A foot of snow is on the ground. I am abstinent.
These two statements don’t make much sense side-by-side, but they are linked.
When I was starving as a buffer between me and a snowstorm, a grey morning, a spring afternoon, a wedding, a message of bad news, a birthday party, they were all events that I could not bear. Life was just too difficult to be endured, so, I starved. I hated food and had since early childhood; there was always something that made it inedible. In my twenties, my revulsion toward food morphed into an obsession with starving. Starving made me feel powerful and in control.
Little did I know that starving was controlling me! Not eating was my preferred escape. It separated me from even the most mundane routines of life, such as opening mail and getting children to school. It was all just too much! I sustained myself on water and air as I hit my bottom.
Then a miracle happened, which I did not welcome. I was thrust into a treatment center that specialized in eating disorders! I did not know that what I did with food was disordered, not normal, or extreme. There I was confronted with food three times a day. Fortunately, there were peers there who told me they would sit with me for as long as it took for me to eat it all. I was slowly educated about the disease I have.
I realized I was afraid to eat because some insatiable hunger inside might be released, and I would never want to stop. Really, there was nothing to be afraid of because all I had to do was follow my food plan.
That was 29 years ago. I have been abstinent ever since, one meal at a time. My peers are now “you people.” I never have to be alone with my food behaviors again.
How could recovery be so simple when I had burdens of the world upon my shoulders? As I was guided, not so gently, through the Steps, I began to wake up and see people and things as they really had been and not as I had imagined them to be.
I was told to follow my food plan and ask for help. I was told to pray each day for abstinence and to thank my Higher Power at the end of each day.
Today, I am grateful to accept that I will always have this disease, but do not have to live in dis-ease! I follow a plan of eating that I do not create for myself; I have a nutritionist whom I trust. I follow my food plan no matter what: in airports when flights are cancelled, and vending machines are the only abstinent option; at children’s weddings; at funerals; and during beautiful snowstorms!
— Anonymous