Trinity’s newest little boy was born today. He’s huge, almost 8 lbs. She’s quite petite, so he was looking like an extra-large watermelon there at the end. I’m sure she’s very relieved to no longer be pregnant, and happy that he’s a healthy little dude. I’m not the best judge of baby looks, but he seemed chubby and sweet, in that way of all sleeping newborns.

Today has been off and on for me. I went to a meeting of Refuge Recovery last night, a Buddhist recovery program for people dealing with addictions of all kinds. I’m finally ready to come to terms with the fact that I have an unhealthy relationship with food, and I need help. Coming off of social media, taking one onion-layer of anxiety out of my life, has given me the strength to look at what else is there, how I’ve been suffering, and ultimately, how I’ve been adding to my own suffering with a cycle of negative behavior.

Anyway, I heard about the meeting at the beginning of the week, attended it last night, and liked it. There’s this duality to dealing with binge eating, where it’s easy to look at this and go “but people have to eat, and I’m a person – clearly there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m just eating like any other human.” Then I eat a whole pizza and side of wings by myself, and feel like a total sack of shit for the next few days, until I get sad or happy or angry and do it again. So I walked into the meeting feeling like a fraud. I knew I needed it, I knew I have a problem, but I was still able to convince myself that perhaps I was just being overdramatic.

But then people started talking, and it was painfully obvious that, though I might not be smoking crack or guzzling booze, the things that lead me to eat compulsively, and the way in which I do it, and the way I feel about it in my general life, these are all things I had in common with the rest of the circle. And no one judged me the way that I constantly judge myself. They were friendly and welcoming, and just normal people who have some flaws they’re working on. I felt at home there. I plan to go back next Sunday, but in the mean time, I also want to start reading the book on which the group is based, and start working towards meditating for general purposes, as well.

Later:

I just took a break to watch a weird IFC movie on Hulu where a lady’s husband is killed right before Christmas, and she goes on to have a mini nervous breakdown involving strippers, drugs, compulsive shopping, and slightly less compulsive shoplifting. Typically that kind of movie would be my thing, but tonight it just wasn’t cutting it. But now I’m back, knowing that it’s almost time to get in bed, realizing that I haven’t talked about my day just yet. So here goes the 1 minute recap:

Work was good, with a few “house on fire” problems that weren’t my fault (yay!) that I was able to handle quickly (double yay!). I had fun talking with my coworkers, and saw one of my coworkers who typically works remotely. She and I sometimes joke back and forth a little via email, but she’s very efficient and business-like. Today was the first time getting to interact with her a bit more casually, and I really like her. If she’s in the office tomorrow, I plan to ask her how I might plan to go about working up to her job. She does the same thing that I do, except that while I take care of room blocks for events at one hotel, she coordinates the citywide room blocks, where one large convention might have blocks of rooms at 5 to 10 hotels (or maybe more, I don’t know). I’m not up to that level of awesomeness, but with enough practice, I think I could handle what she’s doing one day. More than that, I think I’d really enjoy it.

After work, I went to work out at the gym. I didn’t make it there in the morning as planned, though it’s not a huge surprise. After I’d finished working out, I ran into my friend Theo, and we planned to maybe meet up tomorrow afternoon. So that’s nice. Low probability of gym in the morning, but nearly definite probability of afternoon gym time, so I’ll take it!

Not much after that. I meant to go to a community kirtan class at my yoga studio, but I got excited about going a little earlier in the day when I thought some friends might go with me, then when I found out they wouldn’t be able to make it, I got a little sad and decided to stay home. Which makes absolutely no sense, yes, I know. I skipped doing a thing I love because I didn’t have anyone to share it with (except every other person in the damn class). But there’s no reason to be down on myself for any longer than I have been. I ate a really nice shrimp caesar salad, watched the aforementioned movie, and am now about to hit the hay with the intention of getting at least 7, maybe even 8 hours of sleep. Heavenly.

Oh yeah, I forgot the most important part. My anxiety has been seriously down. I’m feeling even-keeled. To be fair, I have been living in my fantasy world again pretty heavily for the last few days, and making all these future plans willy nilly. But if I’m not feeling like I might implode at any moment during the day, I’ll trade it out for a little dreaminess for awhile, and keep making little steps in the right direction. Still need to find a therapist, but I’m having trouble figuring out how to pay for it. Maybe if I can watch what I’m eating, I’ll find that my food bills are much less, and will carve the way for me to pay for therapy. Who knows.