This day last year I was choked with pain, grief, and confusion. I was tearful and over wrought. Frightened. I delayed my trip home for Christmas, feeling fragile and unfit. I had breakfast at the marina with a good friend, M. My fondest memory of last Christmas is M. hugging me tight in the parking lot, singing a Christmas carol in a quiet baritone against my ear. I finally felt safe and peaceful.
This Christmas I am doing a bit better. My true ambition is to feel my feelings, to live my life, with all its ups and downs in equanimity. I lost my abstinence yesterday. Again. I got overwhelmed with stressers -- I came home to my house unlocked and the uncertainty of whether I had been robbed. I lashed out at the housekeeping company for being so careless. The bakery lost my special Christmas order not once but twice! It crossed my mind my Higher Power was saying "No rum balls for you!" on that one. I had been to the mental health support group at the local hospital and there was no lightning moment of insight, just the relentless work of recovery. And I had a lot to get done - my presents weren't wrapped, the almond brittle I had made was in the garbage, needing a do-over, and I had no clean clothes to pack on my trip. So I binged to anesthetize myself from feeling so stressed and powerless.
In speaking with my OA sponsor last night, I see I made a conscious choice to react that way, reaching for food instead of help and support. I took a breath. I started a load of laundry. I started a pot of chilli. Wrapping presents took maybe 40 minutes. And I made two batches of almond brittle -- that set! -- in between making a list, rebooting the laundry, organizing the cat's things for the trip, etc. And I was in bed by midnight, with my house mostly clean. So it is possible. I underestimate my ability to get things done and over estimate how hard it will be. This is one of those distorted thinking patterns they talk about in cognitive behavioural therapy, I think. Perhaps the mental filter one? I feel overwhelmed and therefore my situation must be overwhelming: I can't cope. Not true. I can cope and I did.
The part of Bill W.'s quote this morning that resonates is the desire to be useful and to walk gracefully at peace (under God's grace or the equivalent with my Higher Power). When I am overwhelmed and binge, I am serving those thoughts which would destroy me: the I can't, it's too hard, I need to escape my life, thoughts. What if instead I asked myself what would be the most useful thing for me to do? The answer would not be bingeing, I'm sure.
To be of use is a fundamental desire, a true calling. It reminds me of one of my most favourite poems by Marge Piercy, titled "To be of Use" from Circles on the Water (1982, Knopf):
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
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