Sara Somers - Saving Sara: A Memoir of Food Addiction

Saving
Sara

Copyright 2020 Sara Somers

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-63152-846-0 pbk

ISBN: 978-1-63152-847-7 ebk

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019920769

For information, address:

She Writes Press

1569 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

To all my GS sisters and brothers who show up
abstinent, against all odds, on a daily basis and work
to be good, contributing citizens of our planet.

Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.

Pema Chodron

M y primary aim in writing this book is to help people who are compulsive eaters and food addicts, like me.

In this book, I speak about my participation in a twelve-step program for men and women who are recovering from compulsive eating. This program, Greysheeters Anonymous, both saved and transformed my life.

Like Alcoholics Anonymous, this program follows traditions that guide the health and integrity of our fellowship. One of these traditions keeps us focused on our main aim: sharing the gift of our program with people who are suffering from food addiction, and who find their way to our program.

Another tradition prevents members from benefiting personally by affiliating themselves with their particular twelve-step program in the media. We dont seek fame or prestige through our participation in our program. In order to follow this tradition to the letter, I could have either used a pseudonym or only my first name, or refrained from stating the name of the program Im in.

Unlike Alcoholics Anonymous, however, our program is not well known, and has a name that does not make it easy for people to find us when they search for help for compulsive eating or food addiction. Additionally, without using my full name as the author of this book, I would face significant limitations in terms of making the existence of this book known to potential readers. For these reasons, I have chosen to include the name of the program, and to use my real name as well.

To honor the importance and the spirit of our traditions, I affirm that I have no interest in fame or prestige, and I do not represent Greysheeters Anonymous. This is simply my story, which is one among many such stories. I hope that men and women who are being hurt by their relationship with food will, in reading this story, learn that they have the option of benefiting from this life-saving program.

May all compulsive eaters and food addicts find their way to recovery.

B y age fifteen, I was already thirty pounds overweight. Not only was I fat, I was sullen, and miserable to be with, so much so that my mother threatened to leave me behind when our family moved to Geneva, Switzerland. My father, a professor of political science at Haverford College outside of Philadelphia, was taking his second sabbatical. While he was traveling, which turned out to be 90 percent of the time, my sister, Vicki, and I would live in an apartment with our mother.

A couple of months before we left for Geneva, my mother was sitting in the passenger seat of the family car showing me how the gear shift worked. I was eligible to get my drivers license at sixteen in Pennsylvania and, probably against her better instincts, shed agreed to teach me how to drive. Her tone and constant exasperation with my dark moods always set me off, and this moment was no exception. As we sat in the car, I screamed at her. I didnt realize it at the time but my mother was as thin-skinned as I was. She reacted immediately. Her only weapon was an ultimatum: Unless you shape up, were leaving you behind.

In that moment there was nothing I would rather have than a year without my family. What I really wanted was for nothing to changeto stay in Haverford with my friends.

Like most of her ultimatums, this one didnt hold weight. I went with my family to Geneva, which would only result in more resentment and more gathering proof of all the ways my mother didnt love me. I was full of resentments, anger, and rage, but most of all loneliness. I didnt know what was wrong with me and, like most teenagers, thought I was unique and no one could understand me or would ever try to.

Since the apartment was not ready for us when we arrived, my parents found two rooms in a pension up the main street, Avenue de Chne, that went into central Geneva. We were three blocks from the International School of Geneva, where Vicki and I were to attend classes.

During that first week in Geneva, we went out to a restaurant that was walking distance from the pension. The restaurant was family-style, a large single room, with straight-backed chairs and no tablecloths on the square tables. After seating us and taking our orders, the waiter brought breadsticks and plopped them on the middle of our table within easy reach of all of us. They were pencil-thin and arrived in a rustcolored glass. I scarfed them down, one by one. I was too busy eating to notice if anyone else wanted or ate any of them.

Do you think you should be eating all of those? my father asked me cautiously.

Leave me alone! I snapped back at him.

Im trying to be helpful.

I dont want your help.

I kept eating. It was taking forever for our main courses to come. I curled up inside myself and sank deeper and deeper into some dark place that I called my real self, an imagined self that no one could see but who was thin and loved by everyone. This place I went to in my mind was comforting because I was always right and they were always wrong. In that place, others were punished for not treating me kindly. There was a complete disconnect from that place and the real world, where I alienated everyone, scowling and feeling sorry for myself.

Walking home to the pension that night, my parents argued over my behavior in the restaurant, but I cant remember what was said. I hung back sullenly, provoking my mother even more. If youd later asked me to describe the lake and my new surroundings, I couldnt have. I was too deep in the Black Hole.

When we got back to the pension, my mother entered the room Vicki and I shared, exploding with frustration and powerlessness. I looked at her and screamed, You hate me, I know you do!

She yelled back, Youre right, I do!

I knew it, Ive always known it.

Out of nowhere, my fathers open hand struck my face, causing my nose to bleed.

Vicki rushed between the three of us, yelling, Youre killing her!

I have an eating disorder. Im a binger. The episode that unfolded that night in Geneva is a classic incident in the life of a food addict and her family: sullenness, self-centeredness, self-pity at being fat, anger, blaming others, an inability to stop bingeing once certain substances entered my system. In this case, it ended with violence because everyone felt so helpless and powerless. Sometimes it ended with me stalking off, sometimes in bitter silence.