by Harvey Lillywhite
Something's missing. Something that should be there is not, and this bothers me, though I'm enlightened enough to know that it shouldn't. Sometimes it's easy to say what's missing, though it may be impossible to fix. And sometimes it's hard to say exactly what I think I need to fill the emptiness. Or something that should not be here is here. Some things I think I need, I'm trying to get. And other things I don't want, I'm fending off or trying to get rid of. Either way, I'm not okay.
Moving through this turbulent world, trying to keep my balance, wanting to feel okay, there are good days and bad days. In fact, there are manic days of total optimism, my brain hatching spectacular ideas that (it feels) could change my world and fill any void. There are also days of depression, desire drained, no reason to live, everything starkly bleak and unpromising. And there are most days, somewhere between these extremes. But always the feeling, the nagging feeling, that something's not right. Something's missing. It's sad.
I understand this is whining. I know how attractive the stoic attitude that might keep me outwardly cheerful, easier to be around, and inwardly probably scabbed over. And I know how unattractive mewling and sniveling are. I was repeatedly taught as a child, if something's not right, shut up and get to work fixing it.
My addiction is nothing compared to the big, glamorous addictions. It's not a matter of drugs. I don't cut into my own skin. I crave no illegal substance or activity. My family, my wife and two sons, don't know it exists. I've never shared it with anyone. It's simply a problem with food, with overeating. To look at me, you wouldn't know it. Sure, I could lose ten pounds. But I don't have cookies hidden in the basement. In fact, even as food addictions go, mine is pretty mild. So why even discuss it?
After all, things are in bad shape, globally. The ph level of the oceans around the world is dropping, right? The seas are becoming more acidic-another byproduct of global warming. This problem is worth discussing. And the one true thing I ever heard President Bush say, "we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil…," is true in most of the world. Walking through the Baltimore Zoo with my kids when they were young, we somberly noted the red plaques on the cages of the big cats announcing that they were endangered or soon would become endangered species. You could go on listing huge problems, famine and war, ethnic cleansing and nuclear terrorism, on and on. I and my problems are dwarfed by these wounds that will outlast me, which I will unwillingly bequeath to my children and their kids.
But here is my little life. And I'm in pain. I've become an emotional eater. It's a constant craving.
I want to be rescued. I could swallow or inject or inhale something to take the edge off, to remove the pain, couldn't I? I've been told that the pinball machine of my body chemistry is going amuck. When my serotonin and dopamine transmitters are firing signals that I feel good, everything's fine. And when these levels drop, anxiety ensues. A sugar jolt could take the edge off? GABA, nitric oxide, norepinephrine levels go up-it's all good. At this micro-level, out of my conscious control, I'm seeking neurochemical comfort. A body needs this kind of chemical comfort.
So into therapy. Talk therapy. Antidepressants. SSRIs. Sleeping aids. A drink before dinner. A drink after dinner. Please help me control my desire to eat-when I'm angry, when I'm stressed, frustrated, depressed, bored. Eating with friends. Eating at the movies. Eating in front of the TV, in front of the computer. Eating and eating though I'm not physically hungry. It's that other hunger.
I was an athletic kid. I'm one-third jock. I never thought once, let alone twice, about overeating. Then I got older, gained a few pounds, had a friend tell me about the Rotation Diet, which helped him shed 20 pounds. Hmm, I thought, sounds good. And I lost every pound I wanted to lose. And I was jogging. Then a knee injury. Then a weird kind of compulsive eating I really paid no attention to. Then a weight gain that exceeded what I'd lost. Then my relative, who's battling weight herself, turned me on to Weight Watchers. I became an honorary lifetime member, hanging in their every Sunday morning, standing up as thought it were an AA meeting, confessing my weight ups and downs with total strangers. And again I lost. I really lost weight. I was twenty years older than I'd been when I got married, but I was back to my old weight-my "fighting weight" I called it. Then I stopped going. I stopped exercising. And I gained, again, more than I'd weighed before I started WW.
Here came the therapy, the SSRIs. The therapy taught me that I had a difficult marriage. Yes, I had married my opposite-my twin! We've been struggling mightily together now for over 30 years. My aspirations to be a world-class poet eroded. Reality set in. I was late to get to my mid-life crisis, but now I recognized it. The awareness that the remaining years are dwindling, that the chances and opportunities have largely passed. I looked at the word failure in the mirror. It was stupid. But it was real-really how I felt and how I started to think.
Okay, I got books about mindfulness. I did my yoga. I accepted Buddhism into my life. I tried to relax. But at the end of the day, there I was, all alone in a pretty unexciting life, getting nowhere, time accelerating. The line from the movie "Parenthood" resonates strongly with me, "My whole life is 'have to.'" (I know, stop whining. Well, just a bit more, then I'll be done.)
This brings me to, well, where I am right now, to today. To "this."
I've been taking time every morning over the past few years to just sit down. I sit in my basement in front of the sliding glass doors that look out on our small back yard. No mantras. No special tasks. No waiting for the dramatic "opening experiences" we hear about from others-the enlightened. I just sit there with my eyes open, not staring exactly. It's more like just paying attention. I'm amazed every day how my mind runs away with me. Suddenly I'm thinking about something that's upset me and what I should do. I'm analyzing something. My mind, I realize, is like a grain mill. Whatever the day pours in gets ground to flour-and of course my mind is busy baking bread. I often find myself daydreaming about what to cook for dinner. But eventually I'm back to "this"-just what's there.
I have two sitting partners lately. They're the two aloe plants my neighbor, who's very old, gave me, that I repotted and that seem to thrive in proportion to my neglecting them. I've been inspired, I have to say, with their patience. They sit there chewing up the light-when I remember to open the verticals-soaking up any water I might have remembered to give them, noshing on dirt. There they are turning light energy into, what? Into wood, or not exactly wood, into whatever they are-succulents? So I sit there without a goal and without any hope for a better world or a better me. I just sit there hopelessly lost and found in "this."
I've come to notice that there's lots of giving and taking going on. I take a breath. I inhale. I process the air. And I exhale. I give back a breath. I take food, which I process. And I give back. I was born, without, as far as I know, asking to be. I'll die. That's what "this" is, giving/taking, coming/going, pretty much in equal measures. Living in a culture that believes in improvement and progress that spends trillions to be faster, easier, less painful, it's no wonder I'm so aware of this pain that is my life. It's no wonder I'm so uncomfortable with being uncomfortable. It's no wonder that I'm stuck in "this," and imagine a better place, some "that" which might satisfy me.
I still have trouble with food, with eating. I think rationally about how much and what kind of food I need to maintain a healthy existence. Then I'm angry-for me it's usually about anger-and I fall off a cliff, out of control. I'm bingeing on-whatever. On anything at hand. I see myself when I'm in the middle of one of these binges. I'm astonished. It's like being in a tornado. My rational mind says NO, NO, the demi-urge inside me (those neurochemicals???) says-well, it can't talk, it's mouth is full. It sort of growls and grumbles with delight. Okay, I'm schizoid in addition to being a little manic depressive, and, oh yes, a failure-not an abject, down-in-the-gutter failure, just a regular, run-of-the-mill failure.
So it's all part of "this." It's what is, just as it is, exactly as it is, what's missing and all. I'm coming to understand that it will never get any better-not a bit. In fact, I'm trying to give up my addiction to better. I'm accepting "this" into my life as my personal savior, knowing full well that being saved is impossible.
It's not zen. It's not a higher power. It's you reading this and your enormous world. It's me tapping away on the laptop and my world, which is strangely a lot like your world. In fact, I realize that the "me" I'm conscious of is only part of me. The rest of me might well be you, as well as a third thing neither of us can imagine.
So, there it is. And it's constantly changing. I'm resolved not to solve this problem, to curb this addiction. It sounds crazy. I still replace a window that's broken. I try not to be such a jerk. I'm sure that it's all delightfully loaded with contradictions all the time. It's actually pretty baffling. I'm not trying to eat less (yes I am!). I'm not trying to curb my anger (really I'm not). I'm just saying so-long and diving head first into "this," whatever it is.