Let's Start at the Very Beginning....

Hi, my name is Me and I am a grateful member of Al-anon. I've heard people say the way they got grateful was they married an alcoholic. For me, I'm not so sure that is the case. He got me here... and for that I am grateful, but the real reason I am so grateful for this program is I truly believe that is saved my life.

Let me start at the beginning. I was born and raised in small town. My parents have lived in the same house all of my life and have been married, I'm pretty sure since the beginning of time. As far as I know there was no alcoholism in my family. We had a liquor cabinet in my house that had the same liquor in it from the time I was around 5 until my parents renewed their wedding vows when I was 19.

For me, my desire to fix people and animals seemed to come from within and started at a a very early age. As long as I can remember I have always been the one to take the injured bird that the cat got and try to nurture it back to health. As soon as I was old enough, this “nurturing” seemed to spill over into my relationships.

My first relationship was in kindergarten. I “dated” him until we were in 6th grade. Sometime in the 6th grade someone convinced me that we weren't really together because he had never “asked me out” and so I pushed him. I told him he needed to ask me out and he told me no. I was DEVASTATED. I was convinced that I had thrown away my one true love.

After that I had a series of different relationships, including a couple that were long distance. Each time the scenario was the same. We would "date" for a few months after which time I was madly, deeply in love with the person and planning our wedding. Then it would end and I would be devastated and heartbroken.

I heard someone say a month ago that they stayed too long in relationships. I can completely understand that position. I CLUNG to relationships. The good but more often times the bad. Somewhere along the line I developed this idea that to be whole I had to be with someone. In fact the thought of being alone down right terrified me.

Beginning in the 10th grade was when I had my first truly dysfunctional relationship. This boy wanted to be a minister but it was very “do as I say not as I do” with him. He liked to tell dirty jokes but then make me swear not to tell anyone I heard them from him because he had a reputation to uphold. Within the first two months of our relationship there were major problems, I wrote in my journal that “We fight almost every day and I really don't like it but we love each other so we make it work out.” Looking back I think it was shortly after this that I started to resent him for making me keep his secret identity and for not just loving me for who I was.

Since I was unhappy with that relationship I also started to self destruct in other ways. I had a close friend that I spent most of my high school years trying to “save.” She had a bad home life and somehow I just gravitated towards her and we became inseparable. She is the one who taught me about eating disorders. She had one and I quickly discovered that if it made her feel better it might work for me too.

I felt so out of control of everything else in my life but this was the one thing I could control. At my lowest I was down to 102 lbs. That is when my mom finally took me to see an eating disorder doctor in big town. He diagnosed me and sent me to meetings and therapy. This was my first experience with “support group” meetings. Sitting in a room with 20 other girls all shaking our legs (because it burns extra calories) with my mother sitting right next to me. I didn't feel like I could open up with her in the room so instead of using the meetings for what I needed them for I just clammed up.

Along with the meetings there were also counseling appointments. This is where I learned that if you tell the truth bad things can happen. I told this woman the truth about how much I was really eating and how I really felt about my life and she told my mother that she wanted to admit me into the hospital. This was the last thing I wanted to happen. For me the focus was on control and if she put me in the hospital I would loose all of that control. So, I quickly learned to just lie about it and pretend things were fine. I lied to her, I lied to my mother and eventually they both just thought perhaps I was making it all up and I was free to go about my business, not eating and wearing baggy clothes to cover up how small I was.

Around this same time I also learned to lie to my boyfriend to keep him around longer. As I mentioned he wanted to be a pastor. And as such, he had this perfect vision in his head of what a pastor's wife should be. A lot of things that I wasn't. He never asked me to change who I was but I knew if I didn't he wouldn't be with me. So I became a chameleon trying to blend in with my surroundings and become what I thought I needed to be. Finally, I think he started seeing that I wasn't really who I was trying to pretend to be and our relationship ended.

I went through that summer feeling the most healthy both mentally and physically that I had ever been but in actuality my self worth was wrapped up in what men thought of me. There were a couple of guys that showed interest in me that summer and that was, I believe, why I felt so good about myself.