that. I thought my problem was I felt so hopeless I thought I might as well eat. But, and I've just made this connection, my original problem this last fall was complacency, as after 3+ months of a good fall where I had been doing the morning routine and life was going ok, I stopped the routine, and fell into a trap of my own construction. Or, to put it in a less self-judgmental manner, I fell into a trap of the disease's construction. Someone I quite respect who even so, half the time drives me nuts once said that her disease's most dangerous symptom is it makes her forget that she has this disease.

The forgetting makes me stop doing the things that keep me sane. I guess my disease model is of a mental disease with physical symptoms --- the compulsive bingeing.

Here's a bit of that passage as adapted for my purposes (my changed bits in italics):

"Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real food addicts. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from others. Therefore, it is not surprising that our struggles with food
have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could eat like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy moderate eating is the great obsession of every abnormal eater. The persistance of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.

We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were compulsive overeaters. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.

We compulsive overeaters are men and women who have lost the ability to control our eating. We know that no real food addict ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals --- usually brief ---- were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a single soul that compulsive eaters of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, not better.

We are like those who have lost their legs; they never grow good ones. Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make compulsive eaters of our kind like other people. We have tried every imaginable remedy. In some instances there has been brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse. Physicians who are familiar with eating disorders agree there is no such thing as making a normal eater out of a compulsive eater. Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet.

Despite all we can say, many who have eating disorders are not going to believe they are in that class. By every form of self-deception and experimentation, they will try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule, therefore non-addicted. If anyone who is showing ability to control his eating can do the right-about-face and eat like the normal person, our hats are off to them. Heaven knows, we have tried hard enough and long enough to eat like other people!

Yup, I recognize the demoralization part. Maybe, just maybe, this hopelessness and worthlessness I feel hanging on to me, like a Dickensian wraith, is a disease symptom itself. I have to put that aside and believe the others that value me... I'm going to make a list to make myself remember that:

Fuzz
my studio mate who's invited me out for lunch today
people who invite me to sing with them
BF who wants us to spend xmas dinner with them
Fuzz's folks who don't understand us but want us to have dinner with them
Mary
friends in OA
other friends

ok ok, I'm worthwhile, I get it... ah, that I really believed it. Perhaps this requires the "act as if" stuff they talk about in the rooms, that if I pretend I do enough I will actually start believing it. OK ok, for today, I will act as if my life has a point.

Coming Clean: REALLY Struggling with the Food

I'm having troubles with the food. Big surprise, I'm a compulsive overeater. It just seemed to come to a head in the last couple of weeks. This was after nearly 90 days of sanity after attending a retreat in the fall where I latched on to a morning routine to get my feelings on paper. I was feeling so good, I stopped the routine. Possibly, I fell into complacency, subconsicously believing, "well, I'm fine now...."

So I slipped. And slipped hard, with 4 no-shit episodes of binge eating over the last month, precipitated by a persistant virus/cold that really made my emotions do a nose dive. Life seemed pointless some days. As of today, I'm in my 3rd day "clean". It doesn't feel particularly hard right now, but it can turn on a dime from sane to "fuck it, I'm shit, there is no hope, and I'm going to what I want to do, which is eat". One night I was in physical pain, I had stuffed so much food down my throat. Thankfully I did not feel compelled to throw up, because I feel that bulimia is another eating disorder even more serious than bingeing.

It always starts with the emotions for me. I don't think that the base problem is food in itself. The food, bad as it is, is "merely" a symptom. That's a pretty bad symptom. So the feelings must feel pretty big. Luckily, I've been staying in close touch with a couple of women who between them must have 40 years of experience in Overeaters Anonymous. And they've been helping me through this by encouraging me to stay in contact with them and work the OA programme.

But when I am feeling vulnerable, I hate writing. So, here I am, because it seems easier to blog than write. Of course, when blogging, I wonder about a tendency to gloss things over. Well, maybe, but it's better than nothing. I can always tell myself that not many people read this anyway...

I hate running! No, I love running! No, I hate running, no wait, I love running....oh pooh on it...

Just one of the stories of my summer. I have this love-hate relationship with running. And last week I kind of hit a real bottom (like falling down the old rabbit hole) and tearfully told my coach I was quitting. He sort of talked me out of it, well, he just humoured me. I'm sure he's done it many times, but of course, I thought my misery was special. I really did do a number on myself, it was like I was 300 pounds again. It happens from time to time, I go back to that very dark place. I'll have a bad day, or a string of them, and suddenly I'm in that place where I'm a big lumpy failure.

Now, in my running group, I can safely say I am one of the slowest. We do these interval trials on a small route fairly regularly, and I'm always being passed by these younger, fitter, genetically different atheletes. And then there was the night when we did a 5 k to see how fast we could do it. I was dead last and not having fun AT ALL. It was hot and I wondered why the hell I was putting myself up for this misery. My head was throbbing and my chest couldn't get enough air.

All that was fine and good, I was within reason to be frustrated. What happened next was where maybe I crossed some sort of mental line into crazy. Emotionally, things got very, very dark. I was a loser. I couldn't do this. I quit. Give up, uncle. This life is for others, not losers like me. After the run was over, I walked to a quiet area of the park and cried for a long time, until I figured out I had marooned Fuzz at the parking lot without the car key.

I was in a bleak mood for the rest of the night. The miracle was I didn't eat over it. I had a long e-mail conversation with my coach about it, and I'm still processing it. I'm not feeling nearly so bad now, I'm back to regular running, but the whole event has been interesting as a demonstration of where my brain can go, possibly when I'm not careful about my mental hygiene. It's likely no coincidence that this happened while both my sponsor and my therapist were out of town, and I was only hitting one meeting a week due to holidays and home reno.

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...

It's Official: I'm a Geezer

This doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I turned 47 a couple of weeks ago.

No, what happened is, I bought a Wii a couple of months ago, and it's been fine. Cute, fun. But, not all that I had hoped. It doesn't really require much physical prowess to become a Wii bowling or tennis expert, and even the cow racing lost it's allure after a couple of weeks. I suppose I could buy some better games for it, but I've got a new interest: golf. Yes, that's right. Golf. The game of a million geezers. I know, I know, and Tiger Woods, but face it, it's like riding a Harley. It's mainly played by geezers.

I've just played a little, but now I want my own set of clubs. And noticed they had a women's set at Costco for about what I paid for the Wii. I then had the idea that selling the Wii to my neighbour would pay for the clubs.

Why does golf appeal to me more than the Wii? Well, so far, I'm finding it more fun. And actually better exercise. Outdoors. Even if it is on such neurotically groomed grass. Who can believe that stuff is actually real? It should be an offense to make grass that behaves like astroturf, Still, being outdoors for 3 hours with my friends and then dinner beats the experience on the couch hands down.

I never thought I would play golf. Just one of those new discoveries.

Life is Pretty Good

Sorry I haven't been around much lately, but life has been pretty good. And I've been busy. Maybe a little too busy? Certainly I haven't had much time for introspection, but I still seem to have time to be a couch potato. This morning I'm only here is because I couldn't sleep. So, I've done laundry and had breakfast, done the e-mail, and so... it's either this or go to work. And I don't want to do that for another hour.

Interesting things I've discovered:

Doing things like planting stuff and cleaning up can actually make me feel better.

Sweating will not kill me.

It's possible to get through a night without chocolate.

I need to schedule regular appointments to talk to people in program about program. Not about golf or travel...

I might actually like golf. A brand new discovery. Mind you, at this point I haven't actually played a round, only been on the driving range.

Sometimes the easier way is ok. Not everything has to be done from scratch.

Just because I'm eating healthier, it doesn't mean meals can't sometimes be fairly quick and simple.

Every meal is not my Last Supper.

Lying on the deck with your feet in a still too-cool pool is almost as good as being in the pool.

It's never too late to go back to bed. Which is where I'm going right now.

Coming out the Other Side

This has been an emotionally rocky month for me. I've really had this persistent malaise for most of may and it's been tough. But today, the only day that matters, I'm doing ok. Despite the fact it's a holiday Monday here in Canada (Victoria Day), I got up at the usual time and phoned my food buddy. We rarely talk about anything earthshaking, just how's your food, but it's one of those regular aspects of my OA program that I've come to rely on. It just keeps me closer to good habits, and keeps me fairly honest about my food. Nothing earth shattering, just a new, healthier habit that helps with my sanity.

Amazingly, although I've felt like utter crap some days, I haven't binged over it and I've got almost 2 months with no binge. So that's great. But if I'm going to log some serious sanity time with the food, I need to do some more footwork. Today, my mood is such that it seems possible. I've had a great week, and I think it has everything to do with the healthy relationships I've formed with the people I've met at OA. I went on my first ever organized hike with a group because of my sponsor yesterday. 10 km, which at times felt like it was 10 k straight up and then 10 k down... my toes is sore today, but we did it! Which reminds me.... I've got to phone an OA buddy. My sponsor and this woman helped me move 3 cubic yards of topsoil I had delivered this week and we're going to repeat the favour for another OA friend who's been ill and unable to work in her garden.

Ok, I've got to go, but I just wanted to check in. Later today I'll post some more. I need to do some writing about long term abstinence. I think it's needed... Today, I've got some access to joy in my heart. What a gift.

This Too, However Weird, Will Pass

I need one of those countdown keychains, like the ones I saw in a Greenwich Village tchotche shop which count down the days until we are finally rid of Dubya, except I could use mine to predict when whatever snit I'm laboring under will end. Like Whateverthehellthatwas I had for the last 2 weeks: I thought I was depressed, but then I started noticing definite physical symptoms: my asthma ticked up, I was light headed and my stomach was dipsydo-ing and when I exercised I felt like I had concrete blocks tied to my shoes. Even worse, I couldn't run for long before having to find a bathroom! Embarrassing and inconvenient. Finally I just took a couple days off from the running and didn't do much except read novels. Whatever it was would just have to pass.

But I still wondered if all the symptoms were psychological in origin. Then today, BFF, my travelmate for the NYC trip two weeks ago phoned and said, "I don't know what's wrong with me, I'm just exhausted and my throat is kinda sore and I keep thinking I should be doing stuff, but everything just seems so hard right now!" DING DING DING! Ha! It's not me, it's a virus!

This week is much better, almost night versus day better. Happier, more active, running again, food is very good. Hopefully I can keep more of a long-term perspective the next time something like this happens.

Suddenly, Light at the End of the Tunnel

Well, it took almost another week, but I think I'm finally out of my funk. I started coming up for air on Friday, yesterday was a normal good day, and today I feel pretty good!

It seemed to be touch and go there for a while. The food really started calling loudly. I think it was late Thursday night and I felt like I was just a hair's breadth away from a binge. There was a bagel, the last one of the dozen I lugged back from NYC, and it was calling, no actually, it was bellowing my name. I tried to remember why it is I don't binge anymore, and was coming up with nothing. Logic had left town. My prehensile Lizard Brain was completely in control. Somehow, out of the fog I managed to remember how bad I would feel the next morning. But I really wanted that bagel. But then I thought, ya know, if you pray, really give it over to God, the obsession will be lifted. So, I said a very quick prayer. I'm not sure it even had words. It was more like a thought of "OK, God, it's in your court. Take it!" And suddenly it was almost as if I had swallowed the obsession. It was gone that quickly. Lifted, bada boom bada bing! I felt great. I fixed a cup of decaf chocolate spice chai (my new favorite) and then went to bed.

I have had that miracle happen before, but not often in my five plus years working an Overeaters Anonymous program. Maybe ten times at the most. More often my food choices are more quotidian, not as strong or alarming, ie, will I have an extra piece of potato, or should I have pizza this week, and should I have another piece, that sort of thing. But it's those really strong urges to binge where I really feel like I am being kneecapped by my disease, actually it's more like being forced to my knees, because that's the position I need to get out of it.

After all, five years ago it was my inability to go more than 3 days without a good binge that forced me to seriously attempt OA for a second time after a few meetings that I had half-heartedly attempted. That and my therapist throwing up her hands, metaphorically. I think it was her desperation that really threw me for a loop. I was used to my own, but here was a gutsy smart woman who I had worked with for two years and really respected, telling me that beyond residential treatment, she didn't know what else to do.

Anyway, I can see now that Thursday night I intuitively performed the first three steps of the 12 step programme:

1)I realized that I was powerless over my craving, it was driving me nuts, aka my life is unmanageable.

2) I understood that the only hope of not throwing that bagel in the nuker and digging out the butter was to appeal to some power outside of my normal field of reference. In this case I called on God, whatever God is (still have no idea, not sure it's even important to be splitting hairs at this point - whatever it is, it's worked better than my own best efforts in the past. Three university degrees hadn't done it, I had regained gained over fifty pounds with my last cum laude.

3) I made a decision to say ask God to take my obsession.

And it was immediately gone. Before I even said anything resembling a formal prayer or supplication, I stopped salivating. A light went on, there would be no bingeing tonight. It was if my freezer had suddenly been transported to Outer Mongolia.

I still don't know exactly what happened, and will it happen next time? I don't know. I can't speak to the future, and I shouldn't. Living in the future and the past just makes me miserable anyway. So, here I am. Alive, and awed, and ready to fight another day. Something which has been reinforced is the knowledge that I need to regularly re-commit to the first three steps of the programme, they are the very basis of my recovery.

I still feel that pull back to old habits, sometimes the change feels tentative even after all these years. I guess my neural pathways may take longer to change. Or as a doctor specializing in addiction told me, he believes that the old ones never leave. They may weaken, but they are still there, dormant, waiting.

Brr. Sounds pessimistic, doesn't it? Maybe, maybe not. Vigilance may be the price I pay for liberty.

Painful Honesty Ain't

Awww, do I have to? Ugh, this is gonna hurt!

Actually, I'm not sure it's going to hurt. In fact, I'm fairly sure it's not. But that is my first impulse, where my thinking goes when my switch flips and thinking becomes painful. I've spent the last 4 days feeling really bad. It happens sometimes when I return from a trip, particularly one to NYC where I just get completely overstimulated and turned on by all the art and the riches of what is available to a casual visitor. So, my brain flips out and says, "Overload overload! Shut down, shut down, NOW!"

So I did. Spent a lot of time trying to sleep. Just completely overwhelmed. How was my food... ehhhh.... not bad... I wasn't getting much exercise but I ate as if I was, so more than I needed, but I didn't binge. So I guess I should be grateful for that. I ate fairly normally. Time was, I couldn't go more than 3 days without a binge. All I did this time was have my usual evening dessert without going to the gym that day. I guess I'll survive... Wow. I really do sound sad. Ok, times like this I need to be grateful that even if my food didn't feel overly "clean". I hate that term. It attempts to polarize food, and food is impossible to completely catagorize into clean or "unclean". That kind of thinking is too much like an anorexic obsession, (ie cheese is evil, lettuce is good) and it doesn't work.

Luckily, there were a few things that got me out of bed. My choir. A board meeting. My running group (all 2 or three of us, doesn't matter, got me going). And Fuzz finally returned from his business trip, so that helped. It wasn't just me and the cats. So, it's been tough, but it's improving. It shows me that I need structure to get me out of these funks. That is where my job as an artist hasn't been particularly helpful. Nobody yells at me if I don't show up at the studio. I just don't produce. And a great deal of shame wells up in my breast. Actually, I think it wells up in my stomach, and then I eat to soothe.

AGAIN, I find myself having difficulty with night time eating. You may remember that I had declared a moratorium from eating besides 2 designated snacks after dinner. It was successful, and then, I guess I became complacent. Decided that it was ok, I could just nibble on healthy stuff. Carrots, cucumber. And again the obsession has returned, and more food has been creeping in: a little hummus, some leftover veggie curry, and cheese.. When it starts looking like another meal, not just a snack, I think, hmm... that's not looking too good.

I think I have a fear of not being able to eat again this day. Every meal feels like the Last Supper, and I guess then every snack feels like The Last Snack. It seems to be a fear of not getting enough. Enough. I think that is a metaphor for the rest of my non-food life. Somewhere, sometime, I didn't get enough. And it got translated into food. I was actually happier when I wasn't eating in the evening. After some initial discomfort, and fear, the obsession faded, and I did something else. So maybe I need to recommit to that.

As for today, as they constantly remind us, that is what we have, today. I have today. And since it is Sunday, it stretches out in front of me, full of promise, and menace. What is it about my disease that a stretch of unstructured time feels bad? I look forward to it, but I hate it. I think it has something to do with the time filling up with "shoulds". I should do this, I should be doing that, I should be stenciling the driveway. And then it looks impossible. So much housework, yardwork, paperwork, it all seems ovewhelming. And then I shut down.

It is only when I can focus down a bit, and actually attempt the things that will make me feel better, do I feel capable of functioning. Housework, for instance. It overwhelms me, but if I take just a bit of it---putting away a little laundry, or just sweeping up the worst of the crud on the kitchen floor, I feel better. So I can take it on. And inevitably, I do a little more than I thought I could accomplish. And I do feel better.

Only by taking my day down to more manageable bites, do I seem able to get through it. And like everything in my life, when my day seems more manageable, so does my food.

Ugh. Thunk. Get up again. Ugh. Thunk. Keep going. I think it gets better. If I'm honest and look at my past 5 years working the OA program in my imperfect yet very human way, I do see that things have improved greatly. 5 years ago, obese and miserable. Now, not obese and usually not miserable, but it takes work.