"Willful" wonders never cease

I am 24 again. I feel like I felt when I was 24. This was what 24 felt like.

Three years ago, my life was all about the see-saw. Either extremely up and "free" of food, or subversively down and in the ping-pong game of binging and exercising/restricting.

It's been over a month since I over ate like I did this afternoon/evening. With a sense of panic, of rising anxiety even as I ate more and more food. Until my senses and mind and soul and heart were sufficiently numbed.

This will never change; I am a compulsive over-eater. I have an addiction with food. I 'use' food like others use drugs, alcohol, sex. I have even used those as ways to lesson the discomfort of life, but it always comes back to food. Sugar, salted crunchy foods, breads...these are my beer, wine, booze; my crack, opiates, weed.

This I accept. So afterwards, I don't fight it. I write about it. I call my sponsor and leave a message. I make some calls to friends, BUT not to OA friends. This is a big difference. This is me trying to be normal, trying to appear normal to myself.

Must. Control. Something. Laundry...laundry to fold! YES. Then, a walk. Short, fresh. Then, my wake my husband up from his nap. Control his attention. We are moving in a month, packing lists to make, jewelry boxes to go through, closets to...okay. Enough is enough. Take a couple deep breaths. Shake the shoulders, shake the head, let the shimmy go all the way down through your pelvis and out through your toes.

Go to bed.

[p.s. If anyone is out there reading this, I would love to hear from you. Your reactions, your experience. Feel free to share comments below, or email me @ raskalnina@hotmail.com]

To battle

"They" don't prepare "you" for life. You go from one grade to the next, climbing the ladder of education. Then you go to another form of school, be it a university or a technical college. Then you get a job. Hopefully. Then...what? Life is so much more complicated than that. Where is the manual? How do we learn to life through each day? I guess we each compile our own set of rules, based on our experience and what we have been taught by our elders, peers and media. Each person walking around in their own stew of reality.

Mine is darker tonight. My reality right now is tainted with the sour flavor of resentment that lingers after the decadence of denial, thick with creamy ignorance. I deny that I have to plan for tomorrow. I deny even that there is a tomorrow and I have a place in it. I deny that there is anything else than this space and time right now, where I am going to stuff myself with food to ensure that myself in this time and space will not travel anywhere else but here. I deliberately entrap myself with compulsive eating, thinking myself so cunning, wrapping myself in a cocoon of food, so that time bends around me, and I exist outside of the stream of life.

If I exist outside, I don't have to take part. If I don't have to take part, I have no duties, no responsibility. Without these there is no effort. An absence of effort leaves no chance for failure.  And no chance of mistakes means no growth...however, my pride remains intact, and the dark worm eating away at my soul feeds on the fear that keeps me from participating; in isolation.

Bubbles rising

What to write, what to write. Need to write something, there is something rising inside of me, both ferocious and giddy, like champagne bubbles after a bottle is shaken. Inside me, something is racing to the surface and I feel both alarm and excitement. Could this be, the return of "me"? The return of eager anticipation and determined endeavor? Wow, it's been a long time since these feelings have come around...

Almost two weeks since I started taking anti-depressant medication and I feel human again. I feel competent enough to face the challenges in front of and ahead of me. I know where to reach out for help, and I know that I can reach inside too. I have enough experience in student teaching now to help me through these last 25 and a half (school) days. There is hope. I see that light at the end of the forest path in my previous meditation and it is pulsing with a furious energy, beckoning me towards it, cajoling me to move past "one foot in front of the other" and, with a deep breath of courage, break into a trot. Or at least a steady, brisk walk. It is there. I am so close.

There are a few hurdles yet to surmount. Two portfolios, one significantly larger than the other, and three weeks of "full time" takeover of running the classroom. Its happening though. Here. Now. And I am so immersed in it, it is a miracle to not over eat right now. There have been instances of compulsion, such as the four protein bar marathon in 5 minutes hidden in the bedroom at my in-laws. And the two full dinner night, where I had both a mexican feast and a hearty BBQ plate. Yet this is in between days ...DAYS... of continuous, intuitive, natural eating.

My sponsor reminds me that medication is a temporary relief and "not a spiritual solution!" This is true. But God damn, I am so grateful for what I am experiencing right now and SO grateful to have access to medical care that can provide me with supportive treatment. Wow. Kind of incredible how appreciative and in awe I feel of the help available to me, in this moment.

Do you have support? Do you have access to care? What is stopping you from researching your options, from reaching out? It took me a long time to reach out, and when I did, a while again to wade through the declinations of my insurance.