I am really flabbergasted by how much has changed in that time. Recovery is happening, a day at a time… that is an amazing, bewildering fact in the face of the depths of hopelessness I was stuck in, a mere six months ago.
I didn’t have hope really. Even when, after ten years away from this fellowship, I googled GreySheet and found the website and sent an email… that wasn’t really done from a hopeful place. I would almost describe it as a reflex in the way that a drowning person sticks their hand up and grabs anything, helpful or not… I grabbed the thing God threw at me, in a dream. Seriously, I had entirely forgotten about GreySheet until, in the depths of my despair, I dreamed I was weighing and measuring my food – that was the night of 12th October. When I woke up on the 13th, I googled and then, once I had a response to my email, I just did what I was told, step by step. Not because I hoped things could get better, really – I just had nothing left to continue on with. I had no strength. I had no willpower. I had no new ideas. I couldn’t help myself at all.
That day, 13th October, someone emailed me back and gave me her number. I called her, she gave me a start-up sponsor’s number to call, I called, and she walked me through my first three meals that evening – I didn’t have a GreySheet, and my memory of it was very hazy, so this was a process. But I committed my meals, and the next morning I went shopping to buy what I needed, and that was the 14th of October: six months ago.
For the first two weeks, I was really hungry. Physically hungry. My body wasn’t used to getting just enough! In those first two weeks, I also went on a self-catering holiday and celebrated my 40th birthday. If I had picked a time to get abstinent, before those two events wouldn’t have been my date of choice. But it would never have been “the right time” if that’s what I had been looking for. The lifeline (the dream) was cast to me when God saw fit, and that’s when I grabbed it because I was drowning.
I didn’t stop being abstinent when we went on holiday. Neither when I celebrated my 40th. Neither for a hundred other things that have come up between October 14th and today – and that’s why I’m here now with a hope, a sense of worth, an integrity and a peace I never thought attainable… thanks to this programme, this fellowship.
I stay abstinent because of the food programme but ALSO because of the fellowship. My incredible, loving sponsor. The people in the Hollywood Squares on Zoom who I’m getting to know better by the day. The service I get to do – as a sponsor and in meetings and even in translating the GreySheet… this is no diet. This is recovery. Thank you, fellows, for saving my life.
Binge eating recovery journey 