without being disrespectful....damn girl!

I had one of the happiest solo mornings I've ever had by myself today. I say solo because I can think of some mornings where the experience of waking up was a thrilling one in itself just because I was waking up with the person I loved, and that there was a a lavash in my very near future. Or a Panera breakfast sandwich. Or both. So I specify solo because I'm waking up alone and brushing my teeth by myself and reflecting on the events of the previous night (a butt-numbingly challenging yoga class at a new studio with Sarah, followed by leisurely dinner with her at Chaya Venice, an upscale and slightly more classy/expensive than I'd anticipated sushi joint near my Dad's house).
Anyway, I woke up, found my saturday morning pj outfit (blue tufts sweats and ferris state hoodie), brushed teeth, grabbed a luna bar out of the cupboard, headed to my car where I sang Fireflies all the way to my meeting, and then sat through it. What I love about that meeting is that every time I walk in I get to deconstruct that ideas about me that I've spent the week developing. I walk in with beliefs like "I'm socially inept, I can make small talk with people but I don't really know how to connect, I'm inherently lonely, I'm selfish and broken and can't care about others, I'm going to be alone forever etc." The longer I go between meetings, the more I really do begin to believe my own thinking, but this meeting is especially helpful in unraveling all of those thoughts. I walked in this morning with plans to meet this girl named Jessica (a friend of Mom's that she and Nancy met on a women's cruise last week) who is new to program but wrestles with her own ED issues, and plans to meet Sarah, my sponsee (we now have a standing post-meeting coffee date that is getting longer and longer and awesomer and awesomer), and found myself hugging and How Are You-ing (with genuine interest, not just as a formality) a good handful of meeting regulars that I'm actually getting to know and talk to regularly. A woman I've seen since I first started going to LA OA meetings way back when, spoke and concentrated on the loneliness of her disease, and the ways in which it was far more lonely than her alcoholism, how in her opinion the folks with food issues walk with different level of shame because of what she called the "gluttony factor", which all people with addictive/compulsive thinking have (maybe all people period), but which we get to see more clearly because we deal with food as opposed to alcohol or drugs or gambling etc. We get to see in a different light how our behavior (or food) compares to other peoples, and how what we want or feel entitled to is obviously so much greater than what others want or need. How we literally take bigger portions (or fantasize about taking bigger portions) than other people do. How our craving is greater than other peoples. The very word 'gluttony' comes from the latin word gluttire meaning to gulp down or swallow, pertaining specifically to food, and the word has such a shameful stigma around it. I liked that idea. But then again I like most ideas that imply that I'm in more pain than others. As though it makes me special or less accountable...or more valuable? Anyhow, it felt especially poignant to walk into this meeting eager to shed those uncomfortable thoughts about myself and be made aware of all the ways in my life that I'm trying to prove those thoughts wrong. I'm working really closely with my sponsee (whom I adore), I make phone calls to program people who know my name and my story, and I know theirs, women know me at my regular meetings, I'm starting to make more connections with people at Mirman and some of the other PA's at CV, (Alix and I laughed our freekin' butts off when we lead wrap-up group tonight, and she's definitely someone I'd want to hang out with outside of work!)
After the meeting Sarah and I went to get coffee at the Rose Cafe (where they have a $5 minimum for credit card so I just had to buy a croissant with my latte, pity) and we talked for over an hour about our Dads, our histories, our respective relationship crazy, what its like to fall hard for a woman, what its like eating creme brulee very slowly, and why it is we are prone to the kind of self abuse we put ourselves through. I never run out of things to talk about with this girl, she's very smart and just as lost as I was in my ED. I'm always amazed that time passes so damn quickly when we're shooting the shit, and how genuinely interested I am in helping her not so I can pat myself on the back as a good sponsor, but because I really want her well and healthy and happy. I'm astonished every time I realize I'm capable of real friendship; I dunno if this counts because technically its a sponsor/sponsee relationship, but quite honestly it doesn't matter to me what I'm calling it. To me it just comes down to this: here's a woman who's my age, who HAS the body type that I tried to achieve in my bulimia, who's pretty in ways that I do feel a little threatened by, and who is smart in ways that really interest me, and I'm making an honest, true connection with her without simultaneously trying to find ways in which I'm better than her!
It was such a rich morning. I felt like I was wallowing in gratitude for what I'm slowly by slowly beginning to create for myself. I feel enriched by my peers in program, and by the new hope I have (at least for tonight) that I won't always function out of such a self-deprecating place. I feel like a bit of a tool yammering on about self-love and connection and wanting to be settled with myself, but it took Elizabeth Gilbert an intense few years to even jump-start that process, and that was accelerated because she had help from a freekin Guru and an Ashram and pizza from Naples and a medicine man in Bali. I've got me and Alecya and some peanut butter and a good home group. And hopefully a higher power that hasn't forgotten who I am.

I can't come from the pit of that dorm room in London and the dark nights alone in Medford to a benchmark morning like this and not be on some greater path that's leading me towards loving who I am, something beautiful, my highest self. That's the prayer at least.
According to John Mayer (and that whole soundtrack from that day on the lake) good love is on the way