I heard something yesterday that helped, so I thought I’d post my understanding of it here.
On abstinence: It’s not about the food, it’s about honesty.
I can eat as I please, but then I turn it over to God and to my sponsor. The thing, the amount, whatever it is. And then, God and my sponsor keep loving me anyway. NO MATTER WHAT: that’s in their job descriptions. And that’s how it begins to work (maybe). They keep loving me regardless of what or how much I eat, and I begin to love myself regardless of what I eat. Allowing and denying really have nothing to do with it. Finding self-love fuels and re-fuels my abstinence as it evolves, giving me a real reason to continue to give my body foods that are good for it in quantities that make sense to it.
Also, staying honest about my food breaks that mechanism that used to allow me to will myself into invisibility, the progression of which follows here: I ate something, I denied it. I stole things, and I cheated on my boyfriend. I denied it. My actions didn’t exist, so I didn’t exist. Truly, I didn’t believe I existed.
I’m actually serious. For instance, I once walked into a subway station with a friend who needed to purchase fare. I had a Metrocard, and I wanted to get home and eat, so I literally just ditched him–I remember feeling so furtive–and just sped through the turnstile and underground. He caught up with me, I think, and I made some lame excuse–I don’t know what I said. But I remember clearly a) wanting desperately to become invisible and b) believing to some extent that people wouldn’t see or notice me if I refused to look at them. I like that story now, because it gives an idea of the CRAZY thoughts that commandeered my thinking before program.
Writing this helps me because I tend to think of my abstinence as “not good enough,” but the truth is that I’m here, working a program, and my abstinence is evolving. I am gentle with myself, I accept where I am at today. My food is imperfect, I love myself more. It’s not about the food, really, and I am learning how to be rigorously honest.
Amen.
