Dayenu

Tonight is the second night of Passover. I'm not particularly religious, but as I get older (and think/fear memories of observing the holidays have receded), I keep discovering new and strange ways the culture of the religion has lodged itself in my brain. (Maybe it's because so much of the religion for me is tied up with my mother and my grandmother, the keepers of it in our family.)

Sadly, I didn't make it to a seder this year, so a bit of Hebrew here and the charoses I plan to foist on a pair of extremely good-natured friends this weekend will have to suffice. (What's charoses? It's a fruit, nut and wine mixture/paste that's meant to recall the mortar the Israelites slapped on bricks when they were enslaved in ancient Egypt)

Last week – which included the three-month anniversary of my leaving BN2 -- I was remembering the Passovers of yore with my favourite uncle at the head of the seder table (my father generally refused), when I half-sang, half-chanted (I've been indecisive since, like, birth) Ma Nishtana, or the Four Questions. The literal translation of Ma Nishtana: What has changed?

Well, where do I start? Since last Passover – and since December, when I left BN2 – everything. I remembered the fights with BN2 on Jewish holidays past -- his criticism of the way I explained things (or didn't), his disgust with my indecision about how much I wanted to observe (he wasn't Jewish, so I'm not sure why this mattered), his irritation and the fights that would ensue if I wanted to do anything for the holidays that didn't include him. Last week I wrote my sister a thank you e-mail that basically read: I can't believe how much my life has changed. I am grateful for what you said to me every single day. I hope you'll keep this in mind the next time you struggle to say something you think is going to be hard for the other person to hear.

Enough about BN2 – onto the binge eating.

On Sunday – less than 36 hours post-binge – I ended up at the 10K race I'd planned to run extra early, thanks to my Blackberry (which as I use as an alarm) being smarter than I gave it credit for. I'd set the time an hour ahead for daylight savings, but then magically overnight it leaped another hour itself. Ooops.

Anyway, I arrived at the race over an hour early, freezing cold, exhausted (I'd had less than five hours' sleep), and feeling hugely heavy and fat. I dawdled in the bathroom, hoping to eke out some warmth from the hand dryer. Then I recognized a girl washing her hands in the bathroom as one whose blog I read. I got over my stalker freak fears and said hello, and she turned out to be as lovely in person as she is through her words – and the chat and connection made me feel instantly lighter and happier. As we say on Passover, dayenu, or "It should have been enough." (Dayenu is a song about the 15 gifts God bestowed on the Jews – taking them out of slavery, giving them the Torah, etc – and how just one of them would have been enough. In my family we only did the parts of the seder that involved eating, but we did sing this particular song. My sister, whose name has nothing to do with Dayenu but still happens to sound quite a lot like it, absolutely hated the song. Therefore, of course, I loved it and sang extra-loudly.)

Twice in the past two weeks, I've written to people asking me for help with binge eating extolling the virtues of cognitive behavioural therapy, which I had to help with my own eating problems. The second time I wrote the words I got out some of my old worksheets and realized I'd been slipping back into old patterns of thinking, like disqualifying positives and catastrophizing. I remembered that I don't have to interpret tiny negatives (overeating, or even a binge) as signs from the universe of impending disaster. They aren't signs. They are events I can make in my mind as big or small as I like, portending all sorts of horrible or fabulous things. Kind of like parsing a text message from a guy you like. You can read all the hidden meaning you want and call 14 friends to analyze it, but in the end it is all of 25 words and unless they were written in a sober state and include the words "I love you" or "I never want to speak to you again" – well, in the end, it's just a text message. A binge is just a binge. It does not mean I am doomed to weigh in the 230s or 240s again. Dayenu.

I'm still up six pounds but I'm feeling a bit better, day by day. I know from past experience that it takes about three to four days for what I'm calling the binge haze to pass – for the veil of despair, exhaustion, and general (for lack of a better word) weightiness to lift completely. I binged Friday. That hopefully means – to quote one of my childhood favourite gingers – the sun will come out tomorrow. (Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sunnnnn....) Dayenu.

And on two separate occasions today I got (food and weight) reality checks from two separate friends, one of whom e-mailed that she knew I'd been struggling with the food "but you really do stick at it, don't you, and learn learn learn." She's right, I thought. I am anxious that I may fail, sure, but I haven't quit, and I don't plan on quitting. And that is something to celebrate. Dayenu.