Meditation: Growth

This last week has been a difficult one.  My boyfriend broke up with me.  My ex-husband took my son to see his family in Texas for Easter.  But most importantly, after looking at the relationship patterns I've gravitated towards, I realized that I use love as a drug - and I'm referring to that Hallmark, Valentine's Day kind of love, not the truly deep and intimate kind of love.  When things get bad, I move from one relationship into another - keeping a casual distance, putting the new person on a pedestal, and waiting for things to collapse before starting the process immediately over again. 

This is just one more outlet for my disease to keep me from coping with life, and so I have a cross addiction that I am now dealing with.  Which means I spent this week managing an empty house and a breakup without food, without alcohol, and without the lure of seeking out a new romantic partner.

Being without my son is always tough, but on Easter it was particularly difficult.  So last night I decided that it was time to do a guided meditation.  When working on my Second Step, I learned a number of guided meditations designed to help me grow closer to my Higher Power. 

My favorite of these meditations is one that involves going into your "inner temple."  The process is simple.  Lie down and get comfortable.  Picture that there is a light (pick a relaxing color, mine is a teal color but yours can be anything you like) that is moving from your feet and filling your body as it goes up to your head.  Once you are in a safe little cocoon of relaxation, let yourself drift up and out of your body.  You are going up and up to the clouds.  Ahead you see a big fluffy white cloud and your cocoon stops there and you step out onto that cloud.  Ahead of you is your temple.

The meditation goes on to tell you to approach the temple and go inside.  You let your mind wander and just watch what you do in there - it's like semi-active dreaming. 

It's up to you to picture what your temple looks like.  My temple used to always be a Greek ruin with a few tendrils of ivy going up the side.  The inside had broken floors - it looked like a place that had not seen a human being in centuries (if not longer).  There was a lone stone altar in the center, but nothing else.  I have always loved my meditation trips to my temple because I thought it was beautiful and special. (A bit of foreshadowing . . .)

I couldn't seem to get into my teal cocoon this time.  Instead I felt like I was being sucked into a black hole.  I was trapped inside this little popcorn kernel shaped shell, curled into fetal position - and it was like this that I went up to my clouds.  I thought about stopping the meditation and starting over, but figured I'd go with it.

This time when I went into my temple, it was like a lush botanical garden.  The structure was the same - the same pillars and vines, but this time the whole place was surrounded by lush plants and hanging vines of flowers. The floors were old and worn, still ancient, but they had that well-kept look that you see in old cathedrals in Europe.  My stone altar was still in the center, but it had a pristine white table cloth on it, with candles and flowers.  On one side of the altar there now was a throne where I knew my Higher Power sat.  Instead of a place of decay, everything was pristine - as though it was millennia old, but had been loved every single day of its long, long life.

Looking around my temple, I realized that the changes I was seeing were a reflection of my growth in program.  I am no longer a barren, broken down human being.  My temple before was very pretty, but this place was beautiful beyond compare.  I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude that I was given this chance to see the changes in myself.  After how rough this week has been, I'd been feeling like I had made no progress whatsoever - and yet here was the proof to the contrary.

I looked around and didn't see my Higher Power anywhere, but somehow I knew he wasn't far.  I looked down and in my hand there was the little kernel with me inside, and I realized it was a seed.  Down at the base of the throne there was a missing stone with a plot of really rich smelling soil.  I'm not much of a gardener (as my poor half-dead vegetable garden can attest) but if I were a plant, that is the kind of soil I'd want to live in!  So that's exactly what I did.  I knelt down and planted the seed that was me, and stepped back.  I knew that I had planted my seed in a safe place and that my Higher Power was there to watch me grow.  I didn't have to worry about water or sunshine - my Higher Power had that part.

I knelt down next to the plot of dirt and told my seed-self, "I know it hurts now, and I know growing is a struggle.  But keep fighting, because it will all be worth it once you break the surface and see the sunshine."  I was picturing my seed-self pushing against the walls of the seed, breaking out and struggling against the dirt to push up and to the sunshine. I realized that the feelings I'm having now are just that - I'm pushing through the dirt trying to reach the sunshine.

I came to after that and felt this sense of peace.  I know days are going to be difficult, but just for today I can have faith that the sunshine is going to be worth it.

I don't know if these meditations are just my subconscious giving me the information I need or a way for my Higher Power to reach  me, but either way: message gratefully received.

Full of Feelings - And Right-Sizing Them

I've had a bit of an emotional week.  After much prayer and meditation, I realized that I needed to have a frank discussion with my boyfriend about what being with an addict entails.  I talked to him about the possibility of relapse, and what that could look like. 

Being a compulsive overeater, my relapse looks very different from that of the alcoholic or the drug addict.  I am killing myself every bit as much as those addicts when I am in my disease.  The difference is that I'm doing so in a quiet way that one simply doesn't talk about.  Sure the concerned family member might note I had gained weight, or someone might ask if I was still going to meetings.  But ultimately it isn't the kind of addiction that you can get court-ordered to do something about.

I asked my boyfriend if he was willing to stay knowing that relapse would always be a risk.  He knows I work a strong program.  He knows I am putting program first.  He knows that I intend to do everything in my power to stay in the rooms, because that's where life is.  But after having a slip, I knew that the only way I could continue with him was knowing that he wouldn't suddenly be blind-sided if I relapsed after we were married with children. 

He took my question very seriously, and has been thinking about it all week.  It isn't so much the prospect of me being obese that concerns him (while he wouldn't enjoy that aspect of relapse).  What concerns him is that he will be watching me kill myself and be unable to do anything to stop it.  In fact, if he tries to interfere, he may be hindering my recovery.  That is the aspect that has him concerned.  In his mind, that is a lot of responsibility and potential conflict.  So he has not ended things, but he is taking time to truly think things over.

I appreciate that he is taking this seriously, because it is something that I take seriously.  But being left in suspense is an uncomfortable and frightening place.  I took the action that I felt was in the best interest of my program.  Food had gotten loud and I realized it was my anxiety over how my relationship might interfere with my program.  So I did what was necessary to resolve that anxiety.  In the process I created a different anxiety. 

Today I was feeling that perhaps it would be better to simply end the relationship.  It would give me certainty and end that fear and that powerlessness that I'm so uncomfortable with.  I would choose loneliness and isolation instead - those are feelings that I'm far more at home with. 

Then I learned that my friend lost his battle with cancer, leaving his wife and their four children behind.  Boy didn't that put my life into perspective.  I'm in a huff because my boyfriend is taking time to consider whether he wants to take our relationship to a more serious level.  Yet my friend's wife is mourning the loss of the love of her life.  I will see my boyfriend on Friday.  She will never see her husband again. 

It was a very humbling and I felt ashamed to realize how ungrateful I was for the blessings in my life.  I have a relationship that for today is very wonderful and beautiful, and I was willing to throw it away because of fear.  I might lose him later so I'll throw him away today. . . when there are countless widows who would do anything to get just one more day with their loved ones.  It is entirely possible that my boyfriend will tell me he wants to part ways when I see him this Friday.  If that happens, I will wish him the best and thank my Higher Power for the time I had with him.  But to throw away the possibility of a future with him simply because I was uncomfortable with the uncertainty is ridiculous.

So for a while I stopped thinking about my problems.  I started thinking about those things I was grateful for.  I spent time getting my emotions shrunk down to the right sizes for the situation. 

Then I spent time mourning my friend, because he deserved to be mourned.  I sat down alone on my sofa and I held a small conversation with him.  I thanked him for the things he brought to my life, apologized for anything I could think of that might warrant an amends (and then a few things that probably didn't).  I sat with a Kleenex box and said my good bye.  Then I moved on to work on my program.  I feel very keenly the void my friend will leave in my life, but I know that I must accept the things I cannot change. Sadly, death is one of those.

The Fix

I am sad to say that when I am looking for guru style inspiration, I turn to my favorite blog for a fix.  I love the Big Book and the literature, but there is something a slight bit naughty about finding inspiration in "non-approved literature".  It sounds like something that I should be reading with a flashlight under my covers at night! Only in this case it is a blog by a man who has been over 20 years sober in AA.

The thing I love about speaker meetings is that I almost invariably go away with one sentence that is going to pop back in my head when I most need it.  I heard one speaker refer to these as "God shots" - and he always waited to hear his God shot of the day. [See what I did there?] 

I have learned in my brief time in program that the people with years of abstinence have been absorbing years of God shots that they drop like bread crumbs for us newbies to follow.  Which points out two things: 1) how important it is to have these old timers around to help us youngins, and 2) just how badass and awesome I am going to sound in a few years when I can drop these stolen borrowed gems of wisdom in meetings and blow the minds of the newcomers.

My God shot today came after a discussion with a family friend who is going on 22 years sober in AA.  We were talking about the tendency to replace our addictions.  So of course, up pops a blog entry dealing with the same subject.  The post is about what old timers mean when they say The Road Gets Narrower, and here is the quote that stood out to me:

"When it comes to "fixing" here's the secret, and I learned it the hard way: I will never be able to change how I feel by trying to take something in. I will never be able to let go of the fear or the resentment by consuming -- be it food or goods or people. I cannot fill the hole inside by taking things in -- the only way to shrink the hole is to reverse the flow. It's by giving (of myself, of my time, or my experience, to help others) that I am healed and literally "fixed", that I am filled -- not by taking in."  - Mr. Sponsorpants

Chapter 1 - Bill's Story - page 1

"Here was love, applause,war; moments sublime with intervals hilarious.  I was part of life at last, and in the midst of the excitement I discovered [food]." - page 1

Growing up I remember my mother's valiant efforts to teach me reasonable eating habits.  Considering that she had her own issues with food, this was more a situation of the blind leading the blind.  Not that she is a compulsive overeater by any means, but she has had a conflicted relationship with food as long as I can remember.  Food was her great love and her great enemy, as she often showed with her almost religious dedication to exercise and dieting.  There wasn't a fad diet or crazy medicine she hadn't tried to help her fight what she saw as her own personal battle of the bulge.  That she never got beyond what someone might call a "normal" weight never mattered.  It was the fear of obesity that rode her back like a pitchforked demon.

So it was with a sense of wonder and awe that I discovered my first weeks in college that there was no one watching me.  No one cared what I ate or didn't eat.  I could binge on Fruit Loops for dinner and no one would even blink!  I had a cafeteria with a wealth of junk food round the clock to cater to my whims and fancies.  I was an adult with my own choices and mistakes to be made, and I discovered food in all its glutenous glory.  I slept at insane hours, shirked my classes as it pleased me, ate what I pleased, spent time with whomever I pleased - I was free at last.

That first semester I gained my freshman fifteen and then some.  I was out the gates and heading headlong into disaster with a smile on my face.

"I was very lonely and again turned to [food]." - page 1

All my life I have had a feeling that there is some part of me that's missing.  It's this gaping hole inside that I have tried to fill with success, love, excitement, sex, food, and even pain during my stint as a cutter. 

I can't say I've gone more than a week without some love interest or another since I was fourteen years old.  In those times when I didn't have some romance to moon over I was despondent.  I would starve myself, vomit up whatever I ate, and exercise like a fiend until I finally attracted a new boyfriend.  And then I would wait until the new rush passed before finding someone new, wait until the new relationship was a guarantee, and then leap between boyfriends.  I stayed with men I was no longer interested in so I would have someone there until I found the replacement because the thought of being alone was too terrible.

When I had my son, I felt like that missing piece had been filled and said "ah ha! This is at last the source of my problem!  I was missing my baby and never even knew it!" With that I promptly quit OA and went on to live my life as a normal person. But nine months later I was back in the program again.  My son does fill my life in ways that I never dreamed possible, but the fact remained that when he was in bed that gaping chasm would open up once more to swallow me whole.  Then I would turn to food once more to help comfort me.

But during those times when I didn't have someone to distract me from the loneliness I would eat and eat and eat.  I would go to multiple drive-thrus, ordering huge quantities of food until I had enough to feed a reasonable person for days.  I would even order extra drinks so that people at the restaurants would think I was ordering for multiple people.  But something tells me that a nearly 300 pound woman ordering multiple burgers, fries, onion rings, and deserts plus a few drinks wasn't going to fool them - especially if they happened to see the three other bags of fast food sitting on my other side.

So I picked food to be my solace all the while hiding away in my lonely little apartment so no one could see me eat away my loneliness.  The bigger I got, the more I turned to food - relationship or no relationship - to ease the emptiness inside.  Even after having had a gastric bypass I'd order food like before and then eat it slowly until all of it was inside my stomach.  I was never able to gain back all my weight, but it wasn't from lack of trying.  I would eat to the point of vomiting, clear my stomach, and then eat again in an unending cycle of binge and loathing. 

I would hate myself before I even started the binge, dread the feelings of misery that would result as I took each bite, but was completely powerless to stop myself. So even as I ordered the food I felt that sense of dread and self-hate, and wished I could just stop those words from coming out of my mouth.   But it was like I was a horrified passenger, along for the ride in my own personal never-ending nightmare.

"I fancied myself a leader . . . . My talent for leadership, I imagined, would place me at the head of vast enterprises which I would manage with the utmost assurance." - page 1

Feeling ugly as a child, I had to find another avenue for self-worth.  To that end, I focused on education as my key to making my family proud of me.  I was blessed that in high school and even in my undergraduate years I was able to excel in honors courses with little hard work.  It was the best of all worlds, bringing me accolades with little real effort.  By the time I decided to go to law school, I saw no reason why this should change. 

Of course I was wrong.  The thing about being at the top of your high school class is that you are the best in your little pond.  There has been no sorting of the students to give you real competition outside of your honors and advanced placement courses.  Then you arrive at college where in theory you are with the top students from high schools around the country.  But then you finish undergraduate studies at the top of your class and believe yourself to be one of the best and the brightest.  And you are.  You are selected for a top law program in the nation and you go there expecting to glide through that program as effortlessly as before.  Except there's one hitch.  You're now among the best of the best in the universities. 

This is a rarefied group where you are no longer a unique snowflake - you are just like everyone else.  And then the real sorting comes down to who is willing to work the hardest, because everyone is of about equal intelligence.  Those who are willing to make the most sacrifices are the ones who will win out in the grade pool.

So it was that after my first semester in law school I discovered that I was in the middle of the pack and in dire need of a place for my first summer internship.  These are already difficult positions to come by - all firms expect you to find something, but no one wants to hire you!  And I then realized that I was no longer a special snowflake, and my intelligence alone was not going to get me to the top of anything.  Unused to having to work hard, I floundered and I began to drown.

My ego took a deathly blow, and with it so too did my waistband.  While I had gained ten pounds from stress that first semester, in the next two years I would go on to gain another sixty pounds.  I went to grad school wearing a size fourteen and left wearing a size 24. 

The bigger I got, the worse my job prospects, and the worse my job prospects the bigger I got.  I tried crazy diets, all liquid diets, medically supervised diets, you name it. Nothing seemed to work!  I dieted and exercised like a fiend, and I don't really recall actually breaking the diets.  I could have sworn that I was giving it my all - exercising what I thought was herculean willpower.  But nothing helped.

I can still remember the day I went to the doctor at age 24 and heard that I would be dead by age 30 unless I got bariatric surgery.  I was reactive hypoglycemic and had what they called Metabolic Syndrome X.  Even if I was able to control my eating, my body was so broken, they said, that I was going to be unable to sustain meaningful weight loss without surgical intervention.  So it was with great remorse that I researched and ultimately had a rou-en y gastric bypass.

Old Timer's Prayer

I came across this prayer while reading a really neat blog my sponsor told me about - Mr. Sponsorpants

OLD TIMER'S PRAYER

Lord, keep me from the habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion.

 

Release me from the craving to straighten out everybody's affairs.

 

Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details - give me wings to get to the point.

 

I ask for the grace to listen to the tales of others pains. Help me to endure them in patience.

 

But seal my lips on my own aches and pains - they are increasing and my love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by.

 

Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally it is possible that I may be mistaken.

 

Keep me reasonably sweet. I do not want to be a saint - some of them are so hard to live with - but a sour old person is one of the crowning works of the devil.

 

Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places and talents in unexpected people. And give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so.

 

Make me thoughtful, but not moody; helpful, but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to use it all - but Thou knowest, Lord, that I want a few friends in the end.

Preface - xxx-xxxii

The Doctor's Opinion

"These men were not [eating] to escape; they were [eating] to overcome a craving beyond their mental control." - pg. xxx

A lot of people associate binge eating with emotional comforting.  But I found, especially when the cravings were hitting me bad, that it didn't seem to be any particularly emotional or stressful time that was causing me to eat.  This was not the "I just got dumped" ice cream binge.  I tried to find justifications for the eating - I worked hard today so this is my reward, or I didn't get a lot of sleep so I'm eating to make up for being so tired, or I'm eating because I'm bored.  But the reality often was that I was eating because I constantly was thinking about food.  It had nothing to do with what was going on around me, but everything to do with the fact that I woke up thinking about food and spent the whole day fantasizing about what I was going to eat.  Then when it came time to eat I couldn't pick what I was going to eat so I ate it all.  Sometimes I ate to spite my parents, or to reward myself.  Often I ate even when I didn't want to because I just couldn't seem to stop myself!

"There is the type of man who is unwilling to admit that he cannot take a drink.  He plans various ways of drinking.  He changes his brand or his environment." - pg. xxx

I think for a while this was me.  I used to say I didn't have an eating problem - I just needed to try a different diet.  Once I got on the right diet I would stick to it and I would lose the weight and there wouldn't be a problem because if I gained a few pounds I'd just hop right back on.  But that's just not the case.

"There is the type who always believes that after being entirely free from [compulsive eating] for a period of time he can take a [bite] without danger." - pg. xxx

This was me after my first stint with OA.  I remember that after having had my son, I thought I was fine. I was losing weight while nursing and instead of thinking about food all day I was thinking about my baby and about how badly I wanted to sleep.  I thought I was cured!  Whatever chemical defect caused the binging was clearly fixed now that my body had "reset itself" with the pregnancy and I could live the life of a normal person again.  Yeah right. 

"Then there are types entirely normal in every respect except in the effect [food] has upon them. They are often able, intelligent, friendly people." - pg. xxx

This is probably me now.  I understand I have a problem.  I understand that I need to stay away from compulsive eating behaviors - I just can't do it alone.

"This phenomenon, as we have suggested, may be the manifestation of an allergy which differentiates these people, and sets them apart as a distinct entity.  It has never been, by any treatment with which we are familiar, permanently eradicated.  The only relief we have to suggest is entire abstinence." - pg. xxx

This is the cruel joke of food addictions.  You can live without alcohol.  You can live without nicotine.  You can live without heroine or cocaine or meth.  But you can't live without food.  I once thought I would be fine if they could just feed me through an IV. That would be perfect, or so I thought.  I'd never have to worry about what I ate and I would always get the exact nutrition I needed.  Except that isn't going to work.  Abstinence in OA terms is such a varying concept from person to person.  I heard a speaker say that their abstinence is reporting their food truthfully in an email to their sponsor.  Another person has a list of items he cannot eat.  My abstinence now involves eating a specific meal plan every single day.  There is no one "entire abstinence" that we can sign on for and be fixed.  All we can do is try our best to pick our sponsor and pick our abstinence and hope it makes a difference for us.

"He had lost everything worthwhile in life and was only living, one might say, to [eat]." - pg. xxxi

I found that when I was heaviest into the food I would isolate myself from the world.  I wouldn't talk to people, I wouldn't accept invites to events.  I would get food and sit in my room eating all day long.  I'd play video games or read books and try to shut out the world.  I wouldn't get dressed most days, and often would not even shower because then I'd have to see myself out of my baggy sleep shirt.  If I didn't see myself getting fatter, then there wasn't a problem.  I was an ostrich with my head in the sand, and my day involved eating and those things I had to do between meals.

"From a trembling, despairing, nervous wreck, had emerged a man brimming over with self-reliance and contentment." - pg. xxxi

This is the hope.  I am still that trembling, despairing, nervous wreck.  I am so anxious about my body and my weight and my food and my abstinence that I am a complete mess.  I want to be that self-reliant and content person.  I keep hoping and hoping that I will get there.