Enthusiasm is contagious

I laid in bed trying to convince myself to sleep longer.
But I could not be convinced.
Instead I woke up, put on my FTR t-shirt and made coffee.
Today is Recovery Day, and I am running in the 5K.
The running part is not remarkable.  I do that all the time.
The exciting part is that I get to be with all my people.
It feels like that bench in the hall at high school, the one where I know all my friends will be.
We would drip from the window sill like curtains in back-packs and teenage apathy trying to decide whether or not to go to class.
It feels like Halloween night when the air is crisp and I run from house to house on scuffed tennis shoes.
It is the club when the right song comes on. The whole room pulses with energy and people dancing into the roof, sweat flailing like lady bugs from our foreheads.

After I aloud myself to be excited for this day, I read my meditation:

                             

I know that we will not change the whole world.  But Recovery has changed mine.

Exercise has been a vital part of my recovery since the beginning.

It is a way to quiet my head and center my body.

It soothes anxiety and resets my world back to the basics:

I am simply one human body.

I am temporary and I have limits.

I can also be strong, vibrant and free.

What I seek is found only on the other side of hard work.

That's why it simply makes sense for me to hang out with these people who are doing what I've been doing for years.  We are celebrating our freedom.

My husband likes to tease and calls me an "FTR groupie."

But I don't care.

I am no longer plagued by teenage apathy.

I can be dorky and excited and off I go!

I weigh more than a blue balloon.

I popped a blood vessel in the corner of my eye yesterday.  I did it while purging.
French fries.  Forbidden french fries.
I don't want to tell you this.
I want to tell you that life is grand and I've moved past all this bulimia stuff.
I don't need to write Chrysalisbreak anymore cuz I have emerged a butterfly.
But that's not the truth, and I am here to tell the truth.

My husband could see it.  I am pretty sure he noticed.
I'm sorry husband, I know it makes you sad.
I get this grey swelling around my eyes from the pressure in my head
It was a violent one too, thick and uncooperative and choking.
It was the kind of purge that happens in nightmares when I can't force it out.
But I was determined, and I did a real number on myself.

Afterwards I took a shower and washed my hair, twice.
I scrubbed the toilet.
Then I went to sleep for an hour without brushing my hair.
It was a deep sleep where I forget what day it is and who I am.
I woke up to a throbbing swollen head, and Pepper chattering,
"Mom, I'm hungry."
Food.  There is always food.  I can never get away from it.
When Andrew got home I couldn't look him in the eye.
It wasn't intentional, it's just a side affect.
My eyes stayed down like when I walk by a huddle of men on State street.
I can feel the eyes on me, but I am not equipped to deal with them.
Now I am hungover from it still.
This is the cycle of an alcoholic, of a bulimic, of an addict.
I know it all too well.
It used to be the only thing I knew.
It is the reason I labeled myself, "Crazy"
________________________________________

I just looked in the mirror.  The red spot is still squatting there inside the corner of my right eye.
Pepper pointed it out to me.
"Mom, you have some blood, right there, in your eye."
"I know,"
I told her, and in my voice was the ability to walk on.
It was not the deflated voice of self-loathing.
It was acceptance of the Sarah who hides in dark corners, who is wounded.
She is still with me, even though I have been in recovery for 9 years.
It seems stupid or shallow to say that after all this time, I'm still scared of gaining weight.
My fear is loosing control.
My fear is that if I stop, I will sink.
I'm afraid to get soft.  I need to stay sharp.
I'm terrified of finding that doughy person in the mirror whom I have known before.
I never want to be her again.
But I don't want this either.

I looked up images on the internet for this post.
I did a Google search of bulimia.
Google didn't get it right.
I found a series of staged, over-dramatized scenes.  It looked like a circus freek show.
Girls puking up blood, and gorging on donuts, super-models in fishnets bent over the toilet.
I found pics of Lada Gaga and Demi Levato, as is they are the only two women in show-biz with eating disorders.
Everything was stark and blaring and strangely assertive.
Really my experience with bulimia is quiet and lonely and grey, like my afternoon nap.
The goal is to be weightless, and small and free.  No one is watching.  I have no audience.  There is no drama.  I am chasing the impossible utopia like a zealot wailing for heaven.  In reality I am a concrete body with weight and needs and weakness.
I weigh far more than a blue balloon could ever float.

It's always scary to venture out into the next day.  It is easier to purge when I did it yesterday.
I can't make any bold promises to myself or anyone else.  The way out is not the path of absolutes.
I treat myself as if I were actually sick, as if I were actually on the verge of vomiting.  The way out is with slow steps and deep breaths.

spandex at the grocery store

I'm still hunting for fear.  It is not sitting on my chest where I last left it.
And I wonder, is this how people feel who never needed God?
Is this why I sprinted full force into the dark where deamons rule and there is no light to keep us from killing each other?
Is this how it was for those people at church who made no sense to me, who believed in God because their parents did?
I am without the bitch of angst screeching in my ear,

"This is all trivial!  None of it is real!  
Only your pain is real.  These people are living an illusion!"

Some days I feel that I have joined the illusion.
I drove my mini-van to the office of contentment and signed up willingly.
Now I go to soccer games, and help kids with homework, fold laundry, work out every other day.
I have added myself to the ranks of Moms in spandex at the grocery store.
I don't eat artificial sweetener.  I attended Back-to-School night.
I have a hair-care regiment and I prep the coffee pot the night before.

The darkness and the deamons are far from me...

It used to be that I woke up shaking and nauseous.

I didn't have to go looking for fear, It swallowed me up in its' acidic pit like that monster on Return of the Jedi.
Some days I envy the acute nature of living in crisis.
At least then I can see clearly who the enemy is, and sometimes chose to curl into his scaly under-belly.  There my world is small and nothing is expected of me.

Now my world displays in 76 tints of beige.

I once took Sophie to church.  She was about 7 years old at the time...maybe 8.
She was respectful during the prayer, she listened to the speakers and sang the hymns.
Afterwards I asked her what she thought.
"Well, it's ok...but there's just no color there.  Everything is brown."

This is why I need music and art and journals and especially my fellow alcoholics.
They bring the color and the sound and their stories.
So I can remember the time when I longed to be on the other side of the window.
Before I was sober, I'd look outside, my brain pounding against the glass.
I'd see women walking their dogs, and college students hurrying to catch the bus, all full of purpose and ideas and ambition.  They'd sail down the sidewalk with long strides and eyes forward.  They had backpacks full of completed assignments, printed in the right format and lined in thin plastic folders
I just wanted to wake up not sick.
I could not go one day without needing a substance to take the edge off.  Then came the days when nothing could soothe the burn of acid eating away my last sprouts of dreams.

Now it has been 4 years since I graduated from college.
Now I walk the sidewalk lit by sunrise.

The view from my walk this morning

My painting professor once taught me the difference between a new painter and a mature painter.
He said a novice will use bright colors straight from the tube.
An older painter looks for the subtleties within one hue.
They mix paints and end up with colors that are more neutral.
My life reflects this.
I will always relish color as I saw it for the first time.
I have fallen in love with so many things:
Writing
        Painting
                snorkeling in the ocean with Uncle Gary
                           Smashing Pumpkins
                                   Jack Kerouac
                                             Andrew Roberts
                                                     the Appalachian Trail
                                                             Ani Difranco
                                                                     Pepper - Sophie - Beckam
                                                                              running - swimming - climbing
                                                                                        alcohol
                                                                                                suffering.....
The list is too long to write....

........and there was always a first.  With each love there was a moment of awe where my surroundings fell away and I really saw the thing for exactly what it was.  A pure color, vibrant and glowing.
Now all these loves have been mixed together, and I am left to paint the picture of my life.

On the other side of obsession is a vast expanse, too wide to fill.
If I am afraid of anything, it is that I cannot live up to the space.

Open Window

I was awakened this morning by a rumbling cat trying to crawl inside of my mouth.

It was cute, but hard to sleep through.

Our new cat, Tank.  He is what Sophie calls a teenager kitty.
His name came from Beckam.  Ironic.  Tank named by a Tank.

Yesterday he broke Pepper's heart by using her arm as a scratching post.

She didn't react at all except to cry like a girl stood up on prom night.

"Honey, if he's hurting you, push him away and tell him to knock it off."

"....okay..." she sputters, as if this thought never occurred to her.

Then I wonder, is this foreshadowing?

Is she too wispy to stand up for herself. Is she too surprised to find that life has claws?

My hair is wound up into a bun with the curly little short pieces lacing my neck.

This is the hair-do which happens when I have sweat into it too many times, but have not showered yet.  

It could stay this way for days.

It is sweaty because last night I ran down State street with my friend K.
He looking like Tom Hanks from Castaway, long beard and far away eyes.
I a slice of cantaloupe in melon-colored shirt and shorts.

I wrote a blog about him and exactly one week later, he appeared.

Casually we huffed and puffed and talked about metaphors of transformation.

When I am with him, I feel like a sister.  I bee-bop along with my ponytail flagging and my toes light.  He probably slowed his pace for me, but he never said a word about it.

With family, there is so much unsaid, and this is as it should be.

No explanation is necessary, because how do you explain the whole picture of a life?

That is why we grow up together.  So we don't have to explain ourselves, so we have people who simply know us.  As I age, and realize that I am not separate, my family circle grows.  I have adopted people, quite unintentionally, into my heart.  I can't help it.  The bonding is an organic thing, like how a vine will simply grow long and wind around anything within its' reach.  My heart is the same, as it thrives, the reaching is intuitive and it just keeps going.  I hope in the end the vines have grown so thick and fat, that none can be pulled apart.

As I ran with K last night, I wanted to call each person in my family whom I have pushed away.

I wanted to say,

"I forgot that we are supposed to do this together, no matter what.  I'm sorry I have been distant."

It is so hard to stay.  There are so many justifiable reasons to disconnect.  Sometimes distance is best for both people, but it is equally important to come back.  I forget that part.  Or maybe I don't always see the window to crawl through as it opens just a crack.

Childhood Skill Set

My eyes are burning, but my coffee is good.
I'm wearing my favorite holey jeans.  The ones kids point out to their parents,
"Look Mom, her pants have REALLY BIG holes in them!"
Sometimes they ask me,
"Why?"
To which I respond,
"These are my summer pants.  It's air conditioning."
They giggle, and think I'm a funny kind of Grown-up.

Sophie is always giving me sideways smirks when we drive in the car.
I have a habit of flaring into song in strange accents, or waggling my finger at a glowing sunset.
She isn't quite sure I am an adult at all.

My theory is:  none of us are actually adults.
We each have certain skill sets.  Some appear more Grown-up than others.
However I believe a Grown-up is simply that - a certain skill set.
It just so happens that I have retained a lot of my childhood skill set, because I find it useful.

Here a few of my skills:

I laugh when I get hurt   (also when others get hurt, which isn't always a skill)

I climb anything and everything I can.  The first thought to enter my mind is often:
        "I bet I could climb that."

I share my toys, even the really cool ones.  I do this because I know it is more fun to have a friend to play with, then to hoard all the stuff.

I have play dates all the time.  Kids are better when they move in a pack.

I am quick to forgive and move on.  Holding a grudge brings me down, and like I said.  I want to climb stuff.

I am amazed and delighted by the little things.  I will go to the pet store just to look at the fish.

I like to draw pictures, write stories, and sing songs.  a skill set often lost by "adults"

I understand that a couch can also act as a trampoline, fort, or a battle ship.

I wear Vans tennis shoes cuz they are the best for doing tricks.

I can still do: hand-stands, cartwheels, and back-bends.  I can climb trees, and cross the monkey bars.   I can also swim like a mermaid.

I cry when I get hurt.  Have you ever noticed how kids let events flow through them? I just watched Pepper get scratched by our new kitten, Tank.  She cried because it hurt.  She was devastated...for 3 minutes.  Now she is petting him and watching Tarzan.

I may be guilty of encouraging this kind of behavior.