the takeover, the sweeping insensitivity

Good meeting this morning...as usual I suppose. I love walking in there when I feel like I'm on top of the world, like I can preach about how program clearly works because look how awesome I am, look how together I am, look how well-employed, easy to relate to, emotionally-grounded and articulate I can be. But this morning it was really hard to even get out of bed and go to the meeting, let alone open my mouth. I wasn't planning on sharing both because I just wasn't in the mood, and also because I so enjoy being one of the ones who sits in the front with her sponsee who looks healthy and in recovery, who has solid employment and a clear head and limited emotional turbulence. This morning I just wasn't that, I was still feeling ashamed about the Clearview stuff (still am), I felt wobbly about the People magazine stuff, my food has been weirdly clean and inappropriately small, and none of this was stuff that I wanted to share with this group. But when an older woman spoke up about how safe she feels in the rooms, how she can bring her food and her shame to this home group and speak about them in a way that her parents and her friends and her husband would never understand, how she could be more honest here than anywhere, I understood that it was a matter of my poor ego, and I really had to. So I did, without specifics, but enough to express that I was far from perfect and was struggling both with shame about my behavior and my food. It felt better. Not great, but like I'd come clean with my community and that was helpful.

Afterwards I went to coffee with Jessica, a girl that mom and Nancy had met on their cruise who was also at the meeting. She kept referring to her wife. I liked that. No stumbling around the word 'partner'. We hashed out her food a little bit, talked about shame (of course), and then I zipped off to a rehearsal for the pudding (Mozart's Alleluia). Lunch after with Kali (arugula and beet salad with a side of turkey chili and cheese on top), and we talked endlessly about our respective relationship history and sexuality and promiscuity and getting needs met and on and on...it was pretty much the first conversation I've had with anyone, program or otherwise, about my past behavior in which I didn't feel the need to crucify myself to get the point across that I was dreadfully ashamed of my behavior. I just...spoke it. This is what I did. This is what I was feeling. This is what I think about it. Kali was so grounded in her responses and observations. I actually walked away feeling like I had an interaction with a non-sponsee female program peer that mattered, not something that felt vapid- needlessly and superficially "deep" because I'm trying so hard to connect.

It felt real. Normal. Not some life-changing interaction where I'm shaken to the core at my capacity for human connection. Just normalfish (which is life-changing in itself, though likely temporary).
Then rollerblading, laundry at Dad's, and home for lavash. Maybe I'll paint my toes tonight.



When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; -- then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

-Keats