and food?

There's that food thing. My lifelong addiction craving insane bingeing purging starving over-exercising just giving up and giving in eat everything in sight take pills and don't eat dance all night and drink and fuck around a lot so I don't have to eat eating thing.

That food thing is just fine. It seems impossible. It is peaceful beyond anything I could have hoped for. There's no obsession to get on a diet, no punishment. I'm not hunting down the next insanely restrictive plan to follow. Just working out at the gym regularly, walking every day, eating only when I'm hungry, quitting when I'm full and I haven't gained any weight and am slowly losing a pound or two here and there.

The thing that is so fine and magnificent I really can't even put it into words is that I am at peace. Whole days go by that I don't even think about eating except when I'm hungry. If I eat a cupcake, it doesn't trigger a binge because the cupcake's not a relapse and there's no diet to start in the morning. Peace. Sanity. It's unlike anything I've ever experienced with food and very much like the relief I found in AA with alcohol. I am so grateful.

friends

My friend Mick was just released from prison. I've known Mick for 15 years and about two years ago he went nuts, got drunk, went on a multi-state run of crazy behavior which included exposing himself to his wife's employer (who had mistreated Debra in Mick's mind) and peeing on her shoes, thus the sexual battery charges. He's out and I'm hoping he can stay sober.

Curtis is still locked up, my friend who went mad on crack after a couple of years of sobriety. The Board of Education did not approve and he lost his teaching job, wife, kid. He went nuts and barricaded himself in a motel room, ended up surrounded by cops and SWAT, TV cameras. He made a swan dive over the railing onto a parked car before he was dragged off in handcuffs.

Geo's dad died, and he divorced, both events triggering (or giving him an excuse for) a flat out hell for leather drunk which resulted in his arrest for assault. Geoff's the sweetest guy when he's sober. I met him as he was completing his master's and starting his own business. He's funny enough to do standup for a living.

These are three of my favorite men, sweethearts every one of them. Add some dope, some alcohol, and they are transformed into the kind of guys I read about in the paper, who show up on COPS or the evening news. Do you know any people like this? Folks you love to pieces who just can't get it together?

boo hoo hoo

A post at Long Story Longer made me think of the first time I let loose and cried after a 13 year tear hiatus. It was early New Year's Eve, 1982. There was a year-in-review retrospective on television and it caught my eye. I was about three weeks sober and something about the Vietnam Memorial hit me and suddenly my eyes filled and then my cheeks were wet. Within a few seconds I was sobbing with that breathless gut level urgency that bespeaks tremendous pain or an unexpected escape from something dreadful.

LSL wrote ". . . I also cried like a schoolgirl with no lunch money. Actually, I think it would be called sobbing. I had to concentrate to not go into the loud cry." This was the loud cry: uncontrollable, the body's wet and wracking response to hurt that is, at least for the moment, unspeakable.

I quit crying at twelve, about two weeks after my mother vanished. It seemed I had spent those two weeks at the front window, listening, watching, expecting that she would return only to reach a point of certainty that she was never coming back and crying wouldn't make it happen. I gave it up. Tears reminded me of those hopeless two weeks at the window. This loud cry on New Year's Eve was 13 years of stuffed, wrapped, constricted, should-have-long-since-been-let-loose need to cry and it went on and on and on. The post-tears calm was notable in that I felt peaceful and free. Remarkable.

Over the next several years, the tears were like slow leaking springs in a rocky outcropping. I was a hard, hostile, angry young woman with tears in her eyes. My AA card players, those precious old men who "adopted" me when I first got sober, would smile when the tears would come, then one or the other would get up and come around the card table to hug me and rock me and make it okay. They couldn't make the hurt better, but they could make it okay to be a tough, rowdy, foul-tempered, profane child-woman with a tear streaked face.

In my mind, tears were evidence of weakness, of tenderness, of a soft inside that was vulnerable to hurt, and they accomplished nothing beyond letting others see my humanity. Exposing the soft center of me did not appeal. There was a crazy kind of strength ~ and an awful loneliness ~ in pretending to be invulnerable. But absent alcohol, absent excess food, absent all of those things I've used to manage life, there was no way to keep the wet inside. I leaked.

Once the well was emptied, I found a balance and now tears just come and go as I suspect they are supposed to. It's a shame that our society looks down on or makes light of tears expressed by men. Having had the advantage of crying freely for the last 24 years, I am saddened that the men I love have to struggle so with letting go in this way.

It seems that in my younger years my emotional life was constricted to a single point: anger. Rage, actually. As I got better, my range of emotions widened until I was capable of experiencing all of them. In the same way, the painful episodes of crying in my younger years have diminished and I've reached a point of being able to cry for all sorts of reasons.

Tears today come with hurt and sadness, of course, but also as the result of having a sense of peace, of spiritual connectedness, beauty, love and affection, tenderness. I think the best day I can have is one in which I laugh so hard I can hardly breathe, and also have the opportunity to cry just a little. I don't want to live a constricted life. I want a big, rich, full life brimming with every normal human experience and then some. Being the way I am, I want maximum emotion, maximum experience, I want the most there is, all the time, with great intensity. I think it's possible if I just let go.

shocking, shocking!

Alleged "internet addicts" in China are being strapped down and given electric shocks to cure the addiction. One youth reported using the internet five hours per week. Uh-oh.

Why doesn't someone do this with food addiction? Why can't we get electric shock treatment for that. Oh wait! You can do that and, oops! I did do that back in 1979. $500 for a "treatment" program of a number of weeks, with the intent of curing addictions to certain foods.

My trigger foods were, of course, sugar (my heroin) and various combinations of fat and sugar (my speedball). My first treatment appointment arrived and I trudged off to Schick Center with my substances-of-abuse in a brown paper bag.

Upon arrival, I was taken to a room with a small table facing a mirror. I was asked to name five things that make me feel sick. Not a problem: moths, roly-polies, grub worms, maggots and the dreadful guinea worm, forever in my head, courtesy of First Lutheran Elementary and those mandatory missionary recruiting films.

Electrodes were attached to my wrists and activated. I reported when it was uncomfortable and the technician was supposed to leave it at that. I am confident that she actually jacked it up a few notches because by the time we were done with my half hour session, my hands were numb and my arms so tingly as to be useless. But by God, I didn't want to eat anything.

The theory is that the seductive substance creates some sort of pleasurable sensation in the brain. This must be disrupted by the insertion of pain and unpleasantness over the top of any good feelings associated with the substance of abuse, kind of like a nasty cork-o-pain in your bottle of good stuff.

The actual treatment consisted of arranging the brown-bagged substances on a plate before me while I faced the mirror. When given the go, I put a spoonful of sugar in my mouth. Don't swallow!! Just roll it around in there. As I was rolling and not swallowing, the technician was shouting out "grub worms!" "guinea worms!" "moths and roly polies!" and she was shocking me vigorously on the wrists. I then spit the sugar out on a plate.

We proceeded with a bit of chocolate. "Chew it up, do not swallow!!" Vigorous shocks coupled with intermittent exhortations to think of "maggots!" "fat slimy worms" (not one of mine, must have been one of hers). On this second go, I was running my fingers through the slimy sugary stuff I just spit out. Shock! Slime! Unpleasant and unhappy face in the mirror! Revolting creatures! Shock! Shock! Shock!

I paid for this. Actually, my dad paid for this because I paid for my sister to go through the same torture for smoking. The funny (or not so, but ironic) thing is that I would be perfectly happy to weigh what I weighed when I started at Schick Center. I was round, but far from obese. I'm within sighting distance of that weight again, and I will be thrilled, delighted, pleased, happy as a little clam to get there.

Though I lost a little weight with Schick, the aversion therapy lasted until the moment my father returned from New York toting a box of Godivas, my first experience with those nuggets from heaven. One chocolate, two, and I was off and running, as only a food addict can be. I think Schick had it right as far as the fact of addiction, it's just that the high speed treatment was less than effective for the long run.

ch-ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges

In my futile but lifelong effort to transform my food addicted self into a normal person, I am revising yet again my eating plan. I know I need a plan. OA tells me "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail," but there's a little voice in my head saying "it's okay to go slow."

So am back to a couple of shakes a day and a meal and a snack, something like that. The point is flexibility. I vacillate between absolute rigidity and some sort of fluid approach to food. Too fluid = big binges, but absolute rigidity seems beyond my grasp at this moment.

I learned this yesterday after returning from Ponca City, taking my sister to the airport and finding myself starving. Starving, I tell you! Starving!! So I stopped at a fast store thinking I'd get a protein bar kind of thing. When I am thinking protein bar, I should never, ever stop to read the ingredients. These things have to be manufactured by Dow or Pfizer and they actually smell and taste like it. Yuck.

So instead of the plan-approved protein bar, I looked around and there were grapes. Red, luscious, fresh grapes all clean and lovely in a nice portion-sized cup. I dropped the chemi-bar and snagged the grapes. I went to the park and sat in the grass feeling a delicious sense of gratitude for the beauty of the day, the sun, the breeze, and each one of those cold, crisp, delicious, divine little bursts of juicy sweetness.

Life may be too short to not eat grapes. I am forever grateful for the 6-7 months I was able to do on a full liquid diet because it gave me such freedom. I got rid of a pile of weight and feel frisky and fit and strong. I can do the rest with a more moderate plan of a few meal replacements and a real meal, something to share with friends or my sweetheart. It's okay not to be in a rush. It is. Isn't it?

Don't know what day it is

Funny how the horror of Nutritional Boot Camp makes counting the days seem impossible. It's like early sobriety when I just kind of woke up out of the awfulness of it and realized I had six months. Only it's taken just four days (I think) to feel better. That's the nature of this drug, I guess, as opposed to one of the others.

Husband is better. Had a major electrolyte imbalance and a flareup of inflammation in the remaining quarter-sized piece of pancreas he owns. It's pretty sad when I have to tell the doc what blood work he might need and why his amylase and lipase might not be elevated when his pancreas is messed up.

I'm over the pissed off bit of withdrawal, I think, and am stuck now with tired. Another couple of days and all will be well.

On the phone in the ER standing near a woman who was sobbing her heart out, I overheard her say, as her companion's cell phone rang, "is it DHS?" I had a moment of intense gratitude that, though it may have been DHS, it wasn't me. I don't know what she did/was thought to have done/allowed someone else to do to her child, but at least it was not me who had to make that decision. Life is good today on just that realization alone.

How many days?

Let's see, 18 hours in the ER with the husband since Monday. Lots of uncertainty. Behind at work as a result of hanging out in Florida for a week. Fired a guy who works for me this afternoon. And yes, still no sugar. Still. No. Sugar.

It's better today and I'm getting a reminder of how I felt before I took it back. The AA book talks about those "strange mental blank spots," wherein we find ourselves doing things we swore we'd never do again.

I started eating sugar again for the 49,673d time, having failed to successfully manage it 49,672 times. I used the excuse I've used 19,162 times ~ "I can moderate like other people, I'm better now" ~ though I'd failed to do so 19,161 times. I might be exaggerating a little bit, so consider those numbers +/- 10.

Happy today despite it all. That's what being clean does for me. How easy to forget.

Day two and some perspective

Nothing like a hospital ER to provide a different slant on things. Withdrawal from white powdery substances whether heroin, cocaine or sugar sucks. Being an addict sucks. Doing the same thing again and again and again ad nauseum sucks. It's not, of course, the end of the world.

It sounds absurd, really, to be in severe sugar withdrawal, especially since my consumption has been so casual. It's looked a lot like what regular people do. A little dessert, a bag of whatever. No big deal. Working out, losing weight, consuming regular food. Only I'm not regular. I can't eat like other folks. I say it and say it and say it and still I try it again. Anyway, day two of withdrawal. Yipthefuckee.

But perspective is indeed a good thing. Took the husband to the ER thinking he was having another bout of acute pancreatitis. He was severely dehydrated, incoherent, unsteady on his feet. He's better and home and we go back to the doc tomorrow. Not pancreatitis, apparently. The other big fear is pancreatic cancer, but that's just always hovering in the background with a pancreas as tortured as his.

In the room next to us, separated by those ridiculous "privacy" curtains, was a man who was making all sorts of revolting noises as he tried to rid his lungs of an excess of fluid. Turns out he had lung cancer two years ago. He couldn't remember who his doctor was, never saw the guy after radiation treatment. Has not seen any doctor in two years, now he has a lump on his neck, can barely swallow and can't quit coughing up all of this mess.

He never saw a doctor, he said, because he's got no insurance, has been on Methadone for a long time and had little money for other things. Methadone costs a fortune, but it's a step up from the alternative in most cases. Living on the edge like that, health insurance becomes a luxury. We were there long enough to hear the diagnosis: a lung full of tumors and metasteses to the bottom of the esophagus, liver, throat.

I heard all of this, this tragedy, through that thin curtain in that ridiculously busy ER. I heard, too, the efforts of this dying man to try to comfort the reserved and dignified woman with him who described herself as his "signifcant other." I heard the doctor tell him this dreadful news and heard the compassion in her voice as she called him sweetheart and told him she wasn't going to let him go, that she was going to admit him right away, not send him on a chase to this doctor or that one.

I overheard this same doctor using the same compassionate voice to talk to a man on a gurney in the hallway. He had spent the day huffing paint and she matter-of-factly asked him if he had been huffing all day? had he eaten anything? did he have someplace to go? This man was not sick in a way that ERs can treat, he was sick from chemicals and no food and no hope, no place to go, no one to help. Addiction.

Two stories in one ER in one city. I can't imagine how many thousands more there were across the country just last night. I am a sugar addict and I chose to pick up my drug again. Right now, I have enormous hope of getting it out of my life one more time. I am also healthy, fit, insured, with good finances and a nice home and people who love me and who I am fortunate to be able to love. Alcohol was easier to get off of, or maybe it seems so because it's been 24 years.

It's just another drug and I have all of the tools to beat it into submission. I am blessed with so much and I know it. Today I am praying for those who are suffering without hope, without support, without love.

One day

One day down on nutritional boot camp. Almost anyway. As often happens when I go cold turkey off sugar, there's a screaming bitch inside of me. What more proof do I need of the fact that sugar is a drug?

I remember telling the little sweet gray haired ladies in a morning OA meeting that I was finally clean from sugar and felt like a scream with skin on. That's what today has been like.

Important alert: this crazy woman inside of me has lost the thin veneer of respectability that glosses over her native tongue, profanity. I run my head into this wall of addiction and shriek OUCH! I rub my head, back away, go about my business. I run full tilt into the wall and scream SHIT THAT HURTS!! I bandage my wounds, back away, go about my business. I run my head into this fucking wall until my skull cracks open and I scream MOTHERFUCKER!!!! I screw my skull back together and stagger away. I run full force into this son of a bitching cocksucking shit eating wall and I scream I GIVE THE FUCK UP, THAT HURTS, I DON'T WANT ANYMORE.

And having written that, there's a little voice inside that says "really? are you sure?" God help me, I am sure for this moment. I'm an addict. I am.

Taking the husband to the ER. If you're a praying person, say a prayer for Mike.

Boot Camp Day 13 almost got away

Just to keep momentum, here to report that all went well at the gym, eating healthy, not enough water. Fuck! I feel like I'm drowning, and still not enough. Headache won't quit, worked too much, off to bed. It was fabulous reading the responses from yesterday and I am happy to know I'm not alone as there are so many like me.

My inspiration for that post, David, dropped by to say this, which just confirms that he is charming and sweet and good: . . . Third, I think I agree with your assessment that people are born with a certain temperment. While yours can lead to addiction, it also leads to an adventurous spirit and an ability to stand up to authority. While traditional vices hold little sway for me, I must be coaxed to draw outside the lines, take risks or challenge the status quo. I probably would have come out a decade earlier if I had your spirit.

I guess it's a trade-off. The grass is always greener, so revel in the gorgeous wild grassland of yourself and I will try and enjoy the meticulously manicured lawn of my own.

So there you go. All y'all vice-riddled sisters and brothers of mine, revel in your gorgeous wild selves; and the rest of you so admirably disciplined souls, enjoy your meticulously manicured wonderful lives.

Nighty night, folks. Ice is headed our way and the last time it hit us, we were without power for several days. We're tucking into our featherbeds and hoping it misses us.

Boot Camp Day 12 wherein we consider vices

All is well in this world, went to the gym, did my thing. Very sore for some reason, probably because I really pushed it on the double sets to catch up with my cute little husband.

I've been thinking about something David wrote, at Someone in a Tree. David's a good man, talented, creative, disciplined, Jewish, gay. There is much to admire about him, including the fact that he successfully does yoga nude and I can barely do yoga clothed. Then he posted about his vices, or the lack thereof, and it's been on my mind ever since I read it.

Do you have vices? I am literally awash in vices, though most are held in abeyance one day at a time. If I take a look back at my early '20s, before I sobered up at 25, I was the vice queen. Drinking, a few pills now and then, men, so many men, gambling, cussing, bingeing, shopping and even more unsavory acts I'll not go into here. The only vices I've never adopted are smoking, and not for lack of trying, and porn.

So since I read David's post about vices , I've been thinking about the differences in folks and why they occur. David's a good Jewish boy. I'm a good Lutheran girl, or at least I was good until I wasn't anymore. He's very well educated, I am reasonably so. Smart, talented, creative, nice family ~ check on both sides.

I would say that it's something that happened in life to force me off the wholesome path, but there was no real trauma in my life until about 10 or 11. Yet I remember lying in bed in 3d grade, listening to my little green transistor radio playing Buffalo Springfield's For What It's Worth, dreaming of running away to Haight Ashbury. How crazy is that? I was practically an infant. From my earliest memory, though, I wanted to be bad. Not in a way harmful to others, but I wanted excitement and danger and the night. With reluctant sister and friends, I was sneaking out the bedroom window at 3:00 a.m. to dance in the moonlight even in 1st grade. The thrill of the unknown, the silent city, being free and afoot under the stars was addictive.

An AA speaker I heard years ago summed it up well. He told the story of his first drink, walking into a dimly lit bar, a rough place, full of smoke and packed with people drinking, many of them drunk. He grabbed a stool and a whiskey and with the first drink felt instantly at home, more so than he'd ever felt anywhere in his life. He'd found his place and his people.

That feeling of being at home on the wild side, of always feeling a little like this wholesome path I stay on these days is someone else's path, has never gone away despite 24 years of sobriety and almost that many of being a good citizen.

I'm thinking I was born with vices or with the potential for them. There always seemed to be something just not quite right, a little piece missing on the inside of me. That I am relatively vice-free these days is evidence of having met up with a higher power which filled that void.

And still some days I feel the echo of my old urge for the wrong side of the law, a little not so nice, a little less goodness, more hell for leather, bar the door living. I think it's how I'm made and I can live with it, but I am a little envious of those who have no such urges. Do you have vices?

Pat is dead

Six years ago I answered the phone at work to hear a frantic voice shouting "he's dead, he did it, can you come, they need you." The voice was a neighbor of my in-laws and the dead one was Pat, their son.

Pat was the baby in this family of five. He was the good son, in contrast to Glenda's in-your-face hostility and Mike's hippie wanderings. Pat moved from Wyoming to attend Oklahoma Baptist University. He wanted to be a minister, studied theology, psychology.

One of his classes took a trip to the adult mental institution in Craig County. Pat's world shifted when he saw the inmates claiming to be Jesus, God, Moses, screaming their fear of satan. The scrawlings on the walls, the artwork, so much of it depicting the agonies and fires of hell, somehow convinced him there was no God and his beliefs were foolish.

He dropped the theology, became a committed atheist. In every way but that, he was my kind of man: activist, vegetarian (I'm not, alas, but I want to be), environmentalist, angry about social injustice. He cared. He cared and it hurt him. He agonized over conditions in third world countries. He raged against whaling, against destruction of the rain forests, the absurdity of cutting the last old growth redwoods.

Pat's first suicide attempt came in early December after we returned from a trip to the wilds of New Mexico. There are few states I love more, and the mountains around Taos are a spiritual touchstone for me. Mike and I were spiritually inspired by the evidence of ancient cultures, by the glory of the wildness and Pat seemed so too. We got back on Sunday. On Tuesday, Pat's coworker called to say he had not come to work.

My husband and his sister, Mike and Glenda, struggled with what to do. They debated whether he had the right to follow his own path. While this telephone debate was going on I was screaming GET OFF THE FUCKING PHONE I'M CALLING THE POLICE GET OFF GET OFF GET OFF!! Calling the police had not entered into their minds. They would never rat on their brother, never call "the man" to deal with this thing. Never.

Sometimes I think that nothing I do is authentic to the moment, everything is influenced by past events, by old feelings. My mother attempted suicide when I was a child, passing out at the table while my sister and I ate our bean soup, and I remember being absolutely frozen in that moment. My eight year old self did not know what to do and my racing heart and screaming brain were trapped in an immobile shell of a body. I couldn't act, I didn't, and someone else effected the rescue.

So with Pat the act was clear. I loved him very much, but some of the detachment that comes with not my kin, not really let me act while Mike and Glenda debated. I don't blame them for their inaction and I'm not criticizing, but get out of my fucking way I'm not just going to dick around while he dies. That was my thought. I called the cops.

Very long story short, the cops came, an ambulance, he pulled a gun on me, Glenda assaulted a reporter, Pat was wild-eyed and incoherent with the overdose he'd taken to do himself in. Locked up briefly, raging against us; Mike and I got nervous enough to get the pistols off the shelves and out of the cabinets where they're tucked around the house (a Wyoming love turned me into a gun moll) and keep them handy. Pat was not himself in any way.

But he got over it and meds were adjusted and on and on. Two years later, night before Thanksgiving and a frantic call from the mother-in-law: "Pat left a note on the table while we were gone, he's going to kill himself and the SWAT team's here can you come??" The SWAT team was indeed there, made up of my coworkers among the detectives at the Justice Center and a few others I did not know.

I made an effort to keep my self out of it and to rebuke the feelings of humiliation at having my family become the Client and God bless those cops, they were so kind. Same routine, short hospitalization, release, changing meds, blah blah blah nothing changed.

Twice we interrupted Pat's plans; I suspect there were others we never knew about. He wanted to die, he said so, he told us we could not, ultimately, stop him. The night of our Christmas open house while we were laughing and enjoying life with 150 of our friends and family, Pat swallowed two bottles full of his meds and a pint of vodka. While we were having a lovely evening full of joy and friendship and warmth he was dying alone.

It was Tuesday before Jack became suspicious and, using his key, went to check on Pat, finding him curled up on his bed, a puddle of fluid beneath his head, absolutely cold and finally dead. Jack never got over it. I believe it was this horror, of finding his beloved child in this way, that started the events that led to Jack's death three months later. Another long and sad story and this one is long and sad enough.

I'm not even sure why I'm telling it except to say that Pat and my mother were very much alike. Both intelligent, strong, educated, willful beings who were convinced there was nothing wrong with them. My mother was convinced she did not need lithium; Pat was convinced that medication alone would fix him when the evidence so clearly indicated it would not. I begged him to get counseling and he briefly met with a therapist and actually improved. That's a slow process, though, and painful. Something in him rebelled against the idea of confronting his feelings with another and he quit shortly before his death.

This is a blue time of year for so many and I see it in the eyes of folks everywhere. This day is the anniversary of Pat's death and another couple of days will be 37 years since my mother vanished. I am not blue, though I'd be just as happy if it were January and we could skip all this.

But if this is a blue time of year for you, please take care of yourself. Life can get better. This will be the longest night of the year and from this day forward the days will be growing longer with the return of the sun. The light is returning to our world and if you're missing a light in your soul, know that it, too, can come back. Just don't give up. This is a hard time of year but it will pass. Don't quit on your life the day before it starts to get better. If you've tried everything, ask for the strength to try again, but please don't quit.

And so my holiday wish for everyone is joy, peace and love for all and if you just can't get there, adequate help to make it so and the fortitude to stick with it and keep trying. Love to all of you.

This undeserved life

I don't even know what to call this because it's going to be a rant and I have to get rid of it so I can go to bed. It's long and ugly but it gets better just by writing it out.

I am a helper by nature: little miss fix it, help it, make it better. I don't know if it's some thwarted mothering instinct which would have been spent had I ever given birth. I don't know what it is, it's just been with me all my life and, like so many things, it's hell and it's not, this urge to help.

A couple of months ago I got a call on a Saturday morning from a guy wanting to know if I had some work for him in packing and shipping. Very long story short, I hired him and I adore him. He's smart, energetic, runs circles around my main warehouse/shipping guy. Circles. He's sweet, funny, I like this man. He's the cousin of a guy who used to work for me, and the nephew of another, both of whom are hopeless alcoholics and had to be let go.

This kid (I say kid, he's 38!!) tries so hard. He's sweet. People take advantage of him. I think he's kind of lonesome so he allows all sorts of trash into his life and since he works and works hard, makes money, keeps a home, has something of a stable life, he attracts users. He is Seminole and Creek and he and his family suffer the triad of afflictions so common to Native Americans in this state: profound poverty and discrimination and alcoholism. I don't know if our native population will ever overcome the effects of this country's efforts to destroy their culture with the boarding schools. That policy was a travesty no amount of reparations will ever make right.

He lost his apartment three weeks into working for me because the aunt he was living with spent his rent money on dope; had to move. He gets anxious, obsessive. I know these traits. He's an alcoholic, sort of non practicing, sort of, most of the time. I'm an alcoholic, definitely not drinking ~ geeze, just realized for 24 years December 6. He's done some time on a couple of occasions; it was sheer luck that I was not locked up for any number of reasons. So I helped him with the apartment thing ~ just a little, with transportation, some extra furniture.

Then the electric goes off. Apartment's cold. Some loser cousin used his name to get utilities, didn't pay and now this kid (38!!) owes big $$. I helped. Gave him his Christmas bonus early. Electric's on. Yea. Let's work!!

I hold back part of his money each week so he'll have it to pay rent. He took his check last week while we were in Mazatlan and got his holdback monies too. Before he got his rent paid, he met up with a cousin fresh out of the pen, and got drunk to "show him a good time." Ended up staying drunk all weekend. His female cousins took his money. Some other cousin took his phone. When he realized he'd lost all his money and his phone, he just got drunk again. What the fuck. I know that feeling. I advanced him the rent money without his having asked. Poor people get so thoroughly fucked in this world. A day past due and it's another $25, then $25 per day until paid. By the end of the week he'd have been so far in the hole his entire check wouldn't have covered it.

But then there was the phone. The phone is this man's lifeline. I think it's the way he keeps the lonesome at bay and stays connected to other people. He's frantic without the phone. We have been working on this fucking phone all week. Needs a new Cricket (and I have nothing but dirt to dish on those users, fucking Cricket). Three phones later, nothing had worked. There was one across town, he was sure of it, for $50. We're running all over, all day long, trying to get the fucking phone on so we can actually do some work.

At 4:30 I gave up and said let's just go buy you a new one, we have to stop this madness somewhere, we've wasted days trying to get a used one, it's not working and I'm losing my mind. Four days lost for him and a good 10 hours of my life trying to set up broken phone after broken phone, all donated by worthless cousins of this sweet kid I now want to strangle and run over with my truck.

We got the phone and he instantly relaxed and I was pissed ~ enraged, actually ~ at wasting a day until I got home and headed up the rock path to my front door. There was a fire going ~ I could see the flickering of the flames in the stained glass windows in the living room. As I opened the door, I heard a yip and the thumping of little feet on the oak floors as my puppies came running. The big cat was sitting on the sideboard making blinky eyes at me in welcome.

The house smelled marvelous. My husband was in the kitchen cooking tenderloin, asparagus and a pilaf. He came to me with a smile and hugged me, giving me warmth and comfort on this very cold, dark night, asking if I was okay, if all had gone well, I was late, he was worried, so happy to see me my sweetheart.

I felt so fortunate, so filled with gratitude, so blessed by this life filled with love and the luxury of living without any real struggle, with financial security, safety, companionship, comfort, resources, support. I too often take these things for granted and I realized it at that moment in Mike's arms.

I feel ashamed sometimes of my good fortune. I express this upon occasion and am always told "well you work hard, you went to school, you you you you." But it's really not about me and what I did. I did some things, true, but I was able to do those things because of the sheer happenstance of birth. I was born into a family with resources, a family that valued education, work, steadiness, honesty. Mine is family with good values, so good and so never ending that even when I strayed wildly from the way I was brought up, I still had that foundation to return to. I could be rehabilitated because I had something to go back to, something solid, real, good.

It's not really possible to rehabilitate someone who has never been habilitated to begin with. It's too hard. The making of a functional citizen is a lifetime process that begins at birth. A lot of what's needed happens in those first 12 years. This boy's family members are the main ones cheating him, lying to him, using him. My family lifts me up, they're always there for me, loving me, supporting me. They would never, never, not ever use me in any way. They love me. It is pure chance that I got my family and he got his.

When I am irritated with helping someone who struggles so, I find myself consumed with my mad and think fuck all of this, fuck you, fuck all you losers who can't keep it together. The feeling behind that comes from the selfish bitch who inhabits a bit of my soul. I am not doing what I want or need to do and the initial feel good that comes from being able and wanting to help another dissipates as the process drags on.

I am unselfish by instinct and my first impulses are good, but if it takes too long to help you the great I gets in the way and the bitch gets out and I think fuck you. Fuck you. I want, give me, my time, me, me, me, me, what about me!

Recognition turned my mad turned into glad and then to gratitude and an awareness of this shame or embarrassment or something I have about my undeserved blessings. This time of year when it's so cold and the nights are dark and the comforts of home are so exquisite, I am mindful of those who have so little and I say a prayer for all of the struggling people of the world. I say a prayer, too, that I will be a cheerful giver when the next opportunity presents itself. I know it will come, it always does. I will do what I can.

Big Ass Belle again

When I left off writing at Notes On My Life to start focusing on my health, it was in part because I'd become so despondent over our political climate that I couldn't focus on anything else.

I started this blog as a means of accountability. I know that accountability works and is a necessary part of my recovery as a food addict. So here I am being accountable again.

It is a pattern in my life to set aside the maintenance of me to pursue other things: work, the health needs of others, other folks' crises, disasters of one kind of another, work, work and, most often, work.

Once again, I've repeated this tired and destructive pattern. It started with my mother-in-law's estate sale and then continued as we neared the mid-term elections with too much focus on a new employee's difficult living situations and my anxiety over the outcome of the vote.

I asked my husband the other day why he thinks it is that I have this almost insurmountable need to help. It's true that many, many people in the world could use a little help, but it's really not necessary that Little Miss Fix-It jump into every untenable situation to provide a solution. It's not. I did make a career of helping, but. I. retired. It's so hard to remember that. I'm not a child abuse investigator anymore. I sell antiques. Got to get it through this noggin.

So Little Miss Big Ass Fix-It is turning around once again to take a look at herself and what she needs. She needs to eliminate some of the "too much" crap going on at work. She requires regular doses of quiet time. She needs time with puppies sleeping on her lap. She needs to get back to the gym, and she needs to take enough time to be able to eat healthy.

Can I fix myself? I've done it before. I'm not broken, but I need a tune-up. I also need Help and will ask for that. We'll see what happens.

Wrench, please

In my shop, when we're unloading or shipping furniture, I am often faced with undoing bolts or screws that have been in place for 100 years. Especially with old, old French armoires, it takes a tight wrench and a lot of elbow grease to get the old dirty rusty connectors moving.

I feel right now as if I'm trying to wrench my head around, giving it a major heave-ho, working to get back to a point of gratitude and acceptance. I am not white knuckling it, but neither am I in that divine spot where it feels I am floating on a cloud of grace and serenity.

So much better than it was, as I said this morning, but nowhere near where I want to be. Some of this is likely the aftereffects of excess. Why can't I remember that this. does. not. feel. good. Why? I have a disease that tells me I don't have a disease, tells me this time it will be different, I'll be able to handle it, keep on track, quit with one. It's a liar, this affliction. Maybe one day I will lose my ability to hear its voice.

No, no, no, no, NO!

Food does not make it better. Food does not make it better. Food does not make it better.

There. I wonder if I could get it tattooed on my right hand, the one that reaches for relief? Amazing how much better I feel just a couple of days clean. Amazing. Night and day. Whole different person.

Food does not make it better; it's the big lie, the thing that seduces me with a promised comfort and provides just a brief bit of numbness, then leaving me with the feelings of loss and disappointment and frustration and and and and . . . .

Um . . . I don't think that's typical. I don't see folks on the commercials eating Oreos and becoming despondent. Since that is for me the aftermath to the consumption of a bag of Oreos, does that make me a food addict? Ya think? (Note to self, sense of humor returning, good sign.)

Eating hell for leather

Been doing that, these last couple of weeks: eating like a grown man, like a late July hay hauler, pretty much anything I've wanted, whenever I've wanted and often when I didn't want, just to get through.

It was the drug that got me past this ordeal of taking care of my mother-in-law. Facing 12 hours of tediousness at her empty, cold, dark house, and desperately missing my quiet time, my leisurely mornings, my four-day work week, my sweet little cottage, I'd fortify myself with large quantities of the obsession du jour, thinking if I could just stand it, get it done, survive it, get through, I'd quit.

This is old history for me. I've used food as the fortifier for most every unpleasant or painful task in my life. It works. Temporarily, of course, but I'd not have used it to such destructive lengths if it didn't work.

So I'm beginning again to work on my healthy eating habits and on my fitness. Haven't been to the gym in weeks. Haven't been myself in weeks. I miss the me that I was a month ago. I am closer today to who I was 18 months ago. I don't want her back, not ever.

It's pretty scary, because I know that I am powerless over this addiction. Just saying "I'm beginning again" doesn't mean I will. I want to, I'll take the steps I can to do so, I'll ask for help, commit to a food plan, but still . . .

I can't undo this lost time and the only thing I've really learned is that I am never safe from this thing. Food will always be an issue for me. I may be in remission from the disease, one day at a time, but it is never gone, no matter how much weight I lose or how much time I string together. It's always waiting, always ready, still deadly, still strong.

Checking in

You have all been so kind with your comments, thank you. Here's a brief update before I head out to the final stretch of this three weeks of hell: This is the last day I have to finish clearing out the mother-in-law's house. I'm heading over there with one of my guys from the shop and we'll move furniture and donate and anything else that's needed.

Then I'm going to vacuum and if she wants to clean beyond that she can. I will not haul over to her place the teensy light little boxes she could easily have put in the trunk of her giant cruiser. She is not helpless, helpless just works very well for her. I think part of my anger about this whole deal is that I long to help my parents, who live 100 miles away. They never ask for anything, I love them dearly, they need help with Daddy's dementia and my stepmother's 48 hour a day caretaking role, and I can't do anything for them that would seriously improve their lives. This one, not my mother, not even my kin in the tight definition of my family, is living it up in a retirement community, hanging out, enjoying her life and sucking the life out of me. God, that just sounds ugly and I am sorry to have written it but the comparison between her life and how I can help and their lives and how I can't just kills me.

I am fed up, exhausted, resentful. These are not helpful feelings for me when it comes to eating and working on weight and getting to the gym. I confessed my wish to run away to my husband, even describing my aerie in the old Victorian replete with iron bed and rocker. I am not sure he realized the fantasy does not include him.

I am a resilient person with a strong sense of self. I know I'll bounce back from this and it won't even take that long, but I am ready now and I have one more day. So I know I can do this and I will. But I am getting pretty tired of taking care of other people and I am just a bit afraid that when the quittin' time comes on that behavior, it's going to be final. When my switch turns off on concern for others, I don't know who I'll be, but I believe it will be irrevocable and I believe that change is coming up fast.

Oprah says fat people spend their whole lives putting others first. This fat girl is on the homestretch heading toward done with that soul killing, life stealing way of life.

I hope you all have a lovely day today. I can't wait to have some time this weekend to catch up with all of you.

Meltdown

I sat on my front steps crying my eyes out this evening. Just too much over the last two weeks: 80 hours of estate sale work for the mother-in-law plus running my business, and then she managed to lose 1/3 of the funds collected at the sale. I am so tired, so overwhelmed, just can't get back into my life as I want it to be. This was too much and that's a lesson I've learned over and over ~ I just never seem to figure it out in the midst of whatever it is, only after the fact when I'm as deflated as a used condom. I am deflated, tired, sad.

Addendum: Woke up this morning, October 17, feeling the same way. Started thinking these meltdowns occur with some regularity. Searched through my other blog and found a post titled Insanity, which comes close to expressing how I feel right now, with that tremendous urge to just run away and abandon my post in this life I know. The only difference today is that I'm not sure I'd miss the husband. I'd definitely miss the dogs. Malaise? Incipient madness? Diagnosis, anyone?

The @#$%&* scale

As a fat girl, I know that moving the scale is death. I know it. Once moved, the thing will never read precisely the same again. It will be up or down, and though I try to readjust it, it just won't be right.

My husband, sweet man who holds steady at 172, 172, 172, 172, no matter what, moved our scale. He did it in an effort to determine whether little Bill was as fat as the vet said. Mike has his own scale thing going on: he denies that the vet's monstrous digital appliance is as accurate as our retro chrome beauty when it comes to the fat little dog.

He kicked the scale around the uneven tiled floor in my sitting room a couple of days in a row, desperately trying to make Billy weigh less than 14 pounds. Knowing that an evil report would be the likely result of this moving of the scale, I skipped weighing a few days. And here's the stunning, terrifying thing about that: I gained 6 pounds.

Did I really gain 6 pounds or has he messed up the scale? Really? Really, I've been working this estate sale and skipping the gym. I've been burning the candle at both ends, feel tired all the time, not eating clean. I've probably really gained a few pounds. Six or not, I'd go with the gain being a reality and that speaks to the power of this disease for me.

For whatever reason ~ a lifetime struggle with weight, more fat cells than the average bear, whatever ~ I have a stunning capacity to gain weight quickly. It is one of the things I'm best at. If it were a competition, I'd win, but the truth is I lose with every increment of increase on the @#$%#$^ scale.

I hate scales. Hate them. But I have to have one for accountability. Skipping a day of weighing is a step toward a complete relapse. It's how I gained 80 pounds in less than a year in 1987. It's how I kept a comfortable denial going about the weight I gained when Mike was sick. I have to have daily accountability if I'm going to hold steady. Have to. So I'm back to it, weighing every morning, and I've hidden the scale from the 172 pound man and his fat little dog.