Determined To Succeed

Day ten.

Twelve-step meetings at once are exactly what you expect and something you can’t plan for at all. On one hand, yes, there is the group made up of lost souls looking for strength in the solidarity of a problem. On the other, you never know quite how to feel or quite what to say when it’s your turn to speak, confess and both give and receive strength to and from the group.This is why no one can (or should) ever be confident enough that they can “handle” a meeting. You just never know where it and the people within will take you.

Last night I attended a meeting and the format of this meeting was the same as it was on Sunday, topical. Meaning, three topics are thrown out by members of the group and people take three-minute-ish turns talking about the topics as they pertain to their lives. These topics can be about anything, also. While Sunday’s topics were radical honesty, why we were there and serenity, last night’s topics were boundaries, positive change and making restitution. When the topics were announced I started to really think about what they meant to my life and when it was my raised-hand, volunteered third speaker turn I told the group my name, why I was there and talked openly and honestly about each thing.

When you look around a room, any room, you can tell who really wants to be there and who is just there “because.” I know I have been both from time to time, truly present and truly wanting to poke my eyes out with the nearest object just to leave. Since having catastrophic failure I have been honestly present, more so than I ever have been in my adult life, and these meetings are good because they connect me to both myself as well as support. But in just the same way you can tell who wants to be there or not, you can tell who wants to speak and who doesn’t.I wanted to speak but I also was there to listen.

In both weight loss and now I realized I set very few boundaries. I allowed my time, attention and energy to be spent on other things and other people. So much so that my health suffered. I became so wrapped up in the stresses I allowed to be heaped on me that I took refuge in food (and later other things) as comfort. I let suffer my true work, this writing. I wasted time, precious time, time given to me by my mother as a last gift to see my dreams of becoming a writer come to life. And because I set no boundaries so much of my soul withered, as I traded time, attention and energy, both then and now, to pursuits that eventually left me bankrupt and a dark and empty person.

When I sat and thought of the other two topics, positive change and restitution, that’s when I could see a light at the end of this tunnel. I am trying so hard to make right the wrongs I have done in life. As I was explaining to someone at the end of the meeting things like this are never usually a quick drop down into an abyss. They are a slow and steady downward fall kind of like the stock market where you see the red line, even with its spikes, consistently and continually head lower and lower on the chart. And with that there are so many people with whom to try to make things right both then and now (even friends from way back who saw my weight problem and said nothing for fear of my reaction and whether or not I would actually hear their concern).  And though it may be one of the twelve steps, I did and do want to make things right because I genuinely want to, not because it’s required, and because when I do it truly brings about the time to move forward and work toward healing.

As for the last topic, positive change? I was simply there last night. Simply there in a room full of people also simply there, making that time to try to heal themselves, too. And that all of us, by the simple act of being there, were at least willing to try to keep that positive change going in our lives. And while some showed up just to show up, most were truly present, as I was, because we want that positive change to keep happening. Restitution is part of that positive change. Healing is part of that positive change. And yes, writing about it is part of that positive change.

In everything that’s happened over the last few weeks I’ve come to realize how much of my life was spent in addiction. I’ve also come to realize that food, weight and weight loss all follow the same patterns, the exact same patterns. Well, I do not want that anymore. As the sun rises today behind a blanket of clouds and rain I look forward to making this day the best I can because with each day, each meeting and each piece of work I do on myself to affect that positive change I make restitution to the two people in my life that mean the most to me, myself and my mother.

I will be my mother’s son again. I swear it.