Look for one thing, find another

Tonight I attended my first Overeaters Anonymous meeting. I don't know if I would call myself a compulsive overeater, in that I don't binge-eat or those behaviors, but it is definitely clear that I have a disordered relationship with food. Whatever my dysfunction is, Overeaters Anonymous seems as though it is the closest approximation to an orderly way of dealing with it. So I went.

What I found was a very warm and welcoming group of men and women a little older than I, who looked normal and acted normally and were very frank about the fact that they struggle with food. I was the fattest person there, which was humbling, but then again they had all been in the program for a long time, with their eating plans in place and a lot of practice. It was kind of a best-case scenario for me. Finding ways to make social contact and reach out of my isolation is something that is always on my mind. And these were people who would be pleasant to be around, very well-mannered and sociable. They didn't seem to have a lot of built-up shame, I guess they've processed a lot of that out by now. They took their situation very seriously, though, and expressed sincere dedication to the program. I was impressed.

So that is what I was looking for: a group of people to talk to about my weird life with food.

What I found was the possibility of regaining my career.

One of the women mentioned something that made her sound like a nurse. I chuckled and replied with nursing jargon. The door was opened, then, and she asked me about my work. I explained that I had been a nurse until I'd grown too ill with bipolar to continue. I was very good at it, too, no joke. It was what I thought I would do for the rest of my life. Then came the crash and it took everything with it. But I never had a disciplinary action against me, and my license was clean; I just let it lapse while I was so deeply ill.

She got a very serious look on her face and started outlining the steps I could take to get back up to speed in nursing. There are refresher courses for returning nurses, which is something I never heard of before, but would desperately like to take. It turns out that she kind of has an unofficial specialty in guiding returning nurses, since she is a retired nurse admin. She is exactly the kind of contact I needed to make if I were to get my life back on track and regain my vocation.

I teared up as she was talking, just floored. I'm not ready yet, I need a little more recovery time, time to make sure that the rug isn't going to get pulled out from under me again. But the possibility is there, when it wasn't before. I've got her phone number, and I'll see her again next week.