Not Terminally Unique

Food was a big deal in my family of origin and my Dad’s family of origin.  I know I was compulsively eating by age seven visiting my Dad’s side of the family.  By age fourteen I knew I had a problem with food and my behavior around it but I justified that behavior.  I was a very angry person underneath and tried to help bury some of that anger with excess food.

Somewhat unconsciously I reinforced the habits of

• walking too fast
• sneaking my Dad’s favorite snack food from the fridge (which quickly became my favorite binge food),
• finding work that involved lots of lifting and moving, and
• drinking too little water.

For close to ten years I had a driving job in which I habitually stopped at convenience stores getting both liquid and solid junk food to, so-to-speak, “keep me going”.                                               

After leaving high school my lunches at work or school tended toward junk food.  Coworkers occasionally commented on that.  At church social functions overeating seemed to be encouraged and I gladly complied.

At age thirty nine I hit a bottom… After being out of work for about a year, I attended my first OA meeting.  For the first time in my life that I can remember, I identified with eleven people in a room rather than comparing my insides to their outsides.  Job or no job, car or no car, I got a sponsor and worked this program hard the first nine months finishing Step Eight by that time.

I was abstinent but didn’t realize it until I awoke after midnight in abject terror, feeling emotions I had buried for 30 years all at once.  I knew my sponsor would take late night calls but I raided the refrigerator instead. The following 30 years have mostly been years of slipping and sliding.  After two fights with acid reflux and a second diagnosis of being pre-diabetic I’ve finally had enough.

My perfectionism helped feed my disease of compulsive eating; I would set an unreasonably strict criterion for abstinence which I knew I’d eventually violate, and follow that violation with a binge.  My current sponsor has helped to dismantle my perfectionistic house of cards.

 I’m no longer terminally unique; I’m just another member of this fellowship who can share their experience, strength, and hope.  On the positive side it’s been years since I had any of that aforementioned “favorite binge food”.  I’ve also picked the tool of writing back up; my sponsor insists.

                                                                                                                   -Texas