Just a member of a community and also on a dance floor
Yesterday my nephew got married! Congratulations to him and his wife! And hooray for me to get a night of dancing like when I was young and wild and living in the city!
I brought my own food to the event. It was part of my RSVP, and I had discussed it with the couple before hand. I let the waitstaff know. I told ours that I had everything I needed for myself and she should just pretend that I didn’t exist. (And even still the waitress kept asking if I was sure I didn’t want the salad, the palate cleanser, the after dinner palate cleanser…”oh right. Pretend you don’t exist…tee hee hee.” Sigh. )
But the other wonderful thing about the night was how much I didn’t need it to be about me.
Now you may think, “Kate, it was your nephew’s wedding! How could it possibly be about you????” And that is how I know you are not an addict.
For most of my life everything was about me. It’s common in this culture and society. The importance of the individual. The sanctity of the person. And what person could I care more about than myself?
When I went anywhere socially before I got my eating under control, if it wasn’t about getting high on food and drinking or drugs, it was about getting high on attention, and attraction and the possibility of personal pleasure.
Last night, I wanted to be a part of a celebration of love and commitment. Not as an individual, but as part of a community. And as the member of an even smaller community, my family. My nieces and my nephew, my mother in law, my brother and sisters in law. And my partner in crime was my youngest sister in law. (It turns out we are both former party girls who married men who don’t dance…) We got to be the groom’s two hot old aunties making a scene on the dance floor – in the good way, not the dramatic way.
I learned to put things in their proper place and perspective when I got my eating and sugar addiction under control. There is a lightness to not being so important. A freedom to being one piece of a bigger machine. A joy in being wanted but not needed.
onceafatgirl 