A Story of Recovery:

Cutting Through to Clarity

The day before school started, I thought my son needed a haircut; he adamantly disagreed.

All that was needed was a little trim to the layers around his face. I have some experience cutting hair and could have done it myself. However, I was pretty sure that, if I cut it, he’d complain about it no matter how it looked.

Having put off the task for so long, I’d limited the choices of salons to those that don’t require appointments. This meant I would not know the stylist, but I was hoping for a conspirator who would craftily convince my 12-year-old that there was a reasonable compromise between what he wanted and what I wanted. That did not happen.

The woman who cut his hair was not the least bit helpful. She ignored most of my questions and the few responses I did get were, “That’s not possible,” and “It will look weird.” I knew it was possible, and that several of his friends from hockey had the same cut.

There was a somewhat comical moment, when she started wetting his hair with a spray bottle and seemed to be oblivious to the fact that she was hitting me with the overspray. I moved out of the way, and then she moved and started spraying me again.

I was initially just confused by the whole interaction, but confusion quickly turned to anger. I’ve learned in AWOL that anger itself is not a problem, but when I take actions out of anger, I usually don’t like the consequences that follow. FA has provided me with several tools I can use to avoid having anger direct my actions; tools like writing, making a phone call, or taking even just one minute of quiet time. I did none of these things.

Instead, I declared, “Well, if you’re not going to talk to me, I guess I should just leave!” and then I made an overly dramatic exit.

I was regretting what I’d done before I even got to a chair in the waiting area. Fast-forwarding some, the haircut was awful, he was upset, I was upset, and when I tried to talk to the woman about it, she was even ruder than she’d been initially.

By the time we got to the car, my son was in tears and so was I. I’m really not much of crier, or at least I haven’t been since I got abstinent. When I was active in my food addiction, it seemed like any little thing would cause me to cry. Rather than being an expression of pain or sadness, my crying was more often an attempt to control people and situations when I wasn’t getting what I wanted, or to make people feel bad for holding me accountable for something I should or shouldn’t have done.

But these tears were mostly because I had not used my program and felt like, in the process, I’d let my son down. I’d made the situation about me, because this woman was so rude to ME and wouldn’t listen to ME, rather than remembering it should have been about my son. It might have been a teaching moment, with me modeling how to advocate for ones’ self, but instead I pulled out one of my old drama cards.

I’d like to say that I quickly turned to recovery thinking by using one of the tools I’ve already mentioned. I did not. I continued to cry off and on for longer than I care to admit. I’d stop and then start up again each time I saw his hair.

I knew it would grow back, but I was berating myself because I felt he had suffered the consequences of my character defects. To top it off, my son was consoling me, which reminded me of my old habit of using crying as manipulation. Later in the day, he asked me to buzz off all his hair. I objected at first, and then decided this would be an appropriate punishment for me.

Ugh! I’m reminded once again that I don’t just have a food problem, which means I don’t just need a diet or more exercise. I have a life problem that includes patterns of thinking and behavior that will keep me trapped in negativity and self-destruction, and which ultimately will send me back to addictive eating. Working the Steps in AWOL has shown me that these patterns are simply character defects, not moral indictments, and that character defects can be identified and then removed, in God’s time, when I’m willing to surrender them.

In the end, I buzzed off my son’s hair and he was in an amazingly good mood the rest of the day. My son’s ability to have an emotional 180 degree turn reminded me that I can choose to make that same turn myself. So I did.

What I had identified as feelings—feeling like I’d let my son down and feeling like my crying was manipulation, which spiraled into me feeling like I needed to be punished for what I did—was actually just negative thinking. I basically had ordered up a big ol’ bowl of self-pity covered with self-hate, with a side of despondency—hold the humility, thank you very much. I don’t believe that feelings are bad in any way but, as an addict, I rarely can depend on them to accurately access situations in my life and to make healthy decisions.

One of my favorite stories in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous ends with: “I’ve realized that I cannot go back and make a brand-new start. But through A.A., I can start from now and make a brand-new end.” As an active food addict, I did some really messed up things and hurt others in the process. I can’t go back and undo that damage. As a food addict in recovery, I still will make mistakes that affect other people, but if I stay abstinent, God gives me the opportunity to change what I’m doing. At any given moment, I can ask God or my FA fellows for help to make recovery-based decisions, and then take actions that will give me that brand new end.