Greetings all,

Thanks first off to the many people who responded to my posting, both on and off the loop. I really do appreciate it.

I would like to say that that alone helped me eat sanely, but I can't. I often wonder if that is really possible. Much of the reason for this is that food is so intricately linked to emotion.

When I am angry, I eat in frustration. When I am happy, I eat to celebrate. When I am depressed (which is most of the time), I eat for comfort. When I am bored, I eat for something to do. When I am excited, I eat to calm down. And of course when I am hungry I eat, often as if there is no tomorrow.

Aside from food, and my other addiction, I feel no emotions. I am a robot. I walk past people in hallways and streets, thinking I should smile at them, but cannot summon the energy to do so. I don't laugh when I see jokes on television, or laugh quietly and briefly. I feel wearied and depressed most of the time but say little to anyone. I would like, even love, to cry about it but cannot.

I have no close friends, lacking even rudimentary social skills. Talking to others is a quiet, humiliating exercise in nothingness.

And of course weight stands over this social phobia like a colossus. Perhaps the best example of this is dancing. Even as a boy, I was ashamed to go to school dances because of the terror that I would be laughed at, the fat kid dancing. Other young people enjoy themselves at bars and nightclubs, I can only look on, enviously, as they have fun while I curse my cowardice and obesity.

Similarly, I am always chasing myself to exercise but find myself not doing it, or only briefly and rarely, a sense of self-dislike and shame coursing over me if ever I start. In frustration, I go to eat, and the cycle begins again...

Mealtimes are often battles, as nearly every higher-calorie food I eat will elicit a wisecrack from someone "haven't you had enough of that?". That usually depresses me, or sometimes makes me angry, but doesn't make me stop eating.

Yet there is no one I can talk about my problems. If I express my battles with food, the end result is an unsympathetic "just stop overeating then...don't be a pig". Or "your problem is that you are too greedy and lazy".

Lazy. That is a good one. I steamrolled through high school and university earning A after A, 90 after 90, and I am lazy. And greedy too; I spent most of my adolescent years caring for my parents' real and imagined physical and emotional disabilities.

And so I hear these voices, again, and again, sometimes years after the comment was made:

"You are rather plump/corpulent/obese/overweight/top-heavy/overloaded, aren't you" "Some men have sons. Other men have daughters. What do I get? A boy-girl" "You're going on a diet NOW" "Why don't you just go on a diet?" "You should exercise more" "Don't eat that" "That stomach must go" "If you just trimmed down a little, you wouldn't be bad looking" "Well, who cares what you think? You're ugly" "Snowman (small head, large bottom)" "You don't walk, you waddle. Your belly moves from side to side...it's hilarious" "Hey look! He's actually trying to RUN! Ha ha!" "Lose a bit of weight and you could swim/run/jump/throw faster" "You're intelligent; don't you realize you need to go on a diet?" "You're just eating out of greed. Put that cake down!" "Look at you! You have breasts, stretch marks...you look like a woman! A pregnant woman at that!" "That double chin is hideous" "You are a disgrace" "You were so thin and adorable before. I wish you could be like that now"

Most of these remarks were only made once. Interestingly, I feel no anger against any of the people who said them, only against myself, a lot. For I accept that above as true, and although many have told me otherwise I do not believe them, convinced they are just trying to shield me from the awful truth.

And so food remains. It (and my other addiction) is my only friend, my only lover, my only source of consolation. It is there when I need it, it does not abandon me, it comforts me, it consoles me, it is there to cradle me as I sob, or try to sob as tears no longer flow.

OA people tell me I'm impatient, maybe I am. But - well, merely thinking about being proactive, i.e. drawing up a food plan, trying to abstain etc. provokes what amounts to a mini-anxiety attack. And of course the food plan goes unwritten and the madness goes on. And I continue the slow journey through despair.

Apologies for the pessimism,

Oasis, June 3, 1996.