How Did We Get Here?

Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to — alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person — you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain. ~ Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises from the Power of Now (p. 2). New World Library. Kindle Edition.

I am a compulsive overeater.
Did I refuse to face pain
and to move through it?
I'm sure I did, from childhood.
In many ways I'm Grandmom's heir.
She was pudgy, cuddly, soft to lie against.
Maybe a physical trait took me that way,
early in life. I wore the clothes
whose designation meant "overly ample"
from early years. Mother would have
chosen otherwise and urged me
to those choices. Early adulthood
I felt less than by being larger than,
and endless efforts to ditch the "larger"
left me feeling like failure.
I married when I felt destined to spinsterhood.
I moved from chubby to morbidly obese
and failure on failure accrued.
I proved the assertion, every addiction
arises from an unconscious refusal
to face and move through
your own pain. Every addiction
starts with pain and ends with pain.
I used food to cover...and cause...my pain.
I claimed to be dieting from my thirteenth
until my sixtieth but found the answer
in Overeaters Anonymous. The pain is gone,
replaced by serenity and joy.