Christmas Cookies

You won't believe what I just did! I went to a cookie making party. I was soooooooooooo scared. SO scared. I don't eat sugar. I stress out if my bran muffin has too much sugar in it. What if I accidentaly lick frosting off my finger? what if they notice I'm not eating cookies and try to shove one in my mouth? What if I have no one to talk to and feel awkward and uncomfortable the whole time, and then give up and eat a cookie, begin a binge, and relapse for the next 10 years? I was about to cry about it, but I've been avoiding things like this for 5 years, and I don't know how I could honestly say I'm recovering if I continued to stifle my social life by refusing to be in the same room with holiday food. So I went. I didn't think I'd really know anyone that well, and didn't have the energy to be super outgoing and social. I've been emotionally drained, and couldn't handle something as demanding as delving into connecting with new people. Not today. I do well when I have an activity to do, so I figured that if I put all of my focus and energy into creating beautiful works of art on these cookies, I could forget that they were food. It worked. Everyone was pretty into it, and my cookies were unanimously voted the best. lol. they were somewhat good conversation starters. I was a little too busy detailing the wings of my angel and antlers of my reindeer to engage in much conversation, but I didn't really feel left out. In fact, I was pretty comfortable, and didn't want to leave. They were really nice people, and I really enjoyed spending time with them. I got that same warm feeling that I experienced last week when I went home to visit family. Which is impressive since I feel like I have so little that I can talk about. I feel like I have so much to hide. They were all friends from work, so I can't really share about my eating disorder, recovery from which has occupied most of my time for the past 7 months. How do you answer the question "what have you been up to?" When I leave recovery out of it, it sounds like so little. I feel like a bum, and I hate talking around it. I used to have so many new activities and skills that I was working on. That's all I would talk about, and it made me sound so talented and motivated...and boring. I hadn't really thought about that before, but it is kinda surface talk, like the weather. I wonder if people got bored of hearing about nothing but skills. I get reminded over and over of WHY I'm going through this extended period of physical and emotional...ok AND spiritual recovery. It's important for me to know how to talk about more than just tricks and the physical things I'm doing. I need to get more adept at askin people about THEIR lives. It's not that I don't want to know. I just feel awkward asking! This is the time for me to learn. It's like I've been backed into a corner where the only topic I'm comfortable discussing has been removed. I can either run away and hide until my topic comes back (I tried that and it didn't work), or I can learn how to talk about a wider variety of things without having someone else to steer the conversation. I need to learn to lead a conversation. to ask questions.
I was scared to come home after. The let down of going from a fun loving house full of people and games to a dreary empty apartment on a saturday night without even my computer to entertain me was a frightening prospect. I'm borrowing my roommate's computer now. but my other roommate are going to see Twilight! I've been wanting to see that forever! It's such a fun normal way to spend an evening, and right now, i'm really glad we're going.