Step One – Jane

It was so long ago that my closest girlfriend and I decided to launch this blog that I couldn’t even remember the name of it. Searching past e-mails, I saw that we named it Eat & Spend. We set it up in December of 2016. Vicki wrote one post and I wrote “About Us.” Now it’s December of 2017. Where did the year go, except deeper in debt and another pound heavier?

Compulsive eating was my #1 issue for years, until I dragged my sorry self into my first Overeaters Anonymous meeting one desperate day of many desperate days in my 27th year. Sitting in a church pew on Capitol Hill in DC, sweating beneath a big black coat on a spring day, I knew immediately when the meeting began that I was exactly where I belonged.

I had fought going to Twelve-Step for years; I was aware of the famous 12-Step program patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous but simply “could not” justify the time it took from my busy life. And I was much too proud to walk into a room to admit my failings and darkest secrets. I of course I would not tolerate a Godfest I didn’t/wouldn’t buy in to. And, lordy, I could NOT do That Much Work.

“We have it in our head that if we fill our stomachs, we’ll fill our hearts.”
― Kate Wicker, Weightless: Making Peace with Your Body

No, instead I spent my youth (compulsively) chosing easier, softer ways to address my eating issues – which at the time, I called my “weight issue”: severe diets (diets consisting of 1 egg a day (literally); or nothing but liquid protein (after six weeks the hair at the back of my hair fell out); diet pills (my mother dragged me to a doctor when I was 15; the doctor called them my ‘happy pills’); eating nothing but vegetables (on one diet I consumed so many red bell peppers that I stained the corners of my mouth, a stain that remained long after the diet ended); and my final attempt: joining Jenny Craig, where I weighed in at 190; a week later, having consumed all the food the Jenny Craig people had sold me on the first day and then continuing to binge on Bisquick biscuits with cubes of butter thru the week, I weighed in on Weeks 2 at 200. All the slender young women in their white lab coats pretending to be medical professionals gasped. Much-shamed, I left. (Why did I even go to that second appointment at Jenny Craig?)

But that warm and fateful day in DC at that OA meeting I knew I belonged there with the seven or so other folks I couldn’t make eye contact with. I walked out with the speaker that day and I dived into OA as though my life depended upon it because, in fact, it did. I was sick in the head, sick in the body, and sick enough in my very soul that I was contemplating suicide.

That was Spring 1978. I went to 8 meetings a week for a year before I finally gave myself over to abstinence. In order to stay “abstinent” (three sane meals a day, nothing in between, one day at a time), I had to make calls to OA members between breakfast and lunch and between lunch and dinner and then again after dinner until I went to bed. I also made calls during my meals; simply putting something into my mouth triggered an endless feeding.

I nearly got fired from my job for being on the phone so much. It took me another year in Program to start believing I wouldn’t die (I felt as though I would literally die) if I didn’t eat all the time.

Besides all the good OA folks who supported me during and between meals, what kept me abstinent was holding on with blind faith to the hope that what scariness lay ahead in my abstinent life had to be better than the nightmare of being driven to eat a dozen donuts in one sitting … and then look for something salty.

I had never eaten “normally” in my life. I didn’t grow up with family meals; we ate what we could squirrel away while the parents drank (alcoholics, I learned, don’t seem to eat much; I think that with the calories in alcohol they simply don’t get hungry). Anyway, eating abstinently became simply three meals a day with 4 ounces of protein, 4 ounces of veg, and a fruit and ounce of cheese or 8 oz of milk at each meal. I hardly recognized myself eating real food instead of bags of red bell peppers.

By the time I turned 30 I had lost 60 pounds and was for the first time in my adult life a woman of reasonable weight. The Program re-birthed me. I was brand new. I was becoming who I was meant to be: a deeply grateful woman who, for the first time in her life, had taken to heart the first sentence in The Road Less Traveled, which I read with awe, because it never occurred to me before: Life is difficult.

Fast forward to age 64 (yes, the years really do pass that quickly). My weight is still normal. I’ve lived most of my adult life as a normal weight woman. While I’ll occasionally veer toward carbs, my Program is still strong enough to pull me back to sanity.

“Truth: last week I online shopped too much. Then I ate 2 pounds of jelly beans to feel better about that. In fact, while I was trying to read soul-nourishing things all I could think about was shopping and jellybeans. Points to the monkey mind.”
― Anna White, Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith

Strangely, another addiction has gripped me as I grow older: shopping. Mostly, online shopping. Online shopping of the worst, least-generous sort: For myself. For my home. I would say 98% of my shopping is Me, Me, Me. If I compulsively gave away money to charity I could maybe live with myself …. actually, I do spend fairly generously on good causes, but if you look at my CitiCard statement, it would just take a glance to see that my favorite good cause is yours truly.

For years (decades), “NO CREDIT CARD DEBT” was my mantra. What happened to that? Why did I start sliding into overspending … and why would I sabotage a freedom I had worked all my life for: To be mortgage-free, which I achieved in March of 2017.  Why wouldn’t I want to embrace – and celebrate – the freedom of being debt-free, not only of credit card debt but of mortgage debt? Completely debt-free … what an amazing concept! And it could be my reality right now except for my consistent and constant spending, which undermines that freedom. At about fifty to 100 bucks a pop, I’m spending my way to the edge of a cliff.

As with my food addiction, I wonder about the Whys. I never learned the answers to the Whys of overeating. I’ve done lots of therapy and read more self-help books than I can remember, so I can guess numerous reasons for trying to extinguish my feelings with food: This childhood and That insecurity and various and sundry shames I experienced in my young life. Alas, self-knowledge availed me nothing. Only giving myself over admitting food had me beat and then putting one foot in front of the other by going to meeting and finally practicing the Twelve Steps helped me choose to give up food. I clung to the Program’s promised freedom from the insanity of being driven to overeat. I wanted that freedom; I wanted that freedom even more than I wanted to be thin.

Spending has become a slippery slope; I want to stop the slide before I hit bottom. I have told myself for years that I can stop anytime I want, that my spending isn’t all that bad. I mean, I’ve never lost a treasured relationship because of my spending. I’ve never had to declare bankruptcy. I’ve never defaulted on paying my bills.

But the chase to manage even my minimum payments is becoming more and more difficult. And I don’t have even $400 set aside for an emergency … because I need the money to pay for past purchases.

I will be 65 in February; I fear never being able to quit working, simply because I’ll need to service credit card debt. I want freedom from debt. I know from my overeating days that I can’t white-knuckle it. The second I tell myself I can’t have a cookie, I want ten of ’em. The second I tell myself “You can’t have that,” or “If you buy that you’ll be a bag lady,” I’ll buy the most expensive version of that item and I’ll buy it in every color.

I want to stop. I’ve not spent anything on myself for 6 days now. Each day I earmark an item I would buy if I “wanted” to. I don’t know if I’m just sailing along from my latest spending binge or if I’m really ready to cut up the cards .. but either way I’m thankful for the break from the insanity of compulsive buying.

Concrete Things I Commit to Doing About My Debt:

1. Examine how much debt I’m in. I don’t actually know. How can I know where I want to go if I don’t know where I am right now?
2. Examine my current income. I work for myself. My income varies. I think the trigger for my slide into credit card debt is that I stopped earning as much as in previous years without tightening my belt.
3. Pay taxes on time for once. I usually file for an extension on April 15. It would feel so good to have 2017 put away in April of 2018 instead of when the year is nearly over, in October.

What I’ve Noticed is Happening to Me With Just Six Days of Abstinence from Spending:

1. I’m not sleeping well.
2. I’m having dreams of surreptitiously (and guiltily) spending.
3. I have headaches.
4. I feel remorse.
5. I feel shame.
6. I feel lots of feelings bubbling up that I was burying or distracting myself from feeling: worry about the world we live in, fear of a stupid and senseless war, fear of global economic and social devastation.
7. I don’t feel I’ll die without a particular new bauble, as I did when I stopped eating 24/7, but I do feel deprived and sulky if I “can’t” buy something I want.
8. I feel embarrassed to admit I “need” a new toy to lift my spirits.

Ways I Can Help Myself Get Through the Pain of Saying Good-bye (at least for today) to my Addiction:

1. Admit it: I am powerless over spending. My life has become unmanageable.
2. Live one day at a time and live that day in gratitude. The definition of happiness is being happy with what I have. I have plenty. I have abundance. I have love, good health, good food, and material goods aplenty.
3. Pray for the willingness to accept my flawed self.
4. Pray for the willingness to walk the path toward wholeness. Because wholeness is what I want; peace of mind is the true goal. It appears that the goal is “freedom from credit card debt” but that’s just a means to the true goal. In my overeating days I wanted to lose weight and be thin, sure, but I continued to spend my days desperate for my next fix: sneaking food when I could get it legitimately, then stealing co-workers’ snacks. It took desperation and despondency and all-consuming self-loathing and self-rage to teach me I simply wanted peace. Peace of mind and peace from beating myself up. When I got to that place, finally, I no longer cared so much about losing the fat; I just wanted to lose the insanity.
5. Be willing to be “hungry.” I used to feel I would literally die if I didn’t sate myself 24/7 with food. In recent years I’ve been hungry for a spending fix. It’s not even the item … yes, some things I like, but mostly I like the thrill of the purchase itself. The item … I don’t even care if it doesn’t show up in the mail, to be honest. If it does show up, I’m annoyed because I have to a) acknowledge I did it again and b) store it/place it somewhere.
6. Write. I’m going to write my feelings (I pray this blog is never seen). I’m going to catalogue the items I want. I want to look back and see what I hungered for. And I want to feel pride .. or, maybe not pride, but just feel okay about not having bought it.
7. Look my debt in the eye. I will make a list of what I owe to which company. I will look at that list and I will stand strong and with forgiveness for myself. I may play with the “whys” a bit in my writing … Why do I overspend and why now, in particular? Is it fear of ageing? Fear of not being good enough? Simple love of pretty things? If the latter, why would I hurt myself (with debt) to get a “pretty thing?” Aren’t there enough pretty things for me to buy over time, in a reasonable way? Why do I need all the pretty things I see NOW?  As I could have asked at one time with my eating: Why did I overeat? Fear of youth/expectations of me? Fear of being alone? Fear of not being good enough? Or did I simply love good food? But, then, why would I hurt myself (by eating to passing out) because of “good food” – isn’t there plenty of good food in the world for me over my lifetime?

So this stream of consciousness is a start. Maybe even the First Step.

Jane