Someone Like Me

“Guess what? I have flaws. What are they? Oh I donno, I sing in the shower? Sometimes I spend too much time volunteering. Occasionally I'll hit somebody with my car. So sue me-- no, don't sue me. That is opposite the point I'm trying to make.” Michael Scott, “The Office”

In our sangha, we speak of ‘conditioning backlash’ whereby your ‘reward’ for a sought after experience that frees you from an unwanted freedom or behavior is nothing other than an apparent redoubling of effort to seize your sensibilities. That’s what happened following my ability to wait out an overwhelming craving in my last writing.

It wasn’t until several days and binges later, yesterday, in fact that I could ‘catch’ my mind wanting to wander down the alley of what I can only describe as an internal debate over whether to eat something more at the conclusion of dinner and how dreadful I’d feel to just ‘stop’ for ‘the whole evening’. Though it was like averting eyes from a roadside accident I could feel an internal pulling away and some intuitive assurance that I’d be better off if I did. Sure enough, I went on about my evening and had the most peaceful ‘food day’ among other things, I have had in a month—since I decided it would be OK to have a piece of my brother’s graduation cake to be exact.

That experience is my internalization of what is referred to as mastery, although I have no idea if I’ll be able to repeat it at will. That is the point we reach when we really ‘know’ the internal conversations are just that—voices in the head borne from a conditioned past extending who knows how far back—and though powerful and convincing and causing us to identify strongly with its/their pleas—are not us, but simply housed by us. When we really know that to be true, is when we all of a sudden have available to us the choice to turn away and behave differently.

Of course there are no end of spiritual traditions that espouse that reality. In the 12-step program, that experience can be thought of as surrendering to power greater than ourselves to restore us to sanity as stated in Step 2. Grace is a lovely way to hear it described as well. Most recently I have heard it described as being blown from the belly of the whale, JUST at the point at which we give up all hope (another way, maybe of describing surrender). In any case, I came, I saw, I let go and eating, along with the rest of life, is more peaceful today.

“You must know that you can swim through every change of

“Won't you help me sing my song

From the dark end of the street

To the bright side of the road” Van Morrison

See More Food

“It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it.” J. D. Salinger

I flushed my last sweet roll down the toilet. Not just any sweet roll. Not just my last sweet roll. My last, one of my last, my fourth from last roll sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. And OK it wasn’t the toilet. (No need to ring the spousal alarm bell) It was the garbage disposal. I know it doesn’t sound final and of course with 3 left, it certainly isn’t. But it sure felt final. Actually it felt like the most I could manage after finally having it sink in that maybe some of my cravings are physical with my conditioned self gone riot in tow.

That was almost a week ago now. Since then, I dumped one other and ate the remaining 2. I’ve eaten a lot of things since last week, but I’ve also *not* eaten a lot of things. That’s true of most weeks, except here lately I find myself pacing around an idea the way a detective walks around a taped off crime scene, studying the area carefully, long after the body has been removed, and fingerprints dusted, pondering things only she or he can visualize.

My idea, new, if not original, is that I begin attending Overeaters Anonymous meetings as I used to more than 20 years ago, when I was in my 20’s. I’m not sure what makes this idea revolutionary, except that when I stopped attending, I never once looked back and regretted it. I belonged there, and still do because I am a compulsive overeater, even if I bristle against the word compulsive. I don’t mind being called an overeater. I figure this is
pretty obvious at a size 18 or even 20 depending on the clothing manufacturer. Moreso if you consider I’m just barely 5 feet 1 inch tall. But being compulsive makes me feel like a person who can’t stop washing their hands, or must reenter the house through the exact same door from which they exited. Since my youngest days, I can remember feeling very pulled to eat and overeat, LOTS, and often unable to limit or stop even when I wanted to and I think that’s where the word compulsive and I shake hands.

So now we are 17 hours into this experience, and I just ate lunch, but now I want a Snickers bar. I don't just want it, I *am* it- in that I have no life outside my connection to the Snickers bar. I'm not hungry any more. I certainly don't want the apple I packed in my lunch. I WANT THE SNICKERS BAR. Rachael Brownell in Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore written about her first year of sobriety from alcoholism talks of the way in which she began to see 'crisp white wine' everywhere once she gave it up. She saw it in the clouds, her kids' faces, everywhere-- and so it is for me with the Snickers bar.

I want it because there is a physical craving for sugar that follows lunch and can be confused for the need for a nap (a thought to which I am unopposed even though I'm at work). I mostly want it because it feels like a cuddle with a special someone. In my Zen practice, we'd probably define it as the experience of being identified with a small, part of me, a subpersonality looking for a special connection with the larger being that goes around as 'Celia'. Somewhere along the line, probably in childhood, this little self split off from the mothership of other Celia's linked together and came to believe that food, especially 'certain' types of food, was her answer to the lonely, confused, and sometimes bitterly angry feelings harbored by other 'selves' within and outside herself.

So I've spent a lot of time studying this problem-- decades in fact but none of that changes the fact that in this moment it's me and my craving. I'm choosing something different, because I don't want this for myself anymore at this age. I choose something different because although the experience isn't the one I'm having at the moment, I do know what that little self doesn't and didn't know years ago-- there is so such thing as being apart from ultimate comfort and caretaking. There are just very convincing illusions that we are. Nice place to be. Lucky her. Lucky me.

""My faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear," Anne Lamott