Walking Into a First Meeting With A Higher Power

      I finally went to an SLAA meeting, and I found out that I’m a social (and possibly emotional) anorexic.

      It was a relief, to realize that I had something like this, though I’m a little disturbed that despite feeling like I love people, I do distance myself. For me, it’s all about social boundary issues. I have a lot to work on, but I have a great hope that I will be able to work this program and find abstinence by socializing more within boundaries.
      How did I become a social anorexic? Well, I’ve consistently been a people-pleaser. I’ve wanted everyone to like me since I was a little girl, and the disappointment that others have agendas has brought me to this point. The broken thoughts, I think, are based on a, well, a paranoia that everyone has an agenda which will end in betrayal of my affection for them–either because they’re using me to do what they don’t want to, or they’re using me to get close to open a sexual relationship I don’t want with them.
      We read in the SLAA book, Chapter 5, about Withdrawal. For SLAA, withdrawal is not what I have been doing (denying myself social interaction because I fear people taking advantage of me) but simply halting the behaviors which are not conducive to a healthy sexual and love and social life.
      Once upon a time, I was too open to people. When I was younger, I sought connection through meaningless sexual relationships. Well, I got married and trashed that marriage because of my sexual behavior. It was mutual, but I was not a victim in this. I sought what I wanted: Connection. I traded sex for it. I ended up hurt.
      In my current marriage, I have gone the other way. I have one man who I have a relationship with and who I want to have that relationship with. The price I paid, in the end, was hiding from the world after facing the levels of betrayal that I couldn’t live with by people I thought were close friends. I currently don’t share myself with others. I stand an oasis, yet I am finding that the lack of two-way communication has stilted “friendship”. I have used alternate behavior (hugging) to touch people I fantasized romantic intrigue with while maintaining the letter of the law in that I do not kiss or have sex with them. I really have stepped over more than one line in that way.
      I write romance novels in the name of chick lit, including sex scenes–some more detailed and some less detailed. While I write what I know, borrowing from the experiences I have with my husband, the characters are not him. I am somewhat disturbed by my behavior over my adulthood.
      So, here I stand. I have a vibrant fantasy life, though my physical reactions to it do not cross the line to “acting out” the sexual addiction. It exists behind the closed doors of my mind.
      It’s interesting that this may explain how I ended up being able to grab abstinence readily. I am seeing perhaps the compulsive bingeing was not the core of the problem, because this SLAA stuff is going to be an intense challenge. But . . . OA was the best starting point I could have. I know serenity. I know sanity. I know what abstinence looks and feels like. I have the experience on what appears to be an easier life-warping addiction to handle to be able to handle the elephant in the room.
      This is good, because I have a friend visiting at the end of August. He was once a “safe” friend (distance and his strong sense of propriety and the respect of marriage), and he is a safe friend in many ways. Well, from his words. Only his actions will prove it. Hopefully by that point, I will have a month of boundaries practice in SLAA by the time I get there. I have bottom lines I am ready to put into practice, ones which will reflect a healthier approach to social interaction.
      It’s not so curious that sex and food are so deeply intertwined to me. Outside of wearing a 100-lb. fat suit for almost two decades to “protect” myself from being found sexually interesting to others (yet the determined people seeking to use me that way did not let that get in their ways . . .), I have consistently sought external safety nets. I rarely make friends with women. I never make friends with straight men. I gravitate toward gay men like mad. I prefer being around gay men because there is a clear delineation between us. There’s no sexual desire. The theory that I could find true friendship with a gay man because I am a woman has held fast. Unfortunately, I seem to attract broken people just like myself. People who want an external solution to an internal problem. I crave to fix them . . . so I can earn their love. They want me to fix them, but they don’t. Every time I try to help in that way, I am put into a position of authority they must rebel against. Then, of course, I feel betrayed. It is cyclic, and my solution is to sit in my home on my couch with my dog sleeping beside me waiting for people over the internet to come invited into my home and become “safe friends”.
      I just shuddered at the thought of that broken mindset. The awareness is good, yet it makes me queasy to see it–just like it did when I realized I was far from being a normal eater. The scary part about the love addiction (I think perhaps I am a love addict, always seeking chaste affection and finding betrayal at the end because I use broken rules to try to avoid responsibility for my part in the relationships) is that it is internal. The only external signs of it are not visible to the general public because I am still warehousing myself!
      This addiction has covered itself with the COE (compulsive overeating) tendencies. It wore the COE behavior like a parka. It was my primary external, electrified fence between me and people. I am finding as I peel the layers away that I am faced with one basic truth:

      I do not trust myself to do the right thing when it comes to relationships.

      Well, thank HP I have an HP. This is a great relief, because I would be in tears about now realizing this without the acting-as-if I have practiced over the last 9 months. I am actually feeling closer to my Higher Power for it, that perhaps the guidance to work OA first has brought me to my core addiction. The success I have had in OA already has brought me to lean upon a strength I never knew could be in my life.
      What’s funny is that I actually have found, now, how relevant Eat, Pray, Love is to my layered addictions. I found the Eat section interesting because I related to that as an addict who is living outside of addiction. I saw it as a recovering food addict who was watching a normal eater, and I appreciated the experience she had for the experience’s sake.
      The Pray section touched me so deeply, and I was inspired by her connection to a Higher Power (the Universe, God, whatever she connected with). That was what I was working in my program at the time I was reading. It hit every spiritual button and I realized that I was walking the right path to find peace from within.
      Oh, but the Love section. That section completely threw me. Here I was, hoping to find a woman who learned to love like Mother Teresa. Who would learn to carefully balance her spiritual self with a sense that she didn’t need a man and was whole in herself. I felt freaking betrayed when she found her Brazilian man (actually, I felt betrayed when she went to the party and found herself attracted to the other guy, because I saw personal red flags all over him). What she wrote about the Brazilian man (whom she married eventually, apparently, the reasons why explained in the Eat, Pray, Love sequel entitled: Committed), I felt that age-old betrayal. She was the woman I had put into a position of power, one who had “figured it out”, who I could follow into inner peace, damn it! And then she sat down and stopped hanging out with the mystic and started pursuing her mundane stuff again!
      That. Was. The. Love. Addiction. Talking.
      At this point, I can’t reread that book, and I’m going to wait on the movie until DVD–if I ever see it at all. This is not an indictment of the film, which may be up there with Julie and Julia as one of my top novelized non-fiction films. The book knocked it out of the park for me, and people practicing a healthy life would probably get a lot out of it (though “healthy” people might find the first section annoying and consider her a bit of a whiner). The book is set up to be a wonderful true-to-genre chick flick, though it might be a challenge because it introduces the love interest at the end. Though Richard from Texas is a strong character who can cover that. The Eat section doesn’t really have any one individual as compelling as Richard from Texas and her Brazilian beau. The lover of note, in the Eat section, is the food.
      So, if one is interested in the movie, go see it. Heck, tell me if it’s good. I hope it is, for her sake. She’s living an amazing life as a writer and world traveler and I would love the movie’s ticket sales to encourage that life. More support means more books out of Elizabeth Gilbert. It’s all I’m sayin’.
      Well, a new journey is beginning. I hope that with this journey being worked in concert with the eating disorder, I will finally break through the Step Eight willingness block, mostly because I am finding a lot of the things I found when I started Step Eight had more to do with my social anorexia than my food addiction. These two addictions are intertwined tightly for me, and both are sapping my life from me.
      I have hope, however, despite being disappointed that I couldn’t make it to Step 10 in OA before I finally faced off with a new addiction. Of course, if my primary addiction is this love addiction, then I am finally addressing the core problem and have a strong hope that I will find true and lasting lifelong recovery.
      That’s a wonderful thought, a hopeful thought. And, when I am solidly working SLAA and OA, I will chase my smoking addiction–which seems to have taken deeper root now that I am facing off with the two big monsters–one under my bed and the other under my refrigerator.
      My name is Jess and I am a food addict and, um, well, social anorexic at this point. I suppose my SLAA-related addiction will make itself totally known and I will take my title of responsibility like I did with the food addiction. If I am a sex addict, I don’t feel it. Though I am pretty comfortable with saying I am a sexual, social, and emotional anorexic because I would be acting on those anorectic behaviors if I weren’t in a relationship–one I want to grow and maintain throughout my recovery. I thank my Higher Power for bringing me so many gifts even before I was ready for them. I have things to work and fight for as I work the program. I have lives I want to enrich besides my own, and to become a being of real and healthy love (whatever that is, I am realizing) is the spiritual purpose I seek.