Leading up to this event, in my mind, I had assumed that I would not be able to bare the horror of the loss of someone so close to me.  I imagined all kinds of scenarios in which I would fall apart, either at the hospital or the funeral home, or somewhere in between, but the story always ended with me being taken away in a straitjacket, thereby creating a whole new set of worries for my family at the time when they needed me most.

Had I been going through this a mere six years earlier, these mind movies would have been on an endless loop and I have no doubt that they would have eventually laid the foundation for a world class binge-to-end-all-binges.  And after that?  I don’t even want to know.

But I WAS in program.  And counseling.  And I talked about these fears.  Wrote about them. Cried over them. Most importantly, I cried about them to God and to my OA friends. And each time that I faced my worst fears and let the tears flow, it was like a release valve for my emotions, so that by the time my mother actually did pass away, I was not completely overwhelmed by it.  Yes, I was devastated.  Yes, I felt lost and alone in a way that I had never felt those things before.  But I did not feel hopeless.  I did not feel panic-stricken.  And I did not start spiraling into that black abyss that I had assumed would come to swallow me up.  I realized, through sharing with others, that people deal with death all the time and live to tell the tale.  I was just another bozo on the bus, and this time I just happened to be going through a great loss.

I hear at meetings all the time that “no one said life was going to be easy.”  And similar things about how life still happens even after we get sober/abstinent.  They ain’t kidding. But the difference is, now that sanity has returned, I at least have a fighting chance to face life’s challenges in healthy ways rather than the way I used to  – – by turning in on myself and self-destructing.

Thanks to my Higher Power, there is no need for that kind of behavior anymore, even when life gets difficult.

…UNTIL NOW!!

Over the past two years, I have been able to go to drive-thrus and just get a coffee without even one single thought of getting food!  This may sound like a small thing, but to me it is such a miracle!  Just one of the many promises of the program that have come true in my life!   “It works if you work it!”  Thank you, HP!

I never did.

It would be one thing if my imaginary audience was made up of people I loved, or even liked.  But my silent onlookers were more like a group of hecklers, made-up of the people I feared the most.  In my mind, every move I made was scrutinized by this judgemental crowd.  They made me feel like I was incapable of making even the simplest of decisions, like what shirt to wear, or how to apply my make-up.  And the more in-public I was, the bigger and the nastier my audience became.  For example, if I wanted to go to the store, the moment I walked out of the house, I felt like I was being watched by a group of people who didn’t like me while my worst enemy gave a condescending running commentary of my every move. (Can you tell that I have been told that I tend to use my vivid imagination against myself?)

That is the way I lived my life before program.

In doing my fourth step, however, I discovered that the leading voice in my imaginary audience was actually…MINE!  That the “worst enemy” I mentioned earlier was in fact MYSELF!

Once I understood this at a gut level, my imaginary audience shrunk considerably.  There may still be a few nameless stragglers milling-about the stands, a couple worn-out hangers-on, but mainly it’s just me there.  And I have mellowed.  I am not so hard on me anymore.  And I am not so hard on others.  And sometimes, when I am feeling especially close to my Higher Power, there have actually been times when I have been my very own CHEERLEADER!

In the past, I got involved with exercise programs as a means to lose weight.  Consequently, whenever I “went off” a diet, I stopped going to the gym.  It was all or nothing.  Black or white.  It had nothing to do with my health, but EVERYthing to do with that number on the scale.  In my sick mind, if I was not eating right (i.e., losing weight), what was the use?

Thanks to OA and the 12 Steps, things are different now.  For the first time in my entire life, I have joined a gym for the RIGHT reasons!!  For the past 6 weeks, I have been going three times a week as a means of decreasing stress and increaseing my heart health.  Period.

And guess what?

It’s already working!!

I tend to carry stress in my neck and shoulders, and since I have started some light weight-training, that “pain in the neck” is gone!  Also, I have been monitoring my blood pressure, and that is down several points as well!  Of course, I don’t mind the “side effect” of feeling my clothes getting a little looser, but that is not my motivation anymore.  Now that I feel better about myself, I can more clearly see The Big Picture: that I am worth taking care of and that excercise can help me do this.  That exercise is to be used as a tool to help improve my sense of well-being, NOT as a shortbcut to a smaller body size.  Took long enough for me to finally figure this out, but it finally happened!  HOORAY!

Thanks, again, HP!!

Not surprisingly, when my husband and I moved into our first house, complete with our own front yard to take care of, I brought my neurosis with me.  In both houses we have owned, the rule was that I did the backyard gardening and he did the front.  And that was set in stone.  I wouldn’t lift a finger in the front yard, again, for fear of being seen.  At my current house this became more of an issue because the front yard is very large (so my husband could really use the help) but it is also on a busy road (which means – GASP! – people!!)  During the fall, especially, I eventually had to help rake leaves in the front yard, but that had to be on my terms – early morning weekends ONLY – (I am talking about BEFORE 7 a.m. here!)

All that started to shift last year.  I don’t know when it happened, exactly, but several times I found myself picking-up stray sticks or raking up a little patch of leaves in the front yard WITHOUT having to analyse all the reasons why I couldn’t be the one to do it.  Last spring I filled flower boxes in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, in the middle of the FRONT YARD!  This past fall, I even raked leaves “in broad daylight!”  But the biggest change happened just a few short weeks ago.

For some reason I got it in my head that I wanted to rake out the beds, take apart the existing rock border, and re-stack it in a neater design.  I looked at my schedule and penciled-myself-in for the following day.  I got out there around 10 a.m. and worked until around 4 p.m. (stopping only for lunch and a couple small snacks and drinks).  I was so involved with what I was doing that I didn’t even realize that I had spent an entire day, in the COMPLETELY unflattering position of sitting cross-legged on the ground, in SHORTS, working in the FRONT YARD!!!, and IT NEVER EVEN CROSSED MY MIND that there may be passers-by who were making fun of me or thinking negative things about my body, or making fun of what I was doing or how I was doing it – – all the crap that had consumed my thoughts for my entire life!!

This was a TRUE MIRACLE for me!!

Thank you, HP, for freeing me from all that horrible, draining, unproductive insanity!!

Ever since I lost 75 pounds over a year ago, I have been asked to speak at several meetings, even though I still have almost the same amount of weight to lose.  This has always made me uncomfortable.  On the one hand, I’d feel obligated to say “yes,” since I wanted to give back to the program and do service by sharing my experience, strength and hope with others.  On the other hand, I’d feel that I was not a good enough example of how the program works because I am not at my goal weight, even though I have been in and out of program for over twenty years.  What kind of message does THAT send?

Fortunately, through working the program, my sense of responsibility has finally begun to outweigh my pride, so now I try to accept all my invitations to speak.  But part of me would still feel like a hypocrite.  Even in recovery, I was still struggling with the idea that my worth is determined by the number on the scale.  And yet, didn’t I always get words of wisdom from people with good spiritual recovery who are not yet at their goal weight?  Of course I did!  But for some reason, I could not cut myself the same slack.

To get over those feelings of guilt and shame, I would always start off my “story” with an explanation about why I still have so much more weight to lose.  Something to let everyone know – that I know – that I am still fat.  And I did this every single time I was the speaker.

Until last week!

I didn’t even know the topic I was going to be sharing-on and had decided to leave it all up to my Higher Power to give me the words that the people listening needed to hear.  And guess what happened?  I FORGOT to mention my little “disclaimer” about my weight at ALL!  In fact, it was so far removed from my mind that I didn’t even realize that I forgot about it until AFTER the meeting was over!!  ME!!, the person who has been obsessing about her weight and how she looks to others for literally DECADES, actually FORGOT about her weight while talking in front of a group of people!! 

Now if that’s not a miracle, I don’t know WHAT is!!