I don't know about you, but every once in a while, I like to wind myself up in a good old fashioned snit. I'm not quite sure why, but it just feels good to get completely wound up in a topic that trends towards the unimportant or ridiculous. Recently I have found myself getting wound up in the lives of people that I know, and am even fairly close to. I'm writing about this because I have discovered through some introspection and help from outside sources, that this "activity" directly relates to myself and my journey as an overweight person who is trying to morph into a someone living in a normal sized body. Doesn't quite make sense? Let me explain......
Growing up as an obese child, adolescent and young adult...the goals I set for myself ranged from the weak to the downright non-existent. Because I was most definitely a compulsive overeater from probably the age of about 12 years old, I didn't understand why I was so perpetually unsuccessful at trying to manage something that I've only recently realized that I was powerless over. Sort of like a surfer trying to control the waves of the ocean. I thought my eating was something I "SHOULD" be able to get a grasp on, and was certainly told many times, by many different sources that if I just had enough "willpower" and was "disciplined" enough, I should be able to put the food down. As I amassed ample evidence in my own life of my failure in controlling my weight, I think there was a part of me that just thought that having goals was a fruitless endeavor. If I couldn't conquer this one seemingly basic task, why try and reach for anything bigger, better and higher. Striving for mediocrity became the best case scenario for me. I certainly approached my academics this way, along with other areas of my life. It certainly became the not so rose colored lenses through which I viewed myself.
As a way to compensate for this rather depressing situation, I developed a coping skill of becoming overly focused on the lives of my friends. In retrospect I think it was for the simple reason that they had the lives that I wanted, more than I wanted the life I had of my own. It became easier to become immeshed in their romantic lives and their drama, because it not only allowed me to vicariously live through their excitement, but it also allowed me to ignore what was wrong in my own life. I was always ready and willing to ask deep and probing and seemingly endless questions of my friends to get even the most minute detail of an adventure from them. I would use these seeds of excitement to engage in my own fantasy life, while never having to do any concrete footwork towards developing my own exciting life. While I truly believe it filled a vital need at the time, it certainly was also a double edged sword that I would eventually have to fall on.
Interestingly enough, as I entered into recovery, and began to look at my own life and its' complexities, I found my friend were genuinely pleased that I had started talking about what was going on in my life. They apparently had been patiently waiting for me to start doing my own thing, and they were nothing but supportive in my speaking up. It was NOT a comfortable place for me to be a great deal of the time. My internal self-centeredness had left me unable to distinguish between open and honest sharing of my life versus being a conversation monopolizer. I thought if I talked about myself and what I was going through, that I was being "selfish" or "self-centered". It has taken me a great deal of time and consideration to realize that while it's entirely possible to monopolize conversations on occasion, it's a normal part of the give and take of long-term friendships. And while I genuinely DO want to know what's going on in the lives of my close friends, it can also be perceived as selfish if my interest is based on my on need to focus and fantasize on how great "their" lives are. It does not allow me to be a fully present listener at certain times. A trait I've caught myself in more than once.
Coming back into recovery in 2011, after the passing of my mom, I was blessed to find a WONDERFUL therapist who has extensive experience in psychology and recovery and just has a genuinely loving ability to call me on my shit when necessary. In the course of our getting to the meat of things, I was told what may be one of the most important things I've heard in the past year, "The problem with addiction is not necessarily that you're abusing X, Y, or Z substances. It's the bigger life that you give up because you're pursuing your drug of choice to the exclusion of everything else. Recovery is about having a FULLER, BROADER, MORE DIVERSE life." WOW! There it was. My conundrum in a nut shell. I had been using food, and chasing food, to the exclusion of many life experiences that people of my age have typically had by now. When my therapist first mentioned this idea to me, I took it in at the cerebral level like I am typically want to do. But like a great deal of things in my life, it has taken a bit of time for that concept to go from my head into my heart and soul. The greatest distance between two points for me is often the distance between getting an idea from my brain to my gut. I certainly wish the journey could be quicker, but hey, it takes what it takes. But understanding that concept has been a huge catalyst for me in the current portion of my journey.
When your life has been completely focused on ONE thing to the exclusion of everything else, how to you even begin to IMAGINE bringing different things in. For me, the ONE thing has been food, and not just food but my overwhelming preoccupation with the size of my body and my place in the world framed by my body size. I was asked by my therapist to start looking into some hobbies that weren't related to food in any way, and you would had thought I'd been asked to cure cancer while traveling to Mars. Something other than getting thin, what I'm going to do once I'm thin, planning how fabulous my life will be WHEN I'm thin, and all the great things I'll get to do once I'm THERE. And it's only been after the gentle repetition of counseling that I'm becoming more and more acutely aware of just how much that thinking has organized my life. Because there are certain physical limitations that I have due to the stress my weight has placed on my body, some future thinking is warranted. But there is an organic sadness sitting on me as I look back at all the wasted time, the experiences I haven't felt I deserved, and the life I didn't think I was worth. It's certainly not pretty to look at under bright lights, but the fact that I'm even conscious of how much I've limited myself in the past is I believe a sign of progress.
I've recently found myself back into that place of obsessing about a friend of mine, and their life and what I think they SHOULD be doing with it. And I can honestly say I'm grateful that the voice of my therapist pops into my head and gently encourages me to "Get my own life". Once again, consciousness is a great thing, if not always comfortable. I know that I'm on the path and will eventually get to the point where I will be able to have a more concrete picture of where I want my life to go, and what I want it to look like, beyond the size of my butt. And so the journey continues.....
