AA and being open minded

Its Sunday again - sure seems like the weeks fly by these days.

My 90 day sober-versary came and went on Friday and it mostly seemed like just another day. Except for meeting with my sponsor to start my first step and getting a red chip for 90 days at an AA meeting. The 8pm groups I've been going to are fantastic and the folks are people I genuinely want to be friends with. I've come a long way from scoffing at AA, citing my lack of religion as grounds to dismiss it completely.

Now, I look forward to meetings and events with sober folks. I'm going to an all-day music festival with my sponsor and her group today, and there's no way I could go with my non-sober friends. I can't wait to share my passion, music, with new, sober people. With any other crowd, I would be terrified to have to stay strong during a whole day of drinking and eating fear foods. I would have worried about affecting others' fun by being sober. Not anymore because now I can be selfish and think of myself - make sure I'm having fun.

AA has also humbled me greatly already, made me a more honest and accountable person. At the meeting on Friday, the good-looking guy who keeps asking me to hang out with his group after meetings asked me point blank if I went to rehab to already be at 90 days. I didn't think twice to answer yes, and tell him it was also for an eating disorder. AA allows me to express my most personal secrets to strangers, but strangers I relate to and trust more than most of my closest friends.

I'm so happy I've given myself the opportunity to branch out and reframe my stubborn thoughts to try something new. Finally.

Hope

Today has been a perfect day. It's only 5:00 pm, so there's still room for error, but the progress and positivity I feel within myself is as hot as today's 60 degrees in January.

I'm writing this on my smartphone as I walk my pup in shorts and a t-shirt.

I'm not thinking about how many calories I didn't purge today. I'm not thinking about the pounds I inevitably gained from my week long nightmare called binge-purge. I'm looking around me at the beautiful blue, cloudless sky, the buzz of the city, and the fulfillment I've found. 

It's gotta be a combination of the sunny weather, an awesome Sunday with friends yesterday, and a hell of a lot of perspective at treatment today with the addition of two new ladies to our day treatment group, in the throes of a serious and heartbreaking struggle. 

Seeing these young ladies in such isolating and internal pain is difficult for me as an extrovert. I wear my heart on my addicted, self-loathing sleeve, and I find myself with an excellent support system because of my outgoing nature. Treatment is easier for me because I know I'm a Mess with a capital M. I don't know what hurts or what I'm covering up and numbing with my eating disorder and addictions, but I know how to communicate with anyone to figure it out. I was, perhaps, at one time, as closed off and terribly sick as these women, but I can hardly bear to see someone younger than my baby sister refuse to eat, in tears, shaking with fear and anxiety. 

I am so lucky to have chosen treatment and been able to afford it before descending into the depths these girls find themselves. From here on out, I must find it within myself to set the best example I can, pull them out of their shells, and show them how to live. While also showing myself.