While others ate lunch with seeming nonchalance, I tried with all my might to cap myself at two pieces of pizza and one piece of cake. That was always my goal, although I never achieved it. I tried so hard to, but I failed every time. I always had different reasons, excuses, justifications, or whatever you want to call them, but no matter what, one piece of pizza would become two, three, four and the only thing that would stop me was an empty box (and sometimes shame). Cake (and pasta and crackers and, well, pretty much anything) was the same deal -- once I started, I couldn't stop. I did stop, because people were around, but once they were gone, I was a disgusting animal. I knew something was wrong and had known it for a long time. But when my daughter turned 5 years old, I hit rock bottom.
While I don't remember anything Annabel said or did at her party, I remember that my mother threw out the cake box while it still had an outline of frosting on the cardboard bottom. I had planned to take that box home and in the privacy of my own kitchen, lick it clean. When my mom put it in the pile of trash for the gym's outdoor dumpster, I felt like she had thrown away a treasure. I was mad but I love my mom so I made the best of it. "Now I'll be 'good,'" I thought to myself. But once I was home, I considered going back to the gym, fishing the box out of the dumpster, and sitting in my car to finish that frosting. I never did it, but had the wind blown the other way, I would have.
The next day, I went to my first meeting of Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous ("FA"). There, I found a miracle.
* * *
Since January 18, 2016, I have not eaten flour or sugar (save natural sugar in plain yogurt and fruit). I type that without even believing myself that it is true. But it is. And that's the first part of the miracle.
The truth is, however, that I didn't sit down tonight to write about FA. According to the traditions of the organization, I'm not even certain I should be writing about it (I will ask my sponsor tomorrow). What drew me to my computer tonight, however, is my students.
Tomorrow, as part of a larger team effort, I will deliver to several dozen Boston high schoolers a 90-second to 120-second pep talk about how they can change if they want to. It's likely that only a handful of students will actually be listening, but I still take those 90 seconds seriously. I love that handful, even if I don't ever know exactly who they are. So I have thought about what I will say for 100 times longer than it will take me to say it.
In order to deliver this message tomorrow, I had to sort out in my head the answer to a question I have danced around for quite a while now -- Can people ever really change? Before January 18, 2016, I would have said, No. But FA has shown me otherwise. FA has taken a dumpster-diving young woman who couldn't stop eating, exercising, and obsessing about both and changed her. Because of FA, I believe that people can change. I'm not sure they can change their initial instinct -- I still grieve, if only for a second, food I can't have. I still dream of swimming in a sea of brownie batter or living in a magical world where calories don't count. Food can still be my best friend and my worst enemy. But because of what I have learned in FA and because of actions I have taken as part of the program, I believe that if certain factors exist, people can change the action they take next. In FA terms, people can do the "next right thing," even if they have done 200 wrong things just prior. One day and one meal at a time, I have done just that for 324 days.
Sometime soon, I plan to write about those factors that I believe led me to change something about myself that I thought would remain a problem forever. In no particular order, they look something like this:
1. Desperation
2. Hope
3. Action steps
4. Support
5. Faith
6. Gratitude
7. Gratitude
8. Gratitude
To be continued...
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