A Story of Recovery:
A Three-Fold Solution for a Three-Fold Illness
When I was living in the disease of food addiction, I hurt myself physically, mentally and spiritually. I was almost 100 pounds (about 45kg) overweight. I hurt myself physically by eating almost exclusively flour and sugar. I had joint pain, sprained ankles, chafed thighs, discomfort from too-tight clothes, and pain from being full after every binge. Day after day after day, with no end in sight. I also did other things to hurt myself physically. I picked at my skin and bit my nails until they bled. Again and again I would pay to for fake nails so that I would stop biting them but it never worked: I would bite the fake nails off. The pain of biting off fake nails that were glued to my nail bed was excruciating, but I couldn’t not bite my nails just like I couldn’t not eat.
I hurt myself spiritually; that was evident in my complete and utter hopelessness around my life. I woke up every morning thinking, “I hate myself and I want to die.” I fantasized about cutting off parts of my body or getting sick so that I could lose weight or be in the hospital for weeks on end to check out of my life. I had no idea how to manage daily living – eating, showering, brushing my hair (I brushed the top of my hair while underneath was tangled and matted), paying bills, writing thank-you notes, paying a parking meter, etc. I had no hope that my life was going to get any better or that I could truly change. I had no faith in other people either. I was suspicious and insecure and angry. I just wanted to eat or die.
I came to a 12 step program for food in 1987 when I was 18 and then found the meetings that became FA in 1993 but I was afraid to be real and to let go of the food so I had a very hard time getting back to back abstinence for several years, but I never left. I stayed and kept praying for willingness even though it was very hard to eat over and over again in a sea of abstinent people. I knew that FA was the answer to my food addiction and that I had nowhere else to go. I heard someone share something in an AWOL that helped me and that I have tried to practice these many years since. She talked about being her own best friend. I thought that sounded so corny and I hated it, but I respected her, so I thought about what that really meant. I have a best friend, Marilyn, and I thought of how I would never treat or speak to her the way I was treating and speaking to myself; and she would never treat me that way. I thought about being on my own side and I slowly started to change.
It’s been a very slow process for me. I completed that AWOL and was abstinent for 9 years when I relapsed and ate for 5 months. I was not being honest about a financial matter. I was trying to look perfect and carry the weight of the world on my shoulders instead of turning to God, my sponsor, my fellowship, and my family. That inability to be real, my deep insecurity, had been reactivated and I ate. By the Grace of God, I got abstinent again for 11 years. A few months ago, I made a choice in a restaurant that I knew in my heart was a break. This time has led me to a level of clarity, self-acceptance, and closeness with the God of my own understanding, with people in my fellowship and with my family that I have never before had.
The more I take care of myself, the more I am on my own side, the more I am able to be kind to others. The more I “accept my humanity” as my new sponsor says, the freer I am to be real, and that has always been my biggest stumbling block. As a child I learned to put on a smile and look fine on the outside. In recovery, I learn that the more honest I am about what is really going on with me, the closer I am to God and people. Every single time I am honest about something hard, I feel free. Every time.
Today, I don’t hurt myself nearly as much. I still have defects that I ask God for help with, and blind spots. I still pick at my skin sometimes and I continue to ask God for help to let go of that behavior, but I don’t hurt myself with food, I’m in a right-size body and I don’t bite my nails. That’s a miracle.
I don’t hurt myself emotionally anymore: I don’t hate myself and I don’t speak negatively about myself out loud and hardly ever in my head. I have a lot of neutrality around my defects. I’m just a person who makes mistakes sometimes. There are areas of my life that I excel in and others where I’m weaker and when I average those together, I’m an average person. Being average is a big step up from where I was in my disease so even when I make mistakes, I have no real reason to complain!
In recovery, my hopelessness has been lifted by using the spiritual tools I have been given. Every day is a miracle as I don’t go through multiple fast food drive thru windows or up and down the grocery store aisles in search of “something.” Today I see my life get better day by day. Firstly, I found more freedom from obsession and compulsion from food. Then I saw more freedom to live a manageable life, as long as I put my recovery first. Now I am seeing more freedom from negativity and self-centeredness. I have so much hope that my external and spiritual life will continue to get better.
I have been through many difficult situations in my external life, I lost a baby through miscarriage, cared for my mother through hospice, unemployment, and I have serious medical problems, and FA continues to guide me as to how to be on my own side so that I don’t have to hurt myself or others no matter what is going on. One of my favorite sayings is that “I have to be careful what goes into my mouth and what comes out of it.” That is true for me. I have to watch my words, my tone, the little “joke” that I think is funny but is really sharp and unkind. My disease has so many ideas about how I can hurt myself and others that I need to be vigilant. Today, I don’t hurt myself with food, my thoughts or any of the other ways that my disease can come up with.
I am grateful to have exactly the life that I want today; a happy marriage, two children who are joys to me and grew up in FA, a job where I am useful, family and close friends, a supportive community, and underlying it all is the very foundation and fabric of my life which has taught me every single thing I know, the program and fellowship of Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous.