The Miracle Will Happen One Day

Blog 13th to the 24th April 2015 It’s been almost two weeks since I last blogged. That sounds a little like it’s been two weeks since my last confession. Sometimes I feel I write my blog like a confession. A confession to myself that these things have happened and by typing them out it confirms the truth and makes it more real. Out of my head and on to the paper. My last blog was very desperate and dark; I was struggling big time and wanted to escape in food. It all seemed inevitable and helpless. I knew what to do, I had the tools of recovery, what I lacked was the willingness. Then something important happened in the form of an OA meeting. We read a story from lifeline which helped considerably. It was about a woman who was bulimic and was vomiting up to twenty times a day. I related to it, in the year before doing anything about my food addiction I had been in the same situation, my gastric band had been tightened to within an inch of its life on my orders and I was regurgitating up to ten times a day, sometimes more sometimes less. It was horrendous; at each meal I was anxious, I would sit there consciously aware that I would have to leave the table and throw up but desperately wanting to feed myself and unable to stop. I would leave the table throw up then return to the table to try and get more food down, invariably being disappointed and frustrated when I couldn’t and I would need to run to the toilet to throw up again. Eating out was a misery, I would insist on eating out then spend the whole experience running back and forth to the toilet. Owen would then get angry (understandably so) which would make me more nervous and it would happen more. I felt guilty as he had paid for the damn band which I perceived meant that he didn’t love me the way I was and wanted me thin. This was despite the fact that I had asked for the money for the operation. Owen didn’t understand my eating disorder, how could he? If I couldn’t get it or understand it what hope did he have? All he saw was that he had paid for an operation out of his grandmother’s inheritance and I was not even trying to stick to the recommended diet that the consultant and dietician had advised. I couldn’t stick to it because I was a compulsive overeater and food addict, but neither of us knew that back then. Owen would then look at me with disgust and anger and I picked up on this and ate more to comfort and reassure myself. It was hell, my physical health was suffering, and my teeth were (and still are) in a shocking state. The only foods I could keep down were chocolate, sweets cakes, biscuits; these trigger foods would slip down past the band with gay abandon. I was getting no nutritional value from foods and my weight remained the same. Looking back it was horrifically unhealthy and madness. When I ate with my mother my trips to the toilet were even more frequent as my fear of being criticised for eating too much became too stressful and I often couldn’t keep anything down. As we read that story in OA I was taken back and instead of beating myself up I listened and actually patted myself on the back. I had come a long way. OK I was not perfect a long way from it but I was making slow but steady progress. I was losing weight albeit slowly. I was eating mainly healthily, I was eating regularly, I had apart from on a few occasions abstained from eating my trigger foods. I did still over eat but it wasn’t through triggers. I had for the most part eaten in the right places. In fact I had much to be grateful for. I had coped. This was my primary addiction and it was not going to vanish in a few weeks. My preoccupation could still be there but it was manageable and it did pass. This is turning a negative around and making in into a positive. I could have wallowed in misery and pity but that would have taken me to the end of the road and a ‘sod it’ moment which would have taken me back into the food. I don’t want to go back into the food. I do not want that emotional attachment with food any more. It has taken too much of my life and now I need to learn to manage it and come alongside it. It can be my ally, it can show me where I don’t want to be, it can alert me to the fact that I am not spiritually or mentally healthy and that I need to take action - change or step up my recovery. Food can be my friend and motivator not my enemy. I may have been taking it a little too seriously, we do not live in a famine-torn country, I will not starve to death, and it is not a life or death situation if I do not get to eat a box of Krispy Crème donuts. I need balance and perspective. I also need to stop comparing or getting jealous of others in OA who get it. The important thing is to keep attending these recovery-oriented meetings. They are on their path I am on mine, we are different. I am different and unique; my experience is going to be very different to that of others. I am where I am supposed to be at the moment. I need to take it easy and have faith that the miracle will happen one day. Julie