A Story of Recovery:
Happiness as an Inside Job
When I was 23 years old, I had everything going for me. I had amazing and devoted parents whose love I never doubted. I had a wonderful relationship with both of my sisters, whom I saw and spoke to regularly. I had just graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University and had just been accepted to Brown for graduate school. I had a terrific job teaching second grade at a progressive school in Brooklyn, NY.
I lived a few blocks away in the basement apartment of my aunt and uncle’s brownstone. That apartment was the envy of my friends because it was so spacious and comfortable. My aunt and uncle and five cousins constantly reached out to me, inviting me to dinner and trying to make me feel like part of their family. I had dozens of college friends and new friends living in the NYC area and I was known for my fabulous dance parties. I had a series of boyfriends and romantic interests. Every morning, I ran four miles from my brownstone over the beautiful Brooklyn Bridge, and three times a week I attended yoga classes at a fabulous yoga center just two blocks away.
But I was completely and utterly miserable. I did not understand why I could not stop eating. I had been skinny my whole life, and was distraught to find myself in a fat body. I tried to eat moderately, but I could not last more than two days without violently bingeing. I felt achingly lonely. I regularly cried so hard that I feared I would turn inside out. I woke up with puffy eyes to go along with a tongue that was swollen from all the food I had eaten the night before. I was jealous of my sister’s beautiful figure, and was convinced that my boss didn’t like me. I was sure that I didn’t have enough friends and was confused about what I wanted to do with my life.
When I first came to FA, I just wanted to be skinny again. I knew that my life was unmanageable, but only insofar as my eating went. I had no idea that I was unable to live my life without a drug, and that the drug was poisoning my life and making me unable to see the good in it.
When I first got abstinent, I was overjoyed to be losing weight, but I could not see how I could live a regular life, weighing and measuring my food. I felt like a total freak. Today if someone asks about my dietary restrictions, I readily tell them I am in a Twelve- Step program for food addiction, but for the first couple of years, I was too ashamed to mumble anything more than, “I have food allergies.”
In almost thirteen years in Program, I have been able to stay abstinent through a diagnosis of progressive hearing loss; dating and marrying; pregnancy, bed rest, and childbirth; several surgeries; and the ups and downs of daily life. I am a regular person with a medical issue I need to attend to.
I understand today that happiness really is an inside job. My life will always be full of blessings and challenges. I spent the past few years in recovery working so hard at my job that I derived satisfaction merely from getting things done. I was not unhappy, but I was missing out on the joys of life.
Today, a new baby (the result of years of prayer) has slowed me down and I am starting each day by asking God to really help me appreciate my life. Instead of feeling grouchy that I have to wake the baby from a nap and walk to my kids’ elementary school in the rain, I pause and thank God that I have the flexibility to be there for my kids. The other day, my husband walked with us to school in the morning, and he said, “What a privilege it is to be able to do this.” Indeed.