An amazing thing happened this morning. I went to the grocery store. A big grocery store, with lots of food. It might actually be the biggest, most widely-stocked grocery store in Manhattan, not counting the Costco that recently opened in East Harlem. Anyway, this particular store has been a fantasyland of mine since I first moved here five and a half years ago, so when I got there this morning, I called my sponsor. I said, “I’m at F______. I’m overwhelmed.” She said, “Oh, yeah. Okay. What’s going on?” (I’m paraphrasing–I don’t do her justice.) I said, “Well, actually I feel pretty good!” And I yammered on as is our custom, this time for 7 minutes and 48 seconds (usually we talk around 10 minutes a day), actually clearing up some buzzardlike thoughts that have been encircling my headspace recently. But then I got off the phone and I was still at F______ and still overwhelmed. So I texted her: Um, actually I skirted a main issue – I want to eat all the food here. I want to spend a lot of money. She responded: Pray to your HP and ask for guidance. I: More specifically, I want to obtain and horde all this food. Right. HP. Got it. Thanks. She: Why don’t you tell yourself you can horde the food later if you really want to? I said, “that seems reasonable,” and then got a little glimmer of that excited feeling, that WOW, there are tools and they work! feeling. As a matter of fact, I kind of feel like a small whining attention-grabbing kid when I start panicking to my sponsor (being “taken care of” by her comes with a certain kind of giddiness), but maybe that’s what we all need sometimes. Or maybe sponsorship is a learning tool, in place so we can experience receiving care and advice which we might not have gotten in childhood. I’m surprised because I have a sponsee, and I’m fairly certain I could have coached her through a similar situation just as well. But for whatever reason, when I panic, I need someone to guide me. Praying to HP didn’t even occur to me until my sponsor said it. Mindboggling. That’s my disease. Listen, I don’t know why it works, I just know it does!
Another kick I am on is repeating my new mantra: Never Underestimate The Power Of Twenty Minutes. In twenty minutes, I can get somewhere relatively far away if the trains cooperate, I can make dinner, I can take a halfway decent nap or run, I can call three fellows, I could receive life-altering news! Twenty minutes is a powerful thing. So when I feel like I don’t have enough time (an anxiety-producing feeling), I say, I’ve got twenty minutes, and that’s plenty of time. It’s also, interestingly, sometimes enough time for a physical compulsion (food craving) to pass.
I had a snack just now. It was a snack that required the utmost mindfulness, because it could easily have been binge food (I must admit that there were two “questionable” foods that HP allowed me to purchase today at the store; questionable only because they consist of more than one serving–I’m more or less okay with having one serving of anything now). But I ate it without distraction: no TV, no computer. No reading material. And I prayed, as I ate, for the knowledge of when to finish. In retrospect I might have measured out a certain, manageable amount. Are you wondering if all that stuff is maybe more trouble than it’s worth? Yeah, me too. The food tasted less satisfying than it had in years past, when I’d used it for more than it was capable of providing: escape, comfort, company, et cetera. No surprise there. At least not anymore. At first, yeah. The curtain had been pulled back: the Wizard of Oz was just some guy. Food is food. Not an illusion.
One last thing I wanted to share today:
I think about this all the time when I want to restrict and can’t. I think, I did all that bingeing for all those years; I made my bed, now I must lie in it. I ate the cake, now I must eat the cake (not the whole cake anymore, but let’s say one serving a day). I want to detox and juice-cleanse and stop eating sugar and I can’t–I’m not part of a diet club. I am letting, letting go, letting God. I am following my food plan even when it feels like WAY TOO MUCH food! Because what happens, in my experience, is that when I cut things out I start thinking, ooh, I look good, and then it’s I look awful, and then it’s how can I look better, and then it’s I totally suck and then ready set binge.
On that note. I have to go–it’s been way longer than twenty minutes since I sat down to write this. It’s helped me: I hope it helps you, too.
