A Story of Recovery:

Sitting With Myself

When I try to calculate the amount of weight I have gained and lost from age thirteen to forty-nine, it doesn’t make any sense. I want to believe the amnesia of this disease has made me miscalculate. But the truth is that I have swung between fifteen to fifty pounds every two to five months for the past thirty-six years. The most conservative estimate I can calculate is 1200 pounds of weight variation. The clothes sizes filling my closet were from 6 to 14, which meant I did not stand out as extremely heavy very often. My disease was beating me up less obviously, but not less viciously. I was a slave to progressive binging. I tried to control my disease with extreme restricting over and over and over again.

I could not gather myself up to restrict again. The only hope I clung to for thirty-five years was that this time I would restrict myself better. I tied all the balloons of expectation and self-worth to this accomplishment. I came close to what I thought was an acceptable weight many, many times. That is when the cruelest aspect of this disease would rear its head; I didn’t love myself any more being thin than being big. I couldn’t sit with myself with any acceptance, at any weight. With my addict-head driving the bus and my disease whispering in my ear, I’d dive into the food again; leaving size 6 in the dust. The food numbed the agony of my inability to love myself at any weight. It was the only way I knew to fill, what I now know was a gaping spiritual hole. I crawled to a Twelve Step program for overeaters (OA) and began my path to recovery. I am grateful for my time in OA, though I tried to do it all myself (my lifelong pattern) without a sponsor and defining my own abstinence. After almost a year in OA, I felt my abstinence slipping and I realized that I needed help.

I opened a local paper I had almost never picked up and saw a notice for FA. When I walked into the FA meeting, I was warmly welcomed by people who were shining with belief; people who walked the walk of recovery.

It’s been four and a half months since I came to FA. I cannot express the gratitude I feel for being led so gently, yet so earnestly (I believe by my Higher Power) to this program. I now know how much I needed discipline. I need the discipline of being on my knees for 30 minutes every morning, calling my sponsor at early every morning, reading the 24 Hours book and Big Book daily, weighing and measuring my committed food, making my phone calls (my biggest challenge), writing, making my meetings and AWOL weekly, and helping where and when I can. It is with these disciplines that I have discovered a true relationship and feeling of acceptance from my Higher Power, which has been quite a journey in itself, since I identified myself as an Atheist previously. Being quiet for 30 minutes each day, and being quiet for 90 days helped me listen, really listen. The messages I began to hear from meetings, literature, CDs and in my morning quiet time were filled with love, acceptance and hope rather than the judgment, self-loathing, shame and resentment that had been angrily filling my head for so long.

Desperation helped me become willing and listening helped me arrest or at least question my beliefs and my lack of belief.

I have a lot of wreckage to clear away. I have been angry, mostly at myself, but as my disease progressed, my anger leaked out of me at work, at home and in friendships. At times I used anger to make me feel powerful and at times I felt I was becoming as powerless over it as I was my food. The fall-outs from my anger have made me feel ashamed, especially when I have yelled at my kids. I have gotten better at apologizing and they seem better at forgiving me than I have been.

Previously, I was frightened to take an honest look at myself, because I felt, being so far from perfection and unable to fix myself, that I was worthless. During my daily quiet time of the past four and a half months, I have invited my Higher Power’s presence to sit with me and gradually I have come to feel held with a loving kindness I had never dreamed of before. Day by day I have received acceptance, love and encouragement from this same presence, which I believe grants me abstinence a day at a time, as long as I am willing to walk this walk to the best of my ability. And I am finding that sometimes walking this walk just means sitting with myself and coming to know that, with my Higher Power at my side, I am enough.