Yesterday morning Relationship Hell To Heaven started off with a wonderful bang! (There’s still space for one person, by the way, to join us–you could catch up by listening to the first class recording).
Someone offered the thought “he doesn’t get me”.
It occurred to me throughout the rest of the day what a common thought this can be.
That person doesn’t understand me, doesn’t grok me, doesn’t vibrate the same as me.
And the general crowd version of this thought: These Aren’t My People!!
Long ago when I was only 19, I saw a public service ad for Overeaters Anonymous on TV. I felt desperate. Although I had only had a handful of binge-purge episodes, I was haunted day and night by the problem of food and eating.
I called the number.
A sweet woman, who must have been a lot older than me and had kids, started talking about stuff I had never dared or even imagined people could speak about out loud.
She said before going to OA, she would eat everything in sight in the kitchen as she prepared food for her family. She ate a whole pie once, before dinner.
I still remember the feeling during that phone call, feeling like Dorothy when she enters the land of Oz, and the movie becomes sparkling, brilliant, in full living color.
You mean…people can talk about this?
WOW. I thought you were supposed to hide this kind of information from others.
I showed up at the next Overeaters Anonymous meeting I could find and went for several months. I stopped binge-eating. The rooms were full of interesting people. I was making friends who really got me.
And then, I went off to a college study program in Europe, with my newfound knowledge called “talking to other people honestly” and the Big Book of the Twelve Steps.
They didn’t have OA in Italy. They had AA.
I found the English speaking meetings and went. I felt so terrified of losing my new “food” sobriety. I wasn’t bingeing and purging. I was intensely rigid with food. I wouldn’t let one bite, or sniff, of anything with sugar, flour…I can’t remember what other limitations I had, but I learned it from a “diet” plan they offered at OA at the time.
One bite, I was told, could set me off. I must be very careful.
The people in AA of course were different. They quit drinking, or were interested in quitting. I didn’t drink because that was also a part of the OA program of no sugar.
But the AA people would tell stories about hitting their bottom with drinking, going to jail, helping other alcoholics.
I was afraid to talk.
What should I say…that my name is Grace and I’m a food addict? Should I just say I’m an alcoholic, even though that sounds weird and I don’t think I am? What about those couple of times I drank a lot?
Should I say I’m an addict? That would be true…except they might think I’m a drug addict, which would be even farther from the truth since I smoked pot exactly once and detested it.
I don’t fit in! I’m not like the AA people! Oh no! I have to stay on the program!
I would read the AA stories of recovery in the Big Book and actually change the words in someone’s story from “alcohol” and “alcoholic” to something about food.
I didn’t realize it’s all the same. It doesn’t matter. But oh the agony at the time.
They don’t get me.
They’ll think I’m gross, they’ll think I’m sick, they’ll reject me, they’ll be repulsed, they’ll kick me out when they find out I’m not an alcoholic. If only I WAS an alcoholic…that’d be better than bulimic and food-obsessed anyway. Jeez.
Hilarious, really.
Many people in the Relationships group yesterday felt alone, isolated, separated, frightened when they believed that thought.
But who would you be without it?
Without any belief that someone doesn’t get you, it’s sad that they don’t, it’s not possible that they could, you don’t fit in…without that whole story going on who would you be?
So connected, open, joyful it’s hard to describe.
Relating to everyone. Feeling contact with the air, the chair, my body, voices, people, the flow of energy changing and morphing every second, every moment.
I would feel like I could just sit with others, or with one other person, and hum near them, like a little machine, with joy…without even speaking.
Last year I got to go to an AA meeting again after many years.
I loved everyone in that room.
I still had the thoughts that they are looking at me and wondering if I’m OK and who I am and if I need to talk or need their support or if I just drank myself blind the other day or if I’m an old-timer….chattering of stories of wondering what THEY must be thinking about ME.
But that was in the background.
I knew we were all the same.
Humans.
“All things–all beings and all activities, no matter how ordinary–are equal expressions of the Infinite. There is no more or less Infinite, no higher or lower Infinite…..If you could all at once stop believing your dreaming mind and be completely still right in the midst of your present state, the Infinite would effortlessly present itself.
Turn that thought around: they DO get me, everyone gets me…it was me who didn’t get myself before, when I thought they didn’t get me.
I was worried about being different, rejected, unloved, alone, weird, unacceptable.
I forgot I belonged, anywhere. Because that’s where I was.
“When I walk into a room, I know that everyone in it loves me. I just don’t expect them to realize it yet.” ~ Byron Katie
