I am writing this to clarify thoughts I have been having, primarily about eating. I have had instances where I thought I was clear in my mind about something, but time ended up causing a fading effect to my ideas, to the point where I could barely remember what I was thinking.

I realized a few weeks ago that everything I’ve been trying to do with eating may very well be biting me in the ass. I was going with the assumption that the basic philosophy of Overeaters Anonymous is probably a good rule of thumb – that being that the closer you can get to abstinence the better.

I just watched an episode of House. It delved into his psyche by way of a therapy session. I do like the question of the search for one’s truth. At first, I got a hankering for the way he was obliged to verbalize his life and the meaning thereof. It’s certainly cathartic. Why can’t things be that easy, that simple? Why can’t life be that straightforward? Are other people’s lives simple like that? I feel they might be. I feel my life is too multi-faceted. I can’t really keep things straight like I’d like to. And it’s not because of what you think. It’s not externally overwhelming. My worst falls into oblivion come when I’m bereft of activities and distractions, obligations.

As I was previously saying (and hopefully to some useful end), I had an epiphany about my eating. Something about what Khwan likes to say just clicked. The answer isn’t to overpower the cravings, it’s to incorporate them into my life. They are natural. Fighting with them is like fighting anything that’s innate. They eventually will get the upper hand.

So from that point on, I have been incorporating my cravings and temptations into my daily food consumption, without nearly as much of a fight. I’ve been trying to view them as a proportion of what I require gastronomically. It seems to have helped. I’m a little more even keeled. Less of the see-saw effect, where I deny and then binge.

Unfortunately, I am not seeing an improvement in the slimming down department. This morning I decided I would try to tweak my system. I’m not sure it was a success. I thought I would spread out the satisfying of my cravings or temptations. I even thought I could separate cravings and temptations into different categories, cravings being the real, biochemical versions of the fake temptations. So that way I could really wait until the craving kicked in before I’d give in to it. But it turns out that the psychological temptations are nearly as powerful as the physiological cravings. Hmmm.

The tapestry. The birth and death of a great multitude of humans, right? And all the in between phases of a life. How rich it is. You think your own personal experience is sufficiently rich. But there is always someone either one step ahead or one step behind. Since that is a fascinating way of looking at one’s own life. What about the overlap? We talk about eyesight, the phases of deterioration. We compare. You can think about someone born 5 seconds after you, or 5 minutes, or 5 days, etc. On and on. And likewise before.

I guess my point is partly that you don’t have to worry that life is empty. It is anything but. And you don’t have to worry that no one understands you. The guy born 20 seconds before you will soon most likely experience many things you could share. And those born 20 years before you are your windows into a possible future for you.

Again, you don’t need stories of invisible deities to enrich the potential for wisdom that is ingrained into the tapestry of our human interweavings. Wisdom needn’t be exclusive. That’s so unhuman. Wisdom is supposed to be an unalienable right, really. There’s almost a stigma about it these days. Ha ha. Is it really just these days?

I want to be able to find purity. Is it still existent? If you want to find it, does that mean it’s lost? What should I do to regain it? I’ve tried a lot of things. I write. I read. I go to therapy. I pray. I try to take the high road. I try to be an adult. I try to be a child. I am myself. That’s my destiny.

I just perused the NEDA website. National Eating Disorders Association. It just dawned on me that this is why I am so phobic of cooking. It is connected. I read about someone who was petrified of eating at restaurants. I am the opposite it seems. I am extremely reticent and resistant to preparing food for myself.

I wonder if this is also connected to my difficulty sleeping in silence. My self talk. Someone else was writing about their self talk. Negative, it seemed. They said their self talk was worse than their eating disorder. I can’t bring myself to sleep in silence because then I can’t escape from my self talk.

Let’s say I have other compulsive behaviors that have a deleterious effect on my life, besides eating. Isn’t it possible that by starting with eating, I can begin a healthy process that spirals into the other issues, sucking them down along with the eating disorder? I tend to worry myself into paralysis about what if scenarios. It’s not too fun. I guess the point is that the eating is potentially the compulsion that will send me to the hospital or the grave faster than any of the other neuroses. So it’s not wrong to address it more immediately than the others.

So let’s say I do have an eating disorder. Let’s say I’m on the slide. Somewhere. Let’s say I’m not a big fan of puking. But I’m a big fan of bingeing. So to speak.

Let’s say I’m generally compulsive. But let’s say I’m not OCD. But I could be on the slide. Can you be a slob and be connected to OCD? Am I an OCD cellist? I generally thought of myself otherwise. Like a mellow cello guy. But should I perhaps look a little more closely?

And is my writing an example? I feel off the cuff. (More later)

Okay, I’m back. And with a vengeance. I’ve been ruminating on the subject throughout the day. Why I do this. Did I learn it? Perhaps. Is the problem that compulsive behaviors bleed into each other? I guess I can compulsively undereat as well as compulsively binge eat.

But the compulsiveness is the final step in an already ongoing process, I think. That’s what is visible and noticeable. What about the lead up to the compulsion? I’m supposed to be anticipating the compulsion. I’m supposed to be nipping it in the bud. But how far back can I go on a moment’s notice? When I feel myself succumbing to a compulsion, I don’t have much time to retrace my steps back months and years. What about hours? What about days? The question is how self aware can I be.

I’m also trying to retrace my steps on the cello. It’s a process of unlearning. Every kid is trained to learn. But what about unlearning? Are we supposed to bypass the unlearning curve by never learning the wrong things in the first place? In my case, I can’t relate to that suggestion. Except as part of the unlearning curve that I’m already participating in. As I unlearn things, I try to be somewhat careful not to replace or retrace with other misinformation.

It’s the same old thing. I don’t want to feel pain. So I immerse it in sugar. Or other such things. I am trying to admit that I’m in pain, and see if that helps. I think I knew that I was using the sugar for that purpose. In real time. Sort of. I was sitting there with the knowledge that I couldn’t handle the pain. But I didn’t write here. That wouldn’t have been self destructive. I chose my go-to resource. Bingeing. I thought I was on the verge of bulimia. I saw myself buying too much snacky food. I guess I would have thought I was immune to bulimia because it always gave my chills to see movies about it. It always disgusted me. Why would I want to participate in something I find so distasteful? Isn’t that ridiculous? Isn’t that crazy?

But there I was, going straight for the binge food, as if I was then going to purge later. Whether or not I was always drawn to bulimia, it seems to be a very natural course of action for me. Maybe that’s a discovery I can use. I need to know why. I wonder if it’s hereditary / learned. I mean, I was wondering that in real time last night.

Another potential problem is that I do take things very hard. I do go deep into things. I do go deep, too. That is a lot of ground to cover, emotionally speaking. I am very multi layered. So I think I’m doing okay, and then a different layer emerges, that I had either forgotten about, is newly discovered, or deliberately pushed out of my awareness, and I don’t feel I have the resources to deal with it. So I quickly have to find some way to deal with it. I binge. I binge.

If only OA covered this subject in the ways I would need them to, to make it an effective support tool. Wow. I just looked over at my bingeing evidence. I suppose the food companies didn’t really know what destruction could be perpetrated on an individual by means of their products. I kind of want to blame them. But it’s not their fault. Or even if it was, that doesn’t equal the solution to my problem. I suppose there are factions that want unhealthy foods to be swept from the grocery store aisles. They blame them for obesity and diabetes upticks.

In my case, that isn’t really the point. I make concerted efforts to seek out the binge foods. They don’t come to me. Theoretically, I am supposed to be seeking food for the purpose of nourishment. Or perhaps flavor. Or pleasure. But drowning my sorrows isn’t really the best idea. Poor sorrows, they’ve drowned. Aaaaa! I’m a murderer.