A Nun's life

I'm not supposed to be angry. As a self-centered addict, I can't afford to be angry because I will eat food that I can't eat because they will trigger the uncontrollable urge to eat more and more, even if I'm so stuffed that vomiting doesn't even relieve the pain. Then I obsess on eating more. So the best way to end that deadly cycle is to weigh and measure the food I can eat, and remain abstinent from all flour and sugar products. But that's not all. I have to abstain from "checking out" into fantasy and remain present at all times, even when my life is now limited to basic housekeeping tasks, going to class and Baha'i activities (the ONLY things in my life that are enjoyable), doing my recovery work and waiting for the next meal. No wishing I was somewhere else, or with a member of the opposite sex. And I can't be angry about this. This is my life. It doesn't matter if I don't like it. It's what I've created with my dysfunctional coping mechanisms--eating too much which created the skeletal deformations because of morbid obesity. I'm disabled and can't work a full time job or even the low-paying part time job that I love because I will lose the health benefits that are only available through Social Security and Medicare. Who can I blame for this? No one but me. I've done this to myself.

There are worse fates in life, I keep telling myself. I could live in Darfur, or the Sudan. Or anywhere in the Motherland, actually. But I forget. That's fantasy again. It seems somehow more acceptable to be living in dire conditions because a person happens to live in a place where greedy men with power control the economic conditions of those nations, and their people suffer mightily as a result. I'm sure if I lived in Darfur, I would not feel that my life was filled with acceptable suffering. I would be too busy trying to survive.

I guess that's what I'm doing now. I'm trying to survive life without my drugs of choice. That's hard enough for me, and I feel like such a whiny wuss for complaining about it.

If that isn't bad enough, my sponsor says my job (unpaid) is to take care of my mother. I do that by taking care of her medical and legal affairs, but now I have to help relief the stress my sister is under by taking care of her physically. That means giving her medicine and wiping her s****y behind. Yes. This is doing
God's work, it is my spiritual path. I should feel honored to clean my mother's behind, my sponsor says.

Just call me Mother Teresa, then. I guess I am a "Baha'i nun." Sorry for the pity party, folks. Smelling my mother's feces is not my idea of a good time. Maybe someday I'll see the lesson in all this. Right now, I'm pissed, depressed and in despair. Please pray for me.

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