Hi again

Hey, it's the prodigal compulsive overeater. I'm not doing so well right now. I'm eating fairly well. Not being compulsive for the most part. But I feel very fat. That's always the hardest part for me. I just want to be thin and I feel so gross. I went to a wedding this past weekend, and I bought a really pretty dress, and I felt so pretty in it but when I saw pictures of myself I saw that I wasn't pretty at all. I looked like an ugly girl in a pretty dress.

I can't afford to see a psychiatrist, which I desperately need to do. And I can't seem to motivate myself to go to the gym, which I should also do. I work 9-10 hours a day, and by the time I get home the last thing I want to do is get into a pair of shorts and sneakers and hit the treadmill.

So, I'm depressed, I feel fat, I feel ugly and I have no motivation. I've been trying to pray more, but all I can think when I do that is that I'm talking to myself or to a giant black hole of nothingness. I am sad.

I'm going to an OA meeting tonight, and that usually makes me feel better. But oftentimes I don't say what I'm really feeling because I know I'll end up crying. As open and welcoming as an OA meeting is, I don't want to cry in front of a room full of strangers. Sigh.

I've also been dreaming about my dad a lot. A few nights ago I dreamed that he had a heart attack several floors into a subway system and I had no cell service so I couldn't call 911, and by the time I reached the surface he had died.

Last night I dreamed that he came to visit me in Silver Spring and I showed him my new apartment. In my dream he wasn't having much trouble walking and we were getting along...two things that pretty much never happen.

I feel this is a sign of some kind, but I'm not sure what. I tend to believe that our dreams reveal things to us from our subconscious that we have trouble seeing while awake. But I also believe that they can just represent those things that are on our mind the most at any given moment, and my dad has been on my mind a lot lately. He's been very present in my Step 9 work, especially since I'm having a lot of trouble accepting the fact that I should apologize to him.

In any case, that's it. Maybe I'll blog more now.

I'm back

Once again, I have not updated for a long time. Sorry about that...if I even have any readers left to apologize to. haha.

Anyway, I once again "attended" a phone meeting tonight. And I heard one thing I really loved; one woman said, "My food is quiet. Isn't doesn't sing and dance anymore."

I just LOVE that. Quiet food...what a thought.

It's been a rough couple of weeks, and I've finally got back to abstinence the past few days with the help of a good friend.

I think I'm going to do a gratitude list:

1. Gwen, always there, for OA and anything else. She'll never know what she means to me.
2. Mithun, my boyfriend, who for some unfathomable reason loves me still.
3. My co-workers, for letting me go home when I'm sick. Actually, for MAKING me go home when I'm sick, even when there's tons of work to do at the office.
4. For my Dad, who inspired me to make a call that I should have made weeks ago.
5. For all my good friends, OA and otherwise, who are more like family than anything else.
6. For corticosteroids...without which I may not be breathing right now (terribly cold combined with asthma...not so good).
7. Phone meetings
8. My iPhone (I know...lame. But hey, you do what you gotta do haha)
9. Cats. I just love them. They're just so goddamn adorable. I sort of wish I had one haha

Okay, good night!

I tried to pray today, oh boy...(sung as "A day in the life")

It's so striking to me how some days can be so easy and some days can be so hard. And it's even weirder in that the more stressed I am, the better I am about food! Not always, but it does seem that normal days, days where I have nothing to be worried about at all, are the days I want to eat the most. I've tried for so long to figure out how and why this could possibly be, and the only thing I can think of is that when I'm stressed, I'm distracted. I simply have other things on my mind that take precedence over food. When I'm not stressed, when I'm just relaxing, watching TV, I am so much more alone. The food has more room to occupy in my mind.

Or perhaps, subconsciously, I'm afraid of my thoughts. You know, the self hatred, the loneliness, the fear, blah blah blah. Maybe I let the food sneak in so I have something else to think about.

Anyone else have a similar issue?

In other news, I meant to post this awhile ago, and I never did! I guess I just forgot. It's from about 3 weeks ago:

Tonight, I prayed. I bowed down on the floor, arms stretched out in front of me, legs under my stomach, eyes closed, and prayed.

Well, I tried to pray. I kept thinking about the Paul McCartney concert. So, instead of trying to speak, I just imagined myself bowed down before the Universe. The Universe is my HP, so I thought this was appropriate. I wanted to feel small. So, I bowed down to the Universe, which I imagine basically as space…eternal black of the abyss, with the twinkling of stars and planets every so often, and I, bowed down, floating in space.

I could smell my carpet, which reminded me I needed to vacuum, but I decided not to get distracted and went back to bowing before the Universe. I was actually bowed down in front of my closet, which is so full of dirty laundry I’m sure even the worst of heretics would find it blasphemous to kneel down before such a filthy alter.

In any case, I tried to pray, and that’s a step.

Such is life.

This entry has nothing to do with OA, but I want to write about it and don't feel comfortable posting it on my other blog (which is very public).

I just received word that my Nana is very ill and likely will die this afternoon. She has had Alzheimer's for a long time and has been in a "memory care center" for a little over a year. A few days ago she refused to stop eating, drinking and taking her medications (of which there are many). Essentially, she decided to give up.

I don't blame her. She can't form sentences, she wets the bed, she barely remembers who she is. She lives in a very nice home for people with dementia and Alzheimer's...but of course all the residents there wonder around like zombies, not knowing who they are or where they are. It's a sad place, though the employees try to make it as nice as possible, and they do a great job. But, inherently, places like that are just depressing. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if I were in that situation, and my husband had died 10 years earlier, I think I, too, would decide it was my time. And I do think that she decided it. Even if she can't remember her name, her son's name or the person she was 30, 10 or even two years ago, I think she had the capacity to know that the way she was living was not really living at all.

I don't want to be political, so please don't take this entry offensively. My mom said it's so common for people to say that "pulling the plug" is playing god, but she felt that extending life to a certain point is also playing god in a sense. I have to agree. Sometimes it's just time.

Now, while right now I am sort of in shock and preparing for a phone call any minute from someone (most likely my mom, as my dad may be handling funeral arrangements), I am deeply saddened. I have greatly disliked my Nana for most of my life. That side of the family is just...weird. Manipulative, mean and conniving are probably better adjectives, and my father (it's his mom) has disliked them more than I have. The past few years I have seen my Nana probably once or twice and talked to her by phone maybe a handful of times. She just was not someone I wanted to speak with, especially since she was so awful to my mother, who was nothing but kind and helpful to her--more so than my dad!

But, I know she loved me. She wanted to see me go to college (I did, thanks to a financial situation she was partially responsible for), and she wanted to see me graduate from college. She was just too ill to make the five hour trip for the ceremony, but I visited her right before, though I don't think she had any idea about the graduation. But, she was so happy to see me. In truth, I was happy to see her, too. Like I said before, she could barely speak, but it was okay. I was glad we could communicate through smiles...for once in both of our lives. I'm glad I got to see her one more time, and when I left, she was able to actually say, "So happy to be with people I love."

I hope she doesn't die thinking my entire family hated her. It's a difficult thing to admit: that you really did dislike someone for most of your life when that person is on their deathbed. The guilt is enormous. She really did love her grandchildren, but she was brought up in a very manipulative and suffocating environment (I won't delve into details), so of course she was that way herself. Needless to say, it made our relationship difficult.

Does this entry make any sense? I'm really not sure. I just hope she is at peace.

I've been on a diet my entire life...

This is one of my earliest questions I worked on from when I started OA. I wonder how many other compulsive overeaters have similar stories. Please, if you wish, share yours by commenting.

My first memory of compulsively overeating was when I was about 6. I wanted more cookies after dinner, so I stole some from the kitchen and ran to my room and hid them in my bed. I remember asking my mom when I was in 4^th grade how long it would take to lose 20 pounds, and she said that I kept asking but I never actually tried. I dieted in middle school and lost a lot of weight. In high school there were times when I went on “serious” diets by counting calories. I’ve tried calorie counting so many times on and off, including my freshman year of college, when it worked to a point and then I stopped and went back to my old habits.

I’ve never been able to just leave food on a plate, unless I really didn’t like it. I remember I used to like when my parents left the house so I could have the kitchen to myself and eat whatever I wanted. At parties, I was never able to resist the snack bowls, and I always watched other people to see how much they were eating. I tried not to eat more than other people, and I always rationalized how much I was eating, like if I ate a ton of chips I could say other people ate more at dinner.

In social settings I would always try to find other people who were fatter than I was so I wouldn’t be the fattest person in a room.

My freshman year of college, I gained about 25-30 pounds. I tried going to the gym, but I hate exercising because of my asthma. I tried calorie counting. I tried just being healthier, but I just couldn’t stop myself from eating, especially at night.

I went to a therapist with a specialty in eating disorders, and she helped for awhile, but I felt like it was just another diet. I was in therapy last year to relieve some of my constant anxiety and depression, but that didn’t really help the eating. I finally came to OA because I figured it was worth a shot. I was so preoccupied with what I looked like and what I was eating all the time, and I was never able to control myself…which is something my therapists never understood. They seemed to be in the “willpower” boat, and I have plenty of willpower, but that isn’t good enough for me with food.

I guess I’ve been on a diet my entire life. I’ve been comparing myself to other people and their eating habits my entire life. I’ve always regained back any weight I’ve lost. And it seems like any free space in my mind was always dedicated to the food obsession. I would either think about what I was going to eat, what I shouldn’t eat, what I wanted to eat but vowed I wouldn’t, or just how fat I was in general.

My name is Laura.

My name is Laura. I'm a compulsive overeater.

I remember the first time I said those words in my first meeting nearly a year ago. It was scary...no. Deathly frightening. I had avoided saying those words for two years, even though I knew they were true. Even though I've been in program for 10 months, I decided to start a blog now to help me stay on track and regain some of the enthusiasm I initially had when I first started in OA. The format I'm choosing for now (and hopefully it won't get too confusing!) is to post all my OA step-work from the beginning, intermixed with present progress (or lack thereof depending on the day).

I hope you enjoy this blog and maybe even get something out of it. Please leave comments or send me an email at doubthoperecovery@gmail.com. If you have your own twelve-step blog, I would love to see it!

For now, I will post the journal entry I wrote to myself a few weeks before I finally got to my first meeting:

20 September, 2008

For the first time in months I went on the OA website. I do this every so often, write down the times of meetings, debate going, leave the post it with the times on my desk to remind myself that I should go, that it would do me some good, that I'd be no worse off than I am now if I made myself go even once. I don't know why I can't bring myself to go. I guess I do know why. I'm so afraid of crying in front of everyone and showing them how weak I am. It would be so embarrassing, even if they all had gone through it too.

I don't like to show people if I'm vulnerable. I'm supposed to be strong and smart and the person who is the rock for others. But I think it's time for me to admit that I can't do that anymore, I need a rock, too. I'm still scared. It makes me so angry that most people don't have this problem, they can just shed the pounds through sheer willpower. They don't have an addiction. I feel like it would be better to be able to take all my willpower I have with my work and put it towards diligence in weightloss. I just can't seem to do it. I take too much pride in my work and intelligence than to let that go. And then there's Mike. Sometimes I hate him so much for making me feel the way I do. Between loving him and then getting so upset with some of the things he says to me. No wonder I'm a mess. But I can't blame him. Isn't that one of the twelve steps? To stop blaming others and take responsibility? At least now I don't worry about him cheating on me. I just worry about him wanting to, or wondering if he'd be better off without me. God I'm so fucking insecure it's ridiculous. I haven't had a functional relationship in two years. I feel completely incapable of being loved. I feel like my friends don't even like me. Hell, I don't even like me. I don't really like a single thing about me. I used to like my eyes because they were big and they sparkled. But now when I look in the mirror I just get so disgusted with everything I see, even my eyes seem dull and lifeless. My hair is flat. My face is so round my eyes don't pop the way they used to. I look bad in everything.

I can't believe Mike decided to go out with me at all. He must really like my personality, which doesn't even seem that great to me. Sometimes I can fake it. I can be peppy and happy. Sometimes I'm not faking it. But I don't remember half of the things I do or say. People will remind me or I'll read stuff in im transcripts and I have absolutely no recollection of most of it. It's like I'm existing only in a dream. Where the hell am I? More important, where the hell am I going? The only thing I really want to do is travel. I'm getting restless. I want to get out of State College and hop on a train and go to Alaska and see the Northern Lights to remind myself that there is something out there—a higher power? Or maybe that even without a higher power the world contains such beauty that it's worth it to stick around, anyway.