Drug Medical Information

OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS: INDIAN SUMMER

Love and fear have been at war in me since I can first remember. I was the baby of the family. To me, this meant that father, mother, grandmother, three older brothers and a big sister were all there to tell me what to do. If I tried to participate in family affairs, someone was sure to tell me to sit down, be quiet, don't show off because you don't know anything about it. I believed them.

My parents thought that praise made children vain. Good grades in school were noted without comment. When I won a spelling contest, strangers congratulated me, but at home nothing was said. I concluded that my family did not care, that to them I was still stupid.

No one deliberately taught me these things. They are what I learned.

My older sister, who was twice my size, dominated me completely. She was fat, poor child, and she passed her discontent on to me by convincing me that I was not only stupid but ugly. She ordered me to wait on her like a little slave. If I protested, my mother always made me surrender because she dreaded her older daughter's explosive temper. She would then try to make it up to me with hugs and kisses.

I loved and resented my mother. But I never doubted her love for me. It was the sun that warmed my days, my shelter in storms.

My father always made me feel unnecessary, a tagalong. It seemed that all his tenderness was taken up by my sister, the first girl after three boys. He appeared to notice me only to reprimand me or to take something away from me.

Young as I was, I sensed my father's integrity. It was at odds with his treatment of me, but it validated my inferiority.

We were raised in a very straitlaced kind of religion. Everything pleasurable was suspect. Hell awaited the poor sinner who dabbled in "joys of the flesh." I knew all about hell, having listened to many a vivid description by shouting evangelists. I knew it was my destination because I was so bad.

Meek, mousy child, how did that heavy conviction of my "badness" enter my heart? Was it because I could never hope to meet the standards set for some impossible angel-child ? Or was it because of thoughts I dared not express? Whatever the cause, the guilt, fear and unworthiness stayed with me.

When did I learn to be an overeater? I was a scrawny child, though we lived on a farm and food was plentiful. I remember looking at a favorite food on my plate and leaving it because I had enough.

As I approached adolescence, we left the farm and moved to town where my father opened a small business. He worked hard but those were Depression years and he didn't have a chance. From plenty of food we fell to scarcity. As a consequence, I grew even thinner and anemic. I had frequent bouts with bronchitis. Is this when I learned to worship food?

I was painfully shy, and though my grades were excellent, I still thought of myself as stupid and bad. After one year at the local college, I boarded a bus with a little cardboard suitcase containing all I owned and headed for the nearest city to find work.

In the year that followed I had seven different jobs. And I fell in love. John was a soldier. We were akin, two people who belonged together. He saw me as beautiful and brave; for him, I began to be what he thought me. I bloomed.

Children of the Depression, we could not afford to marry and have a family. So we waited. I made a bargain with God: We would be "good" - no premarital sex - and God would see that we had a life together.

As U.S. involvement in World War II approached, my fears for John grew. He had been sent to San Francisco for special training. I joined him and we were married. We had two weeks together. Then he was shipped to the Philippines.

I was alone in a strange city, with no friends and a crushing load of anxiety. I began eating. My weight rose to 200 pounds before I knew what was happening. I was appalled. I quickly dieted down to 140 pounds for John's sake. It was not hard.

No sooner had I lost the weight, however, when I became ill. I had fever, nausea and pain. The doctors could not determine what was wrong. I was hospitalized and put under observation. After two weeks I told them to operate or send me home. They operated and removed a perfectly healthy appendix.

I was doing defense work when the wire came: John was dead. He was captured on Bataan, went through the infamous death march and died six months later of fever and starvation.

I plunged into a bottomless rage at God. Though I had never regarded Him as loving, I had thought Him just. Now I knew better. In my anger and grief, I shut everyone out. I carried that anger and grief for thirty years.

I do not condemn myself now for the brief period of promiscuity that followed. In my heartbroken loneliness, I looked for something, anything to hold to, even for a little while. When I found myself pregnant, I had no thought of asking help from anyone. I was fiercely determined to keep my baby and give it all my love.

I had been corresponding with a lonely soldier overseas. He was back now, and he wanted to marry me, baby and all. I did not love him, but I accepted him. He needed me, and I needed some kind of life, I thought.

I lost that first baby. Two years later I had two others, little boys, and the realization that I had married an alcoholic.

The Big Book of AA speaks of self-interest that places us in a position to be hurt. I knew that our marriage could never be what I hoped for, but I feared that if I left my husband I could not support my children. So I stayed, out of fear and self-interest, and I was in a position to be hurt.

When the youngsters were four and five, we had a third son. Little Johnny was a beautiful, sunny baby, a delight to both of us. But when he was a year old he developed a mysterious illness and after some weeks we had to take him to the hospital where he was given blood transfusions. Then he was sent home, much improved. I sat holding my dear little one on my lap and watched my two older children at play. A feeling of thankfulness welled up in me. For the first time since John's death, I spoke to God: "Thank you for my sons."

Johnny died of leukemia soon afterward.

Once again, I closed the door on God. "You've hurt me enough. Let me alone. Forget I'm here."

What did I have left? Two little boys. They became my only reason for existing, and I tried to live my life through them. What a burden I put on them!

My husband's drinking got worse and so did my own disease. My weight climbed past 300 pounds. From time to time I dieted and lost weight. But a terrible craving would begin gnawing at me day and night. Soon, all determination and hope were gone, along with the dieting and the weight loss.

Predictably, the children were not thriving emotionally. Our older son was a quiet, well-behaved boy, very bright in school but withdrawn and unhappy. When he reached puberty, he began to put on excess weight. I watched him become fatter and more detached as he went through high school, but I knew no way to help him. I couldn't help myself.

Our younger child was a funloving, outgoing boy, a favorite of sorts with his father. But he got into a minor scrape at twelve, and his father never let him forget it. Time after time, my husband drove the boy out of the house at the slightest provocation. Eventually he married and moved away, which relieved some of the strain.

Our older son attended college for one year, during which he made the dean's list. The next year he flunked out due to lack of interest. He got a job working evenings. When he came home he would stay up all night reading, eating and watching television. He slept all day and got up in time to go to work. That was his life at twenty-four.

I was now fifty-six. I weighed more than 300 pounds. My feet and ankles swelled hugely; I had arthritis in my knees. My blood pressure was at stroke level.

"But my general health is good," I told the doctor.

"You are very sick," said the doctor. "This can kill you. You must lose weight."

I thought it was nice of her to care, but I didn't. Why should I? All I had to look forward to was my husband's retirement in a year, when he would be home all the time, drinking. I had never driven a car, and my husband never took me anywhere. I could not walk a block without becoming winded. I knew that I could never hope for any escape, any pleasure in life except the food with which I sedated myself. My life was over. I was just marking time, waiting for the hearse.

Then one day my obese older son, who had his mother's compulsion, went to an OA meeting. He came home with all the little pamphlets. I observed his enthusiasm with doubt: Would he stay with it or give up after awhile? Loving mother that I am, I figured that if I started this OA thing with my son, it would help him to continue.

So I went to my first meeting. I was wearing my one dress, a homemade cotton print that I had enlarged from the biggest pattern I could find. And I had two front teeth missing; when you weigh 300 pounds, who cares about your teeth?

All I heard that night was weight loss, "get a sponsor" and "keep coming back." It was enough. I got a sponsor, and I kept coming back.

Abstinence was easy. I did not question the why or how, but for the first time I had something that limited my food and, unaccountably, kept me comfortable. I was hungry by mealtime, of course - probably the first real hunger I had felt for years.

I was quite satisfied with this until I began hearing something else at meetings: the twelve-step program. I wanted no part of that, thank you. I had no desire for a spiritual life, and as for turning anything over to the likes of the Higher Power I had known - impossible! But they told me that if I did not follow the steps I would not keep my abstinence. I had tasted hope and I could not give it up. So I did as I was told as best I could. My recovery began.

Through my shell of bitterness and hopelessness, the therapy of love reached me. Delicate green tendrils took root in the big aching hollow inside me that food could never fill. As my weight dropped, OA friends rejoiced with me.

With gentle but relentless prodding, people called on me to lead meetings, even to speak at other meetings. From the start, I said yes instead of no. I had let fear speak for me long enough; I couldn't live with it anymore. Soon the old shyness and fear of people were gone. I was at last free to be myself.

The practicing alcoholic who was my husband now had a new problem. He had been accustomed to a wife who was a doormat, a martyr mother. Without quite knowing what had happened, he found himself confronted by a stranger who said things like, "I think I'll get a wig," and "I'm going to the dentist." The men he worked with razzed him: "She's wearing makeup and getting her hair done? And she stays out late and you don't know where she is? Uh-oh!" Funny they should guess that I was running away from home, one meeting at a time.

Though none of us knew it, my husband was mortally ill. He died a few weeks before he was due to retire. We were able to accept the sad reality of his life and death with compassion: "He loved us as much as he could. He did his best." There was a sense of peace, a release from pain, and that was all.

Abstinence, weight loss and personal growth do not solve all of life's difficulties. The last two years have been especially trying as I sought solutions to my own and my troubled younger son's problems. But great progress has been made. My older son, for whose sake I came to OA, lost all his excess weight in the first seven months. Now happily married, he has been maintaining the loss for six years.

Throughout the bad times and the good, the love and assistance of OA friends has been there, sustaining me. I am rich in friendship, who once was so destitute. At an age when too many women are living in the past, I am privileged to be growing, learning, sharing in life. Best of all, I am living at peace with God.

In my springtime years I met with disaster: Depression, war and tragic loss. In my summer years I propped up an alcoholic in his sickness and my own. But this is my Indian Summer, my golden autumn. I am glad to be fully alive every day of it.

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