What Do I Really Want?

I quit drinking last year on December 16th, the day before my birthday. Well, my last drink might have been a couple of nights before that when my dinner was free samples (of wine, crêpes, milkshakes, alcoholic milkshakes, meatball sliders, cookies, sushi, apple cider, everything else imaginable), then I performed on my birthday stand-up show which devolved into some sort of open bar situation where I kept drinking because it was free, duh! (It turns out this is my main reason for doing most things. You can put a price on my dignity...and it's $0.) On the 2am subway ride home, I had to transfer trains and my train was 10 minutes away so I ran out of the subway station during this brief window to go to Duane Reade and buy the cheapest box of cookies they had. Not even my favorite cookies--that's how much I hated myself. I didn't say, "Hey it's my birthday I'm going to go get myself something I like for a treat!" It was more like: "Hey, body? I hate you, and you've already eaten too many things today, so I'm going to fill you with as much crap as possible and NO you don't deserve the good crap--you're going to get this $2 box of off-brand vanilla rectangle wafer cookies that taste like packing peanuts stuck together with a modest amount of sugary cream filling. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BODY!"

Upon my annual existential birthday reflections, I finally got honest enough with myself to admit that drinking wasn't contributing positively to my life. Having disordered thoughts around food is already like being in a controlling, abusive relationship with yourself, and alcohol brings that out even more--"Ooo! Katie let her guard down. Let's eat all the donuts and pizza and gross packing peanut wafer cookies and other things she never lets us have!" (Now, I'm at a point where there isn't anything I won't let myself have--at least in theory! But at the time, I was telling myself that a lot of foods were bad.)

Now that I've been sober for a little over 9 months (enough time to make a baby without Fetal Alcohol Syndrome--cool!), I've realized my problems with alcohol and food weren't really about alcohol and food at all (which of course I'd heard before, but didn't understand it until I experienced it). What has helped me a lot is asking myself the question, "What do I really want?" What am I looking for when I pour myself a 3rd (or 10th) glass of wine? Or gaze longingly into the refrigerator when I'm not hungry as I stick my finger in a jar of my roommate's peanut butter? Or run out of the subway station at 2am to buy gross cookies? Or log into Facebook when I just checked it 20 million times 5 minutes ago? What do I really want? (Usually validation, excitement, comfort, feeling fearless and uninhibited, self-acceptance and love. All of that fun stuff.) Having an eating disorder was a way to make food the thing that was hard for me instead of living my life and confronting what's actually hard. For the longest time, I was convinced I had a problem with food, but really I was just using food to deal with my problems with life. And it really IS effective--because it gives you this whole new category of things to worry about! Instead of having to face my fears of putting my creative work into the world for instance (e.g. by pressing "Publish" on this blog post), I could just deal with the problem of having eaten half a jar of peanut butter, which I'd often deal with by eating more peanut butter and then going to hot yoga to off-set it and not eating for the rest of the day unless I got really hungry later and then I could maybe have a protein shake if I log all of my calories on MyFitnessPal and the math checks out. And then I go to bed feeling productive for micromanaging my food and exercise, not realizing MY BODY HAS THAT COVERED. I can spend my energy on other things...like feeling my feelings. Ugh.

In a strange way, I'm grateful for being a compulsive over-eater and drinker because I finally having the awareness that I use food and alcohol and Facebook and other things to distract me from real life. Today, living in recovery from these compulsions/additions isn't about perfectly executing some sort of meal plan or following a rigid set of rules, it's more about being honest with myself about when I'm using these substances as a substitute for real life. It's about showing up for life even when it's uncomfortable. It's about pausing in the middle of my 5th trip to the refrigerator to ask myself, what do I really want? The answer changes all the time, but all I know for sure is that I've never found it at the bottom of a peanut butter jar or bottle of wine.