A Story of Recovery:

I didn’t find FA, it found me.

My childhood was stormy, and whenever the sky looked dark, I turned to food. My parents divorced when I was four, and I lived with my mother and three older siblings.

Fear was a constant in our house. My mother’s first husband was a paranoid schizophrenic, who hurt my mom on a particularly bad night. When my mom’s brother confronted him, they got into a brawl that ended in bloodshed, and my mom’s husband was institutionalized for life. He broke out of the facility more than once, and we lived in fear of his repeated threats toward my mother. My mom’s brother fell into serious addiction, murdered a woman in a drug-induced rage, and called from prison on a regular basis. We were all frightened of him.

My mother was single for a long time, with four kids to support. She did her best to keep the cupboards stocked and our home comfortable, but it was at the cost of being largely absent from our lives. The older kids were teenagers and not around much, which left me with unfettered access to a well-stocked kitchen and no supervision at all. I ate whenever and whatever I wanted, ran the streets long after all the neighbor kids were called home, didn’t wash my hair, and certainly never did my homework. I did know how to cook, however.  Food was my constant companion and my sole source of comfort and wellbeing.

I quickly became despondent about the cruelty of the world without holding myself accountable for my selfish and greedy behavior. I took the biggest piece of everything and raided the fridge on grocery day so I could be first to get all the best stuff crammed into my face. I didn’t feel shame about what I ate. I paid little attention to the needs or desires of others, and never drew the connection between my behavior and my lack of friends.

When I started middle school, my father and mother each remarried. My mom’s new husband was a mercurial man who deeply loathed her children, so within the year, all the other kids moved out. My brother went to live with some neighbors, my eldest sister lived with my grandparents, and my other sister moved in with friends out of state. I spent a long time being angry at them for leaving me with the man.

My dad and stepmom invited me to live with them very soon after, and that was one of the happiest moments in my life. They had three younger children, who have been the only exceptions to my growing apathy toward other people.  My new family was so very different from my old one.  We had meals together and went on trips.  Money wasn’t tight, and everyone got along. As far as I was concerned, they were perfect. The only thing wrong was me. My stepmom spent a good deal of time trying to civilize me. Her heart was in the right place, but I didn’t take direction willingly. Over time I did learn proper hygiene and minimal social graces, but I never let go of the food. I ate in secret, when everyone was in bed.

Up to that time, I had developed in really only one significant way: I grew armor plating. Everything about me was for protection and defense from whatever demons I thought might jump out at me. Flour and sugar were my best defense. I felt safe and loved in the arms of a good dessert. I weighed 180 pounds when I started high school. I found the scariest kids I could and clung to them for social safety.

My relationship with food escalated to a deep obsession. I would starve myself for a day or two and then binge on sweets. The increase in my flour intake brought apathy and caused me to view life like it was a movie. Nothing I did mattered because nothing seemed real. My feelings were muffled, like I was experiencing life through a thick curtain. I committed crimes, skipped school, did drugs, hung out in the bad side of town, and got into fights. My dad and stepmom gave me freedom as long as my grades were good.

My strategy for social survival had some holes in it, obviously. I did the things I did so that I could feel safe, but in doing so, I got myself into some very unsafe situations and my nervousness increased. While my friends got into hard-core drug use, I got into hard-core food use.  I survived high school by some miracle, but not everyone did. My best friend over-dosed and passed away.

I arrived at college in a fog.  I had let my life become so strange and stretched in unusual directions that I had zero social skills to handle the new environment. I couldn’t relate to my peers, I isolated, and I just barely attended my classes. I spent days and weeks alone with food.

I managed to graduate, but when I did, I weighed 240 pounds and stayed around that weight for the next 10 years. I didn’t care about anything. There I was, 22 years old, with the world open to me and the old demons so far away that I couldn’t even see them anymore, but I kept on preparing for battle, steeling myself again.

For the next eight years or so I ate, watched TV, played video games, and worked just enough to pay for all that. My apathy loomed larger and larger until that’s all there was. I let my electricity get shut off, not for lack of funds, but because I couldn’t be bothered to pay it. Then I would rage and rant at the injustice of the utility company for cutting me off.  I would scramble to get it back on so I could be left alone with my food and TV. I let my car get repossessed and told myself it was “their” fault as well. I felt surrounded by injustice and corporate greed. That was the problem; it was surely not me.

Eventually I met a man who showed interest in me romantically. It was the first time that had happened, and I wasn’t interested in him, but I dated him anyway. I was getting older, and that’s what real people did, right? His interest waned, but the relationship suited me because I could eat what I wanted, come and go as I pleased without any interference, and could tell people I was in a relationship! What could be better? We decided to get married, but he called it off a week before the large wedding I had planned. I wasn’t sad about his leaving because I just couldn’t care about anything other than my own comfort. I was, however, devastated that I had allowed myself to get into that situation. I had to admit my own failure.

When he left, I found a whole new level of food addiction. I got to 256 pounds and I started to have a variety of health problems, including becoming pre-diabetic and having ankles that would no longer hold my weight in the morning.  I started to figure out that food was maybe not such a great friend after all.

I didn’t find FA, it found me. One day my stepmom and I had an argument when I flew into a rage and told her she didn’t know anything about weight problems and couldn’t understand because she obviously didn’t have the addiction that I had. I told my stepmom I wished there was an AA program for me. Soon after that, my stepmom met a client for lunch, who opened up about her food program. That brave act may have seemed small to her, but it saved my life. When my stepmom sat down with this woman, she learned that a program like AA did in fact exist, and she called me immediately.

Thank God I was in an area where there are so many FA meetings and such a large fellowship.  I went to a meeting that week, and I resisted. I took the food plan and ran back to my solitude, but it doesn’t matter because I knew even then that FA was a perfect fit. I came back. The curtain has been lifted, and I have a shot now at being a real person, not just a walking defense mechanism. I certainly appreciate the 60 pounds I have lost, but I’m beginning to understand how much I have been missing. I realize that my fear of life had became more of a burden than the danger of living, that my armor is so much heavier and destructive than the dangers I face. I am learning that it’s okay to fall on your face once in a while and to make poor choices, if you learn from them. I am learning that facing your own failings is how you stave off perpetual guilt.  I am learning.