Each Day a New Beginning: September 6th

We can build upon foundations anywhere if they are well and firmly laid.
  —Ivy Compton-Burnett

Recovery is a process, one that rebuilds our lives. And the Twelve Steps provide the foundation to support our growth as healthy, productive women. But each Step must be carefully and honestly worked, or the whole foundation will be weakened.

How lucky we are to have found this program and the structure it offers. We looked for structure in our past. We searched, maybe for years, running from one panacea to another, hoping to find ourselves. Booze - pills - food - lovers - causes; none gave us the security we longed for. We couldn't find ourselves because we hadn't defined ourselves. At last we've come home. Self-definition is the program's guarantee. Not only can we discover who we are, now, but also we can change, nurture those traits that we favor, diminish those that attract trouble.

My actions today are the key. They tell who I am at this moment. Who I become is up to me. I will pick a Step and reflect before I move ahead. The strength of my foundation depends on it.

From Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women by Karen Casey © 1982, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation.

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I couldn't find myself because I hadn't defined myself. Very true, and very profound words.

Connecting the Dots: The Long Road to Recovery (My blog, 2011)

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding.”
Kahlil Gibran

My husband has the most extensive collection of music I’ve ever seen. When we go to garage sales on Saturdays, he picks up CDs for a buck or less to add to his already enormous collection of all types of music.  A few months ago, he bought a copy of Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits which he put in my car, since he knows I like their music.

I popped the disc into the CD player while I was driving to work one day, humming along to The Sounds of Silence & A Most Peculiar Man.  Then, I Am A Rock came on & it hit me with such an impact, I felt my scalp start to tingle.  I hadn’t heard this song in many many years & really, I’d forgotten all about it.

I Am A Rock was ‘my song’ when I was a teenager.  When I got to work, I googled the lyrics & I’ve been reading them, over & over again, in an effort to recall what on earth I was feeling way back then, when I felt that song had been written for me & me alone. I didn’t relate to the song from a ‘lost love’ perspective, like every other teenager on earth did, I related to it from another angle:

“I build walls, a fortress deep & mighty; that none may penetrate….”

“I have my books

And my poetry to protect me.

I am shielded in my armor.

Hiding in my room

Safe within my womb

I touch no one & no one touches me.

I am a rock; I am an island.”

If they’d added ‘food’ into those lyrics along with books & poetry, the song would have been perfect.  As a teenager, I was self absorbed in my own little world which I had created to shield me from pain. I could read books & poetry all day long, lose myself in the words, and come up for air only to feed myself with candy & junk food. 

I lived for 48 years allowing no one to penetrate those walls I had constructed around myself. My kids were able to, from time to time, because I allowed them to melt my otherwise ‘independent, fiercely self-sufficient, capable & sensible’ heart.

I was quite proud to tell myself that no one could touch me because I wouldn’t allow it. I had built a wall of protection around myself that nobody was permitted to penetrate. While I kept a smile plastered on my face for appearances sake, it was just a façade.  On the inside, I was a Rock & I was an Island. Not to mention, an emotional mess.

But, what happened to me that would’ve created this closed-off personality where I felt I had to avoid pain & discomfort at all costs & at all times?

A perceived trauma at age 5 is ‘what happened’; I found out I was adopted.  I couldn’t discern what reality was; everything I knew & believed in up to that age was an illusion. Even my name was changed.  So, I created a fantasy-land for myself; a place where things were as I wanted them to be instead of how they really were. I retreated into that make-believe place when I needed to escape a reality I couldn’t handle, and I used food to help me cope & to stuff back the feelings that tried to surface.  My Cardinal Rule of Life, back then was: Things are not as they appear to be.

I wound up staying stuck at 5 years old, when the trauma occurred, and I never developed emotionally or spiritually from that age, only physically. And, of course, a 5 year old has to have her way all the time & never, ever be allowed to feel pain or discomfort.

Somewhere along the line, I heard a very powerful message that would stay with me for decades.  What I heard was, “Love is Conditional”. I told myself I needed to be The Perfect Person in order to be deserving of love. I heard that message from my parents when they said, “You are so pretty but you’d be so much prettier if you’d lose some weight.”  I heard that message in Catholic elementary school when the nuns told me that God would only love me & accept me into Heaven if I toed the line & followed the rules of the Church.  I heard that message from the first man I ever loved, when he’d beat me & tell me it was my fault for setting off his bad temper. I heard that message on a daily basis from my ex husband of 22 years when he’d tell me ‘if only’ I treated him properly, we could have a much better marriage. Whether these messages were true or not is irrelevant; I perceived them to be truthful, and that’s all that matters.

So I set out on a mission to be The Perfect Person; the perfect daughter, the perfect friend, the perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect employee & so on. I could never reach that impossible ideal, naturally, so instead of being The Perfect Person, I became the Unworthy, Useless Person Who Could Never Manage to Do Anything Right.  That fact was quite obvious in my weight, which was the badge of dishonor I wore for all the world to see. Even if I managed to get a handle on my weight, it would only be for a short period of time before I went back to food to soothe my wounded, imperfect & abandoned soul. Even God couldn’t love me, I thought, since I was so perfectly imperfect. Sheesh, if my own birth mother didn’t love me, how on earth could anyone else? No wonder I ate to excess…what a burden I’d put onto my shoulders: the driving need be Perfect!

I found my birth-family in 2000 & that’s when I really started my journey to find myself in the ashes of all the rubble. The fantasy became a reality, and a very, very ugly one at that. I finally heard the truth & I could perpetuate my fantasy-land no longer.  I filed for divorce from my husband of 22 years in 2002 & that was the next leg of the journey for me; striking out on my own for the very first time in my life.

When I met my husband at a party on August 20, 2005, I knew instantly that he was the person who could break down my walls, once and for all. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. I fell in love with him on the spot…..love at first sight I guess you’d call it. I knew in my heart that he was my soulmate & that with him, I’d finally be able to be me. I was ready to see those walls come down, a bit frightened at the prospect, but ready nevertheless.

Little by little, he chipped down my walls because finally, I allowed someone to do it.

As long as I had a wall around myself, I lived in my own world where others weren’t really allowed. What I did let in was excessive & self-indulgent behavior. I thought everything had to be done my way, and if it wasn’t, then I was entitled to eat to soothe myself. Nothing allows denial to thrive quite like self-righteous pride methinks. If I was always right & had all the answers, then obviously everyone else was wrong.

Until recently, I wasn’t even able to identify whether or not I had walls of protection around me. But oh yeah, I did, and to some degree, I still do.

These walls prevented me from seeing the truth, they kept me in denial & practicing selfish, self-indulgent & childish behaviors.

Who’d a thunk a song would be so revealing? It wasn’t really the song itself that did it….it was a combination of soul-searching, asking God to guide me to an answer, and hearing that song, decoding it, and finally putting the whole story together. The journey of self-discovery that initially began in 2000, climaxed in 2011 with a bunch of revelations that have finally opened my eyes & made sense out of what appeared to be nonsense.

It’s taken me 3 years of not using food for emotional reasons to finally hone in on what happened….what led me down the road to compulsive overeating. For some reason, I didn’t realize that I’d created my own Never-Neverland until recently. Oh, I knew the circumstances of my life, but I was never able to connect the dots. I haven’t been able to put all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together & come up with ‘the reason’ I’ve abused food for so long.

Since I’ve been having a bit of a struggle with my program these days, I was forced to look within myself to find out why. Something was wrong & that means I wasn’t being 100% honest with myself somewhere. I had to figure it out or I’d be in danger of backsliding instead of continuing forward with my journey.

Someone told me that the 3^rd year of maintenance is the hardest; when the arrogance tends to set in, when we think we ‘have this’, see that we really don’t, and we either hit the wall, go back to the old habits, or figure out the why’s of it all.

Now I have to recall the old feelings & purge them, maybe discuss them further, maybe even beat them out of my system on a punching bag…..but they have got to go.  What used to be is no longer.

The illusions have been replaced with reality. I am healthy enough, emotionally, spiritually & physically, to deal with my life as it is and as it needs to be.

And it’s funny, but ever since these revelations have appeared, my desire to overeat has vanished.

Maybe now, finally, I can change the Cardinal Rule of life to read: things are what they appear to be.

And a rock feels no pain;

And an island never cries.

I am not a rock & I am not an island. I am a soon-to-be 54 year old woman who wants to stay in recovery & who will stay in recovery, one day at a time.