I shared in a meeting yesterday that I'm striving to allow myself to be average, to accept myself as I am; neither the best or the worst. I see that my thinking that either I am the best or if not I'm worthless has driven my disease for so many years. It sees me push and push myself, and others, instead of being open to my HP's will. It also let's me hit the 'fuck it' button and opt out when it seems too much or too hard.
I want to live a live where I know I am good enough and that I am loved no matter what I achieve. Or what I look like. Or what I own. Or how I spend my days.
However, I also see that my cunning disease is manipulating this desire to live differently to the black & white thinking of perfectionism. Abstinence continues to be an important tool of recovery, my only path to recovery and sanity. In my early years of recovery, abstinence was something I treated so preciously so carefully. I ensured everything I did protected my abstinence. I planned and lived my life in a way to ensure I could eat abstinently at every meal.
All these years later, after years of slipping and sliding, but with years of emotional and spiritual recovery I seem to take it all for granted. I seem not to be that stressed when I take the first compulsive bite. I justify that they are only little diversions, but deep down I know it's dangerous. The additional food numbs me from my feelings, I put on weight which leads to more self obsession, I feel like a hypocrite when speaking to sponsee's and newcomers and stop being a role model of hope for others in program.
Yesterday I ate some crisps at 10pm. They weren't on my food plan, I wasn't hungry and they weren't mine. I waited until my husband went to sleep so he wouldn't know I'd eaten them. Straight away after the first bite I knew I was in trouble as my next thought was 'what else can I eat'. That thinking takes me on a dangerous road as there is bottom line food in my house. I opened the fridge and looked at the food that my hubby has in there... Luckily I remembered to pray and my HP got me through to bed without any more food.
I find my dishonesty (eating my hubby's food, at a time that he won't see and a quantity that may go unnoticed) so confronting. I am rarely dishonest in other areas of my life. My husband (who works another 12 step program) tells me it is this dishonesty that confirms to him I am an addict. I am also rarely super clear in meetings or with my sponsor that I have eaten outside my food plan or broken my abstinence. I use terms like messy and rough to describe my abstinence, and talk about food as being shinier. I don't say the reality that I have broken my abstinence.
Sadly, I'm the only person I'm kidding. Messy abstinence doesn't serve me, it keeps me stuck in self obsession, dishonesty and separation. I can't be connected to my HP or others in my life if I am being dishonest. I can't hear my HPs will for me if I have food talking loudly to me. I can't be the best me if my thinking is full of thoughts of food.
I will tell someone today that I broke my abstinence last night and that I recommit to abstinence today. My abstinence is 3 meals a day, no snacking in between. No food not on my plan especially recreational sugar.
HP please grant me the humility and wisdom to treat my gift of abstinence more carefully. Help me to surrender to my physical compulsion and not take the first compulsive bite.
No comments:
Post a Comment