Déjà Vu?

Life is dotted with weird synchronicities.

My mom’s 80^th birthday had me encountering a collision of my eating disorder past and her present- day milestone. They say, “truth is stranger than fiction.”

Indeed.

Mom’s birthday party was held at her care facility. The long table, flanked by her twelve resident- friends, reminded me of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” She was the center chair, with two empty ones on either side of her. These were reserved for my husband and me.

I sat in the chair next to both my mother and a woman named Betty.*

Introducing myself to her, I had déjà vu. I felt I’d seen that face before.

After the party, I asked Mom if Betty was the woman I was trying to place. Yes, she was.

Cue my eating disorder past greeting me in my mom’s birthday party present.

“…One of my guidance counselors asked me to step inside of her office as I passed through campus one day. Panic! She knew. Scared, I switched into ‘self-preservation, automatic lying pilot’ mode. ‘Okay, just get through it,’ I told myself... Once inside of her office, she started out with some initial chit chat, but I felt the ax coming down. This was it: confrontation.

She started to speak, ‘I’m concerned about you, that you may be bulimic’—there! No! She said it! Even more than my secret obsession being discovered, I’d feared being labeled as that this whole time. Once people found you were anorexic, bulimic, or out of control in any way with food that is the only way they see you. You stopped being a person; you stopped being you. And I didn’t want to be thought of as that…I didn’t want people looking at me and judging me only as this ‘problem,’ this freakish ‘disorder.’ No thanks, no way. Even if I had to lie, I won’t be that!

So, how did I respond to this counselor, who by the way, was a former nun? I lied.

‘No, I’m not.’

‘I’m just concerned about you,’ she continued carefully.

‘I’m fine,’ still desperately insisting, ‘I’m okay.’

She left it at that. I left the office feeling triumphant at first, and then it occurred to me: I just lied to a nun…”

 (Excerpt from Cruse’s book, “Thin Enough: My Spiritual Journey Through the Living Death of an Eating Disorder”)

Betty was that counselor. The former nun. And now, here she was again.

To paraphrase the film classic, “Casablanca…”

“Of all the birthday parties, in all the care facilities, in all the world, she walks into my mother’s."

 A lot had changed over the years. At the top of the list? I no longer hid my disordered eating reality. I’d gone from complete shame and secretive denial, to writing and talking about it openly. Impossible, right?

But we can change in the most unexpected ways, can’t we?

I know this incident was not out of the realm of possibility. After all, this was a small- town setting, co-existing with this college I attended. Therefore, it was not entirely surprising for Betty, as a vulnerable senior citizen, to wind up in this care facility over twenty years later.

 No one can stop time; we all age.

I found it most surreal that something as mundane as a party seating arrangement put me back in touch with this intervening guidance counselor/nun. She could have sat anywhere else.

It was a tiny signpost to me: look how far life has brought me.

Look how far life brings us all.

I appreciated the uniqueness of this occasion. I have no idea if Betty remembered me.

Probably not.

She encountered hundreds of college students in her career.

It registered as more significant to me because it was a demarcation of my recovery. Betty was my first intervention.

And over twenty years later, this collision of my eating disorder past and my mother’s present-day 80^th birthday, two seemingly, unrelated things, taught me a lesson about proximity and humility.

To me, the proximity of sitting next to Betty signaled humility. It is “there but for the grace of God go I.” That stuff.

Perhaps, we need to be equal parts impacted proximity and humility. Something in our past lives usually finds a way of bumping into our present.

For those of us in recovery, indeed, we can run into a former drinking buddy, an old flame or, a college counselor.

We straddle who we were versus who we are.

So, have you run into someone who gave you déjà vu about a certain experience?

Pay attention. For, I suspect it’s an occasion of when, not if, it happens to you.

*(Not her real name).

Copyright © 2020 by Sheryle Cruse