Guest Contributor – David Zaleski, CRPA
Let me paint the picture: I stopped off at one store for a few items before driving down the road to another store for a few more things; then I would drive to a third store and take my phone out and purchase what “everyone” ordered, before rushing home and consuming it all. I told that story at a sober house one time and the resident asked me what my drink of choice was. “A pizza,” I replied. I never did say it was a liquor store. It was fast food and restaurants. But it is all the same.
Food was my comfort and my crutch. It is the same as alcohol or drugs in the hands of an addict. I would binge and purge to get that rush, that feeling of something in my life. The same centers of the brain that light up with heroin light up with sugar. When I was focusing on everyone else’s problems and trying to ignore my own I’d dive into food. I binged and purged to numb the feelings, to numb the thoughts, to feel better.
But I wasn’t just a binge/purge boy. I restricted. Pushing myself to go another hour without food, denying myself something you generally need to survive, all to feel that pain and light-headedness. I passed out many times from my restrictions in my room at college. Nearly hit my head a few times, too. I didn’t really care. That light-headed feeling was a rush. That pain was physical, not just psychological. It was all to numb and it was all to feel.
For me, food transported me beyond the undiagnosed bipolar depression that haunted me. My manias were fed by my restricting because I had energy to burn anyway, so why bother consuming more fuel for this fire? I could just live off of the euphoria.
Growing up fat and gay I felt that I was not an ideal kid. I was not the six-pack abs football jock who was destined to have a great head of hair, a beautiful wife, and the heteronormative life most parents expect of their children at birth. Let’s face it: every parent in my generation’s parents, at least, sees their newborn and thinks of their wedding to someone of the opposite sex and of all the grandkids they will have. I was also not the 6-foot-6, rippling six-pack Adonis the homonormative life said I needed to be in order to be a good boyfriend one day. I had my brains, not my looks – I thought at least; now, I think I look pretty good.
I still see that broken boy in the mirror hiding in the closet, peaking out like the kids in Jurassic Park in the kitchen scene. The panic of being discovered. The pain of being in trouble but not being able to scream it out. But it’s only a reflection. And it’s distorted like a fun-house mirror. I may not be my ideal physique at present, but I am happy enough with myself. I live openly and proudly as a gay man now. I am more authentic than I have ever been before. It wasn’t food that got me here. It was the work and the decision to leave that past behind and live a life of recovery.
I can’t abstain from food. My anorexic tendencies would love that too much, but I would like to live. But I don’t have to binge or purge to survive. I feel my feelings as I feel them. I sit in the moment. I got comfortable with silence. I silenced the negative thoughts in my head with medications that bring me to an average for me.
An average for me. That’s my key. I am not “normal.” There is no such thing. I am only an average version of myself. And by that I don’t mean I’m just average. No! I am unique and extraordinary. I am the prettiest snowflake on the lawn. But I am on my own average when it comes to my moods. I still have highs and lows, but I don’t have to live in extremes. I just live in this happy medium, a medium that is my baseline, not anyone else’s. I couldn’t have gotten here without embracing and working my recovery.
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