A Tale of Two Mallow Cups
My parents, sister, and niece are visiting for the weekend. Last night I went into sugar overload, with ice-cream and the big bowl of chocolates and various licorices my mother laid out on the table. We were watching old home movies, one of which was my wedding. Is it a coincidence that I ate two bowls of ice cream, a handful of Swedish fish, and two mallow-cups within a half hour's time? I tend to think not. HAR! But to be fair, they were small bowls of ice cream, I enjoyed every bite, and I'd do it all over again. HAR! (a little ED humor, there). What I mean is, I don't feel awful about it, I don't feel l like I was out of control, I'm not counting calories or restricting , I just wish I had quit at one bowl of ice-cream and one mallow-cup. I'm supposed to be removing refined white sugar from my diet, that's the whole POINT!!!! Grr.. I'm having such a rough time with it! I used to drink, the whole time my family was over. Morning to night, just a steady little buzz.... Could they smell it on me? I wonder.. I really do. Because last night, I just sorta blurted out that I was changing my diet, everyone was there at the table then, and it felt like all eyes were on me, even my two older daughters, they were actually at the table at the time (they NEVER come out of their rooms currently), and here's me, "Oh, yeah, well, I'm taking alcohol, sugar, caffeine, and wheat out of my diet BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH...." And then I feel my parents, my sister, my husband, my daughters, I feel them all intently staring into me, at this revelation, and my mom says, "What made you decide all this? Do you feel you were drinking too much?" And I thought, HELLOOOOOOOOO. Allow me to introduce myself! Good GOD!!!! I don't know, Mum, you tell me: I was drinking almost every day. Sometimes beginning as early as 9 in the morning, depending on what I had to do that day. When I wasn't drinking, I was thinking about and planning just WHEN and WHERE I could safely begin drinking. Or if I wasn't drinking, I was binging, and then thinking and planning just WHEN and WHERE I could safely purge. Before every, I say, EV-E-RY family event, I was pre-drinking. Thanksgiving dinner? Lit. Just mildly though, not so you would know it, but I'm extra loud and extra gregarious, you see... I'm not me. This isn't really me. This is my little sugar-bubble-coating... Preparing Christmas dinner? Oooooo, the "cooking wine", that's what I called it, let's have some "cooking wine" since we are COOKING, RIGHT??? HA HA HA HAAAAAA, it's a joke, right, you get it? Cooking? Wine? Cooking wine? HARRRRRRR!!! I am so funny!!!! Except that while others drink half a glass of "cooking" wine, I drink 6. How do I do it? There's only one little bottle of wine in the kitchen, and it's still half full!That's where my little Top-Secret-Super-Spy-Laundry-Room Stash comes in. If you look on the shelf, way down in the laundry room, way in the back corner, behind the washer, now pull out the container of bathroom cleaners, way behind that, now reach , reeeeeach back, and there it is! The Big Ol Box of Happiness. Is it red? White? Rose? Doesn't matter. It's never mattered. Color? Taste? Bouquet? Never mattered. Only thing that matters is alcohol content. Anything above 10 percent. "Would you like to see the wine list, Madam?" "No thanks, bub, just bring me a 12.5, wouldya, and make it snappy, Big Mamma don't wanna lose her lil' buzzy!" Excuse me, I have to go down and change the load in the washer. I may be there a while, don't worry about me, I have to fold the load that's in the dryer and then I have to sort the other dirty clothes, and you know, that stuff takes TIME...You kids want to go for a walk in the woods? Just a minute, I'll be right there, I'm just getting my shoes on (drinking), I'll be right with you, I have to (drink) go to the bathroom, be right there, Mama's almost (buzzed) ready.... Nothing, I literally did nothing without pre-drinking, if I could get away with it and I didn't have to drive. Yeah, that was the last rule to go, no driving under the influence. And then the rule changed to no driving with my kids in the car. And then the rule changed to, only in an emergency. And then, holy shit, what the hell am I DOING?!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could get really down on myself, if I wanted to, right this minute, looking back over it all... But I'm not going to do that. I was smart enough to see it, and to catch it and to stop it and to research it and to reclaim and to restart my life. Regret and remorse, yes sir, I am loaded with it. But I can't dwell there. I can't wallow. I can't self-flaggelate. I've had enough negative and self-defeating. I have a very important job to do now. That job is to find the True Person, the one I was before I became addicted to, and under the influence of Alcolol and Bulimia. I'm worth finding, if not for the world to know, at least for my kids. This does not mean I need to go back and find out where it all started, so that I can lay out my intricate little Web Of Blame. There's no blame here. I had a good childhood. I had, and continue to have, great parents. I was healthy and hapsaidpy and secure. And then something shifted. Something got ahold of me. A niggling, tiny little idea...that snow-balled into 30 years of lies, secrets, strange behaviours, and self-harm, and the not knowing that I had any potential as a human being without these little "crutches" of mine. They won't take me at "Rehab." I'm too complicated, apparently. I'm "SPECIAL" is how I prefer to see it. The very nice and terribly kind admissions counselor, for her name was Julie, and in my experience, people named Julie are always so very nice and terribly kind, and expressly gentle too... It's true, isn't it? Do you know a single "Julie" who isn't very nice and terribly kind and expressly gentle? Me EITHER!!! So Julie calls me, this is after our initial in-take/assessment interview, and she says, "Er... Um... well, I'm afraid, after talking this over with my supervisor, we feel that perhaps.... with your condition being complicated by an eating disorder, we feel that maybe, our treatment may not be effective, until you can maybe get the eating disorder more stabilized, and then possibly, maybe, perhaps we might be able to treat you..." That was a tough blow. To make that call, get an appointment, drive there, walk in that door, and tell a complete stranger the most dispicable things about yourself.. ... Only to be told, "Sorry, honey, baby, sweety, you're a great little gal, we love ya, but we can't help you. " And then to know you have to go through this whole process all over again, because you can't give up, this thing is enormous, this thing is 30+ years of your life, this is your HEALTH, this is your LIFE, this is your children's MOTHER, this is their legacy, this affects them, this is hurting them, this is dangerous and destructive and devastating. I'm so tired of being devastated. I need a little revival. Renewal. Release. Reclamation. So my mother says, "Why? Do you think you were drinking too much?" And here's me, like a deer in the headlights, all eyes on me, my mum, my dad, my husband, my sister, ALL FOUR OF MY CHILDREN.... and I can't believe this is how it comes out. It's not supposed to be like this! I'm supposed to get to tell each person individually, with tears and proper humiliation and partial disclosure, only what I'm comfortable with.... Not here, at the dining-room table, all at once, lights on full blast, everyone looking, looking, waiting, waiting for an answer..... I said, "Yeah, well, I think I was. I wanted to cut alcohol from my life. And so when I started to look into doing that, I learned that maybe I have a problem with low blood sugar, and that alcohol is like pure sugar, so your diet can affect you in that way.... " I trailed off in a vague sort of bleeecchhhhhhhhh.... I was so very uncomfortable. I'm not even sure how all this unwanted attention became diverted from me, but something happened then, I don't know, maybe the phone rang, I was in such an altered state, I can't even remember!!!! I think my dad said something like, "Well, if you cut all that stuff out of your diet , WHAT DO YOU EAT?!" And we all had a good laugh over that one. And then my sister cracked on me about the sugar, because at that very moment, I was about to dip a mallow-cup INTO Bowl Number Two of chocolate ice-cream, so we all had a good laugh over that one... And there you have it. That's how it went. There were no tears, there was no pulling people aside, one by one, and breaking the news to them, with tears and recriminations and apologies and humiliations. There was just this one really strange little five-minute interlude at the dining room table, where time stood still, and I gave to my family a tidy little white-washed, G-rated version of my disease.
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