Whatever it takes

My I see you god list

I'm on step two. I'm continuing to practice powerlessness from step one by calling my sponsor daily. Now I'm reading a bit in the AA 12 & 12 on most days and writing an "I see you God" list most nights. I was trying to do it mentally, but it doesn't work the same. I need to put pen to paper and write it out.

What's an I see you god list? It's a gratitude list. Gratitude lists always seemed so corny to me. But when my sponsor called it an I see you list it resonated with me. At night I think about my day and look for my HP in it. Things I could not do by myself, so it must be god. So for today it looks like this:

I see you god:

• in sticking to my food plan
• in paging Dr. L again even though he didn't return page Friday or Saturday (and not being angry about that)
• in calling my sponsor with no expectations
• in calling someone else in OA when my sponsor was unavailable
• in going to my meeting today and not even thinking that I might not want to go

There isn't anything huge and dramatic there, but any one of those things is impossible for me to manage on my own. Making the list makes me look at my life differently.

Mostly though, every time I make the list instead of blowing it off, I am following suggestions from my sponsor and practicing my program to the best of my ability. That's it. When I do what I'm told I should do everything is better. It's that simple.

Until it is not about the food

Almost two weeks now of abstinent eating. Doing okay with it. Even letting go of some of the crazy about losing weight. (Am I skinny yet? I've been on my food plan for 13 days! Why aren't my pants loose already?) Trying to surrender the crazy along with the control over the food.

My hard drive in my work laptop died yesterday. It just wouldn't boot up. Now I have it back with a new hard drive, most of my old data and missing all the non-standard apps I use daily. I was just getting Office 2007 customized to be usable and now I have to start over. I was on XP and got to skip Vista entirely, so that is good, but everything is so foreign on this OS. What does this have to do with OA? Everything. This is life. Not a huge dramatic issue, but it could be if I was in the food. I could be weeping and wailing to everyone. Okay I did mention it, but it was hard not to when I was without a computer for 6 hours and had to borrow people's machines to check my email during that time. And I'm writing about it here. So it is a big deal, but I think I'm making a normal person big deal, not crazy lady big deal. 

The other thing that is related to my program is that I was really afraid that an action of mine had killed it*. I wanted to hide what I had done. I wanted to protect myself from blame for ruining a laptop. I wanted to stay in bed and pretend the world was not going on without me. But I didn't, I got up and got to work and talked with the local tech support and confessed my crime. She said she didn't think I had caused it; the laptop model I have is old and all of them are starting to have hard drive and other hardware issues. I'm so glad I confessed! I left a message about it for my sponsor on the drive in and realized how badly I wanted to keep it a secret. This is the type of thing I eventually eat over and never see the connection. 

I have way too many of these petty secrets. I lug around a ton of guilt and shame from four decades of living. How many of those are misplaced? The biggest revelation for me in OA is how many things I'm wrong about. Everywhere I turn I've made faulty assumptions or been taught lies. The more I talk with other OAs the clearer the wrongheadedness becomes.

* I used canned air to clean the keyboard for the first time. The buttons were getting crunchy. I must have tipped the can because I froze some of the keys. They got frosty. It was right over the hard drive. The PC was on all day after that, but next time I turned on it couldn't boot.

And the crazy train goes on and on

I recommitted to abstinent food plan last week. The usual stuff:

• No sweets*
• Three meals a day, nothing in between
• No bread as a meal

There are some new specifics, things I've been "getting away with" lately:

• No Wheat Thins
• No sugar-free Jell-o
• No sugar-free pudding
• No potato chips and dip (I could eat chips out as part of a meal, but no more snacking)
• No Colonial Cafe corn bread with honey butter (D'oh! How did that slip back in?)

The first few days were rough. Suddenly everything on the list above called out to me. I thought at first about the irony of it; as soon as I can't have it I want it more than anything. But really, there is no irony there. While I was ignoring my food plan I didn't deny myself any of those items. Want became Have without any debate or struggle. I was oblivious to the cravings.

After a few days of white knuckling it the cravings went away. I prayed and called and did anything other than eat. Then I didn't notice when the cravings ended. Tuesday night I worked until 8:30pm. I thought about stopping for dinner or grocery shopping on my way home. I was too tired, so I decided to eat something at home. I decided on a frozen dinner because I could get it over with the quickest. I could cook and eat it and get it out of the way.

Then I almost decided not to eat dinner at all and realized this was not normal thinking for me. My first thought after that was that I must be ill. I wasn't hungry and didn't care what I ate or even if I ate, therefore I must be very sick and probably dying. Instead of being thankful the the compulsion was temporarily lifted I jumped to the most dramatic conclusion. Then I laughed at myself and ate my damn dinner because that is part of my plan too. Three meals a day, no more and no less. 

* No sweets is a no brainer and required for any semblance of sanity. It is such a given that I don't think about it anymore. Without it I don't go to work and live on DQ dairy treats. It has been a few months since my last sugar binge.

Big Big Book

I ordered a copy of Alcoholics Anonymous 4th edition in large print. I've been looking for one for a while and could never find one for sale. Now I know that it is out of print. So I ordered a used one from Amazon. There are a ton listed. There are probably a lot on ebay too. I bought one for $5 (+$3.99 S+H). There were cheaper ones, but I wanted one that promised no highlighting or underlining. I like to do the underlining myself.

I first saw a large print version at a Big Book study. The leader had one. Now that I'm wearing my reading glasses more and more, I thought I could justify it. The lighting at my BB study meeting is somewhat unreliable.

I already have a few versions of the BB. In addition to compulsive eating I'm also a somewhat compulsive shopper and collector of stuff. I have the standard soft cover, a hard cover version, a paperback study version (with space for notes, got it at the BB study weekend as part of the package) and a tiny paperback version that only has the first section, no stories.

I'm totally excited to get my new big BB. I'll probably order one to donate to the meeting too. I'm not the only person in the reading glasses set.

It's just you and me kid. Or, um, just me I guess.

Another first for me last night; someone texted all through a meeting. Not just one or two messages, an ongoing conversation from opening to closing. The kicker here is that it was just the two of us! Just me and my multi-tasking new friend.

I don't even like to see people knitting during a meeting. I go to a meeting to connect with others in recovery. I suppose I understand the motivation at retreats and conference where you sit for hours listening to speakers, but in a one hour meeting is it really necessary to multitask like that? I'm making judgments here, but I might as well stay home if I put that kind of boundary around myself in the rooms.

If I could find a way to read a book, play WoW*, and watch a movie all at the same time I'd never leave my lazy-boy. I'd get the same neutral disconnection I get from binging. Ha! Just had a flash of that Seinfeld episode where George is eating sandwiches during sex.

* That would be World of Warcraft. I'm a level 50 Troll Hunter. For the Horde!

Precarious balance

Fear of changing how I handle everything. I'm either doing it or not. I'm either living a god-conscience life or I'm not. If I'm not actively seeking HP in every aspect of my life I'm sliding toward my disease and all of its many traps.

I'm afraid of doing my job well and getting more responsibility (and more chances to fail.)
I'm afraid of committing to a food plan.
I'm afraid of who I am without the habits of a lifetime.

Change is hard. Eating the way I should takes effort, planning and discipline. Going to work on time every day and working with best effort and integrity is exhausting. Exercising is time consuming and painful and I never get to a point where it is energizing and feels good. Reaching out to people decreases my Me Time. Connecting with people takes time and effort; it is emotionally risky.

Recently I heard someone say that motivation comes from taking action, not from thinking. This goes with what my first sponsor says, "Take an action, any action. Even if it is the wrong action, do something." The Big Book is loaded with action. My shrink talks to me about going above knowledge. Knowledge is a trap that is hard to get out of. Just as food can easily displace my HP, so can knowledge.

I know a lot about OA and about the 12 steps. When I started OA I bought all the literature and studied hard. I researched, I spent hours every day reading and looking for program blogs to read. I wanted to become an expert so I would know what to do. Knowledge often takes the place of my HP. I want to think about things, talk about what I should do, mull it over. I'm afraid to take action though. What if I do it wrong? What if it doesn't work? What if it does work? All the while I'm still living in my own head.

Right now, writing this post I'm in my own head. I started writing this morning just to exercise my demons. Maybe I'd send it to my sponsor or maybe I'd just delete it like I do most of the time. But writing is a tool, so I'm not going to get too hung up on it right now. Since I'm already typing it out, maybe someone will identify with it to. So I'll post it.

I'm afraid of failing and afraid of succeeding. I know what happens when I don't take action. That is where I am now. I've been here many times. It isn't great, but it is familiar. If only surrendering to HP was a one-time action, like jumping out of an airplane. It takes a lot of guts and faith, but once out the door the decision is made. Instead it is like a little switch that I have to keep resetting and watch for changes. If I don't pay attention it will switch off. Maybe instead of a switch it is a lever I have to keep pressure on. Like the short end of a see-saw. All my experience in this disease and habits of a lifetime are on the long end. In order to have balance I need to put more pressure on the short side. Spiritually I'm a light-weight. I have to use the tools, connect with OAs and work my steps to keep the pressure steady. If I stop paying attention the balance disappears and the long end hits the dirt.

I want to believe that with practice and time the apex of my teeter-totter will move closer to the middle as I experience more life in recovery. It is daunting to think it will always be this hard to stay god-conscience. Which is probably why we must focus only on today. All I can do is work OA to the best of my ability today. Right now that requires constant attention. Exhausting.

Connecting to my group

I'm still floundering, but I've started reaching out to meeting members. I feel a strong connection to the people coming regularly to my Wednesday night meeting. I want to practice a strong program and I know that to do that I have to call people. A lot of people. This will help me and help them and I'd hate to lose any of them. 

I'm excited to do this. If it occurs to me to call someone I want to do it right away before I give myself a reason to delay. I left a message for my sponsor (day 2 in a row) and called one person from Wednesday night. I thought of another person to call and didn't. I plan to call her tomorrow. 

I can do this and I want to. I need to call people and not talk about myself. This will grow my spiritual fitness. I'm excited about it and don't want to analyze it too much. I'm tired of hanging out in my own head. I want to surrender and just do the next loving thing.

On that note, it is past my bedtime so I have to go, but I thought of posting and didn't want to put this off either. This post isn't as thoughtful as usual. Maybe that is a good thing. I need to get back to using writing as a tool as well as the telephone.

Thanks to everyone's continued support. 

I'm powerless and my life is unmanageable.

I continue to act on my will and the results are always painful. For a while I was relieved of the obsession with food and I took it for granted. I've been slipping sugar into my meals and thought I was getting away with it. Nope. Of course I wasn't. There is a direct correlation between the food I put in my mouth and the actions I take. It goes both ways and the equation is always the same: poor food choices lead to poor life choices, poor life choices lead to poor food choices.  So around I go again.

I've been eating the corn bread with honey butter that comes with some of the entries at one of my regular lunch places. First time it came I was surprised and decided to eat it anyway. Now I'm struggling not to ask for seconds. This has lead to escalating damages: more honey butter, sampled sweet bread, sugar-free instant pudding (one box equals one serving right?), 1 fortune cookie, and snacking all weekend.

Last night I ordered Chinese take-out right after my meeting. This is a known bad thing even if I don't have explicitly sweet foods. I eat too much and it leads me to more food later. Last night I ate two fortune cookies and used three packets of sweet sour sauce. Then I stayed up until 3am surfing the internet. I could not stop it even as I watched the time tick by. I managed to get to work on time today, but am tired and craving sugar.

Also, I intended to eat a Girl Scout cookie at my sister's last night before the meeting. I saw them open and scattered on the kitchen table. I planned to go to the bathroom and then pick up a cookie (or two) as I left. While in the bathroom I debated if this was really such a bad plan while part of my brain was already plotting a trip to Dairy Queen. Luckily my sis came into the kitchen while I was doing my business. I was disappointed and relieved.

So of course, there are about 20 boxes of Girl Scout cookies on my manager's desk to be handed out. He will put some out on the table to share like he always does. I once asked him not to do it. He listened to me for a day.

So I pray for the willingness and ability to follow HPs will not mine. Mine just brings me misery. I also pray that someday this lesson will sink into my soul and I'll stop reenacting it.

P.S. Thank you to everyone who has left me encouraging comments! They mean a lot to me. I have not responded to each one as I feel I ought to. I feel more guilty about it the longer I wait. It's not you, it's me. Thank you for taking the time to share with me.

Step one, I might be wrong

Powerless and unmanageable? You bet. Tough week, but hopefully I'm closer to true humility because of it. I wanted to just write a quick update and now that I've started I'm not sure what I want to share.

I spent a good deal of time last week in pain. I followed some suggestions and learned that although I felt like I was getting the crap kicked out of me and that "people" were mad at me, it was not truth.  I made a list of people in my life and not one of them is. The only one beating me up and hating on me is me.

This is so simple, yet shocking to me. A major ah-ha moment. 

I'm also wrong about so many things. The farther I go off the 12 step path the more lies I tell myself and believe with all my heart. 

For today I will ask for help and run any ideas or theories I come up with past my sponsor. I'm also working hard to stay god-conscience throughout the day. My shower wall is again covered with reminders to pray and what I should pray for. Help and grace.

Back to the beginning again.

I went back to my Sunday night meeting today. Everyone there except me was a sponsor. It felt good to listen to so much recovery. I also got a new sponsor. Nothing wrong with my original sponsor. Just too much guilty history. It seemed like a fresh start was necessary. She thought it was a good idea too. I've got step one writing to do. Hooray!