For Today: August 9th

What a day may bring, a day may take away.

Thomas Fuller

“Hang onto the good feelings,” I tell myself.  Sadly, the effort to control dissipates the very state of being I want to retain.  The clarity, the joy of living does not come about on demand.  God feelings come as a result of getting out of myself and “going with the flow.”  As I live the OA program, I root out gloom producing defects and discover a new capacity for pleasure.

For Today:  This is a day to be aware of my Higher Power’s gifts;  to live with whatever comes my way.

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I read an article recently about the mindset of people who are substance abusers.  Those  who are addicted look for reasons to be miserable. They look to find fault & discontent wherever they go. This is too hard, this is too annoying, people bug me, if YOU didn’t do THAT, I wouldn’t have done THIS; the traffic is too heavy, the vacation isn’t long enough, the salary is too low, the water is too cold, the heat is too hot, the dress doesn’t fit perfectly….and on & on goes the litany of complaints.  If the addict can’t find something wrong, he will invent it. He will go out of his way to find fault & misery everywhere he goes.

 

 How else can he feel justified to partake in his drug of choice if he isn’t miserable?

Misery gives the addict license to practice whatever he feels like practicing. If I feel like crap & go shopping, I can justify spending too much money. Doing so ‘made me feel better.’ So did that pint of Haagen Daaz I sucked down without even tasting it.

If I choose to look at the bright side of life, what excuse will I have to overeat? If I look for the good in people instead of the bad, how can I overeat about the perceived injustice that rotten so-and-so DID to me? There will BE no perceived injustice when I change my attitude towards one of happiness & acceptance instead of aggravation & discord.

If I don’t feel particularly happy, I can fake it till I DO feel it.

If a person insists on viewing his glass as half empty all the time instead of half full, he stands a much slimmer chance of changing his life for the better or ditching his addictive behavior once & for all.

I grew up in a house where everything was looked at as a problem, a misfortune, a misery, an injustice or something to be afraid of. The boogey man was going to sneak in my window at night if I left it open.  A thief was going to rob & kill me if I walked down the street unescorted.  The Russians were going to invade the United States & life as we knew it was going to cease to exist. My friends weren’t real friends because they were jealous & envious & out to harm me. Nobody on earth had my best interest in mind, they were only out to get what they could from me. If I didn’t keep the doors dead bolted & a chair rammed up under the knob, I’d surely be robbed & raped & murdered.  And if the baby was left to cry in his crib for 30 minutes as the doctor recommended, the cat was going to jump into his crib & suck the breath right out of him. I was told to never, ever, under ANY circumstances trust another human being for ONE second.  And I needed to be oh-so-very-careful about airing the dirty family laundry! That laundry was OUR secret & nobody could or should ever, ever know about what went on in the privacy of our home. Shhhhhhhhhhhhh! I was told how very ‘lucky’ I was to have such a loving home but yet, I had to keep some big  secret about what went on.  So how great WAS that ‘lucky’ life I led? Pretty confusing message for a kid methinks.

I wonder why I turned to food to cope with my life? If it was so horrible, so bad, so terrifying, so dangerous, so downright UNLIVEABLE, wasn’t it the natural thing to do to turn to an addictive behavior to cope with it???

In a world where nothing is ever good enough, why even bother trying to change things?

I’ve worked my ass off for the past 8 or so years to squash the dogma that’s filled my brain! It takes a LOT of hard work to undo all that garbage that’s cluttered my head up for so long!

I wound up marrying a man who thought exactly the same way as my folks did! If there was a patch of ice in the middle of the Sahara desert, HE was going to find it, slip on it and break every bone in his body! Because he was cursed; born under an unlucky star, blah blah blah & BLAH.

I was so bogged down in the misery for SO long, I’m not sure I even realized I was living that kind of life & responding to it accordingly! I became a people-pleaser…..I had to ‘fix’ everyone ELSE & prevent THEM from acting out THEIR misery! It became MY job to rule the world & make everyone smile & be happy. I wound up living for others but never for myself. What a vicious cycle!

I moved out of my parents home for good when I was 20. I moved out of my ex husband’s life when I was 46.  The day my ex moved out of the house was the day my life truly began, I think. Life on MY terms & not dictated by the misery of another!

As of that day, I decided to no longer tolerate misery in my life. I had to remove myself from the glass-is- half-empty philosophers who inundated my life.  I divorced my ex husband & I set boundaries down with the folks. I will speak to you on the phone every  Wednesday & Sunday. I will see you for 2 or 3 weeks every year & I will do my honest best to smile & be happy while you are here to make your stay most enjoyable.

 And that’s it.  

My lifelong quest to fix everyone else was finally over. The only person I CAN fix is myself.

I have finally reached a point where I can tell you my life IS good enough. I AM good enough.  The Food Plan I follow IS satisfying.  I’m no longer ‘trying’ to achieve a better quality of life, I am MAKING it happen by focusing on the Positive! I refuse to live in negativity & perpetuate the ‘poor me’ syndrome!

If I expect to live without the chains of addiction weighing me down, I have to change everything about my life. It’s not enough to say I’ll cut back on my food intake. That’s only one small part of a much, much larger picture that turned me into a person who abuses food & booze to cope.

I started my journey at 46 & I am still a work in progress at 54.  With God’s help, I will continue to BE a work in progress until the day I die.