Two Bowling Balls

 One of my A.A. sisters who I see infrequently showed up at Keep It Complicated a few days ago.  She normally attends meetings later in the day so I don't get to see her much but it was obvious that she had shed a significant amount of weight.  She is never going to be thin but she was clearly carrying weight that wasn't going to do her health any good in the long run.  Because I have no filter between my brain and mouth but also because I've learned to look before I leap I asked if she had lost some weight.  I wouldn't do this to anyone but this woman is a friend.  We have to be careful commenting on a person's appearance - there's a fine line to walk between a compliment and an insult.  "Your hair looks great styled like that" can mean your hair looks great or your hair used to look like shit.  I told a woman one morning that she looked tired.  "You mean I look terrible?" she said.

Anyway, my friend said that she had lost 35 pounds.  Wow.  That is not easy to do.  I often use the analogy of the sixteen pound bowling ball.

"You were walking around with two bowling balls strapped to your back."  That kind of extra weight can't be easy on the knees, legs, ankles, and back.  It makes me think about how generally obsessive-compulsive many of us are - if it makes us feel better or different we stuff it in our mouths or smoke it or stick it in our arms.  It can be hard quitting some of these behaviors even after we quit drinking.  While I rarely have drinking/using dreams I will wake up from time to time from a vivid image of smoking a cigarette.  The other facet of this behavior is that we have spent so much time thinking poorly of ourselves that we have thrown in the towel; it's as if we don't think we're worth it.  I used to keep all my nice clothes ("all" being a relative word here) in the back of the closet.  I'd never wear them.  I was saving them for "good," whatever that meant.  Some of this stuff was way off in the  size department by the time I got around to wearing them.