A Sponsor Lost, a Friendship Found
Christie O. Tate
“Are you new?” she asked, her voice soft as a grandmother’s cheek.
I took in her cuffed jeans, faded to the soft blue of a twilight sky; Kelly-green Saucony tennis shoes; and maroon sweatshirt. She looked younger than my mother, but maybe twenty years older than I was. Her simple, short brown hair cut reminded me of the nuns who’d loved and tended first- and second-grade me. Drowning as I was in the toxic femininity of my hometown (Dallas), of my sorority, of Seventeen Magazine and Kate Moss’s heroin cheeks, I instantly admired that this woman wore no make-up—not even lip gloss or a cursory swipe of mascara. My mascara, applied the night before, was caked on my eye lashes, which, given my hangover, seemed to throb along with my temples. This woman had only said three one-syllable words, but it was enough for me to gather she wasn’t from Texas. Not with that elided “R” in “are” and the rounding of the “ooh” in “new.” I would have bet my young and broken life on that.
I nodded.
Yes, I’m new, but I feel so fucking old, older than the century oak on the center of campus where hopeful coeds accept engagement rings every spring. My swollen limbs ached, there was peanut butter smeared in my hair, and every light inside me was dimmed from years of secret binges. Words like “hope,” “future,” and “tomorrow” were nothing but black marks on a white page.
“Welcome. I’m Billie.”
Eighteen hours before I met Billie, I began the evening at a raucous fraternity party where I promptly drank too much Everclear punch. My memories of the party survived as flashes: My date, Ryan, leaning against the wall, his Wranglered legs crossed as his eyes followed me on the dance floor. My roommate throwing her arm around me as she handed me a shot. Blaring music—half country staples from Garth Brooks and David Allen Coe, the other half whatever genre Nine Inch Nails is. Ryan pulling me from the party into the back row of a van, pinning my arms, and climbing on top of me. Me trying to squirm away.
Flash, flash, flash.
Somehow I made it back to my dorm alone where the memories sharpened into a perfectly rendered scene: I stumbled up the stairs and spotted a pizza box sticking out of the common trashcan in the hallway. I flicked the lid open with my index finger and spied four unmolested pepperoni slices. I pulled them out and walked twenty five paces to the student lounge where I zapped them in the microwave. I grabbed two paper towels and sat alone at a table eating “my” pizza and daubing the grease off my lips. Spine erect, I was dignified, aristocratic. A young woman enjoying a late-night snack. When I returned to my room, I ejected the pizza from my body with a flick of the same index finger that discovered it in the first place. The peanut butter came after that.
Billie handed me a packet of brochures like those displayed in hotel lobbies advertising nearby tourist adventures, except instead of canoeing and caving, they explained various manifestations of disordered eating and listed various tools to aid recovery. “This is our newcomer’s packet. We are like AA, except we are powerless over food, not alcohol.” She held up a blue book called Alcoholic Anonymous and explained: “We read this book as our primary text, but substitute ‘food’ and ‘eating’ for ‘alcohol’ and ‘drinking.’ If you have trouble with eating, you’re welcome here. You’re not alone anymore.”
The room slowly filled up with other people—all women—and the official meeting began. One young woman about my age shared that she’d doused her leftovers with dish soap so she wouldn’t binge on them. Someone else said she left a work party early because the cookies were “calling” to her.
I listened, riveted, and then closed my eyes and let the breath slowly seep out of my lungs. Here, at last, was a place where I didn’t have to pretend to be okay. The relief of being around other people who were fucked up around food and trying to get better was the first pinprick of light to penetrate the layers of darkness that had been closing around me for years.
And I was right, Billie was not from Texas. Halfway through the meeting, she referenced her hometown in Maine.
**
When you’re as broken as you’ve ever been, bloated with the secret that you’ve been bingeing, stealing, vomiting, starving, and lying since you were eleven years old, people who are calm, solid, and kind are terrifying. The contrast between them and you is so stark that they seem freakish. Of course, your real fear is that you are the freak because you have an addiction that’s pushed you into a dark corner and bellowed lies into your ear for most of your life. But you cannot understand this yet; your addled brain can’t figure out who to run from and who to run toward. You know only that you need help—so much help—and your poor pinched soul can only tolerate so much light.
**
Billie never missed a meeting in our small college town. She always greeted me by name and smiled like she was happy to see me. Sick and afraid as I was, I couldn’t manage much eye contact, so I stared at the hem of her faded jeans.
When she spoke during meetings, I hung on every word. Once, the topic was forgiveness, and she shared that she forgave herself for having an eating disorder the same way she would forgive herself if she had asthma. I remember the way the light slanted across her face when she said those words, and I had an honest-to-God revelation: one day, I too, might let go of the self-hate I’d carried since the first time I binged on six slices of Wonder Bread after school in fourth grade. Another time Billie shared that she set a boundary with her mother, asking her not to speak critically about other people’s bodies in her presence or in front of her children. It was 1993, and I’d heard of boundaries, but I didn’t know you could set them with your parents, and I sure as shit didn’t know you could draw a line to protect yourself from casual body-shaming.
Boundaries. Forgiveness. Addiction-as-disease. Every time Billie opened her mouth, she handed me another key to the endless cages that addiction had locked me in.
It seems like a small thing, but it mattered so much to me that she wasn’t from Texas. All the mothers I knew from Texas, including my own, cared so much about appearances. Wear the right shoes before and after Labor Day. Don’t wear shorts until your legs are tanned. Put on lipstick before leaving the house. Are you sure you should eat those French fries? That sweater makes you look frumpy. Wash your face twice a day or you’ll end up on Accutane. Smile so no one thinks you’re depressed.
I couldn’t separate the mothers I grew up with from the flat, hot land where my family had lived for three generations. Billie’s straightforward East Coast vowels and unadorned face were as far away from the Lone Star State’s lipsticked, fake-ass bless your heart as Mars.
**
Twelve-step programs suggest getting a sponsor, someone who’s been in the program longer than you and who can guide you through the steps. “Find someone who has what you want, and ask them how they got it,” I was told. I wanted to ask Billie, but I was scared. When I pictured calling her for help, my chest tightened with fear, and my mind went blank. I couldn’t tolerate her love and attention. Instead, I asked a senior named Jenn who lived in the dorm next to mine. With Jenn’s help, I celebrated one, then two, and eventually six months without bingeing or purging. Jenn was like a manager at a job where I was a probationary employee: I did what she said and hoped for a promotion to long-term sobriety around food. I respected her, but I didn’t love her.
After eight months, Jenn graduated and moved away. I needed a new sponsor.
It had to be Billie. In addition to her gentle wisdom, she often shared about her daughter, the brilliant writer; her son, the engineering whiz; and her husband, the agronomy professor. She mentioned sewing projects and a church community. Her life was much more than the story of her disordered eating. I wanted what she had.
**
The first time I dialed Billie’s number my hands shook. What should I say? What if I was interrupting family time?
Deep down, I had to know she would welcome my call, and that’s why I was shaking. Loving care from an older woman around food and body issues, the source of my deepest wounds, would touch something tender and starving inside of me. I was scared of how it would feel to feed that part of me.
“Hi. I need a new sponsor.”
Her gentle laugh put me at ease. “Glad you called.”
“So. Well. I feel fat today.”
“Fat isn’t actually a feeling. What would you be feeling if you weren’t obsessing about your body size?”
No one had ever said anything so profound to me. How brilliant was this woman?
“I guess I feel. . . ” I ran through all the emotions I knew and landed on lonely. “My roommate is in Austin, and I’m alone for two more days.” My eyes welled up. Until this call, I’d had no clue what I was feeling. I couldn’t stick with the emotions; I quickly pivoted back to my body. “It’s insane—I’m convinced I’m obese, but I wear a size two.”
“If you’re like me, you can’t trust everything your mind tells you,” Billie said, and I shook my head in sheer wonder. Where did she learn all of this? Now she offered it freely to me, some college kid from her recovery meetings?
Billie’s feedback was both simple and gentle. “For today, don’t hurt yourself with food.” There were no frills, artifice, or bullshit. Her words, like her presence, offered safety that I felt deep in my bones.
After the call I felt hopeful and filled up. Was this fullness what I’d always been trying to reach with those thousands of calories?
**
Within a month, I started calling Billie four or five times a week. I called her when the baked potato I ordered arrived slathered in so much butter I was scared to eat it. When I wanted to eat extra rolls from The Black Eyed Pea. When my pants felt too tight. When my boss pinched my forearm and asked if I was eating enough. I also fretted over tests, cried over boys, worried about spending too much money. Billie took every single one of my calls, each conversation lasting about ten minutes. I always got off the phone feeling like a baby, tenderly swaddled and held close.
Sometimes her husband answered the phone. I never met him, but I saw him when he picked Billie up after meetings. He had a shock of gray-white hair and thin shoulders. I remember the first time he called Billie to the phone by saying, “It’s [name redacted],” even though I hadn’t identified myself. A smile broke across my face as I realized he knew my voice and my name.
In recovery meetings, we joked that our program was a “secret society” because of the anonymity, but I felt most recovered when I was known and named.
**
“Should I take the job at the cafe?” I asked Billie one spring morning during my junior year. “Being around all that food—is that like an alcoholic taking a job at a bar?”
“Maybe. But I believe recovery means you can go anywhere and do anything because you’re not in the grips of your disease anymore.”
I took the job and used my tip money to apply to graduate school a year later.
On the many occasions that I lacerated myself for a perceived failure or actual shortcoming, Billie would say, “If you had a daughter would you talk to her like you are talking to yourself? What if you tried gentleness instead of beating yourself up?”
**
After college graduation, I stayed on in my rural college town for an extra semester, working at the mall and waiting for an acceptance from graduate school. I could have returned to Dallas, but I wasn’t ready to leave Billie. When a thick envelope from The University of Chicago arrived on a March morning, I screamed my joy into the mailbox and then ran upstairs to call Billie—before I told my boyfriend, my parents, or my roommates. Over the phone I could hear her beaming. “I’m so proud of you.”
She must have foreseen how many calls she would field from me about financial aid, finding an apartment in Chicago, moving across the country.
When I settled in Chicago a few months later, I called her every day for weeks as I processed the shock of leaving Texas and the rigors of graduate school. My biggest complaint wasn’t the bitter wind off Lake Michigan or the dearth of decent Tex-Mex food; it was the 12-step meetings.
“The people aren’t friendly.”
The only meetings I’d ever known were the cozy ones where Billie and I’d sat cross from each other three times a week. The discomfort of the unfamiliar meetings—different books, format, and rituals—felt like a threat.
“It’s going to take time for it to feel like home,” she said. “Just keep going to meetings,” she urged in her gentle way.
I trudged across campus to the meetings I hated, each time hoping to find someone like Billie. I wanted a maternal figure to sit next to me and remind me that the most important thing I did every day was not abuse my body with food.
Eventually, I forced myself to ask a graduate student in biology to be my sponsor, but we didn’t get along. Mostly because I hated her. I was jealous of her long thin legs, her fiancé, her imminent Ph.D. “She acts like this is a diet program,” I’d complain to Billie, projecting my own restrictive habits about food onto her. Every time I called my Chicago sponsor at her lab, I exaggerated my peace around food, a performance purely to spotlight her anorexia.
I racked up huge long distances bill calling Billie, but I couldn’t survive the harshness of Chicago without her. I borrowed money from my Dad to cover the bills and kept dialing her number.
**
After graduate school, I moved to D.C. and found myself sitting in 12-step meetings with 25 or 30 other members. Again, I searched for a new sponsor, but found a reason to reject each candidate.
When a young woman named Marley asked me to sponsor her, I agreed, and in our phone calls, I quoted the wisdom I’d learned from Billie.
“Someday let’s road-trip to Texas so I can meet the legendary Billie, my wise grand-sponsor,” Marley joked.
**
A few years passed, and I returned to Chicago. I still called Billie every few days. I wanted my work with her to be enough to keep me mentally stable, but after a distressing bout of suicidal ideation, I realized I needed something more. I turned to therapy. The therapist I chose had a deep voice, an enthralling intensity, and an unshakable belief that all problems could be solved in through group psychotherapy. I committed to joining one of his groups, took out a private loan to cover the costs, and began spending ninety minutes a week shoulder to shoulder with six strangers.
In group, I slowly revealed secrets about my eating that no one except Billie knew.
“I eat six to ten apples every night.”
“I skip breakfast every other day.”
“I spend 60-90 minutes on the Stairmaster every day.”
“I don’t let myself eat bread, rice, potatoes, bananas, sugar, beans, or wheat.”
Each revelation lifted a weight from my chest, but also felt like a betrayal of my bond with Billie, who for years, was the only person on the planet who knew the truth about my fucked up eating. I tried to describe to her the new me emerging from psychotherapy, but I couldn’t articulate my feelings. I didn’t know how to hold onto Billie and let in the new people whose loving support was expanding my life. When my therapist encouraged me to take even more risks around food—greater variety and more meals with other people—I resisted. “This is not how Billie eats,” I said, clinging to a decade of modeling m
“The work you do, here in this group,” my therapist said, sweeping his arms around the room, “enables you to have a bigger life.” I nodded, afraid of what I would lose on the way to this so-called “bigger life,” afraid of losing Billie.
“It’s okay to grow beyond—” my therapist said, but I plugged my ears, unwilling to hear the rest. Outgrowing Billie was the most terrifying thing I could imagine. She was the beating heart of my recovery. What would it mean to get too big for her?
It wasn’t planned, but I slowly called her less and less after my first year of group therapy. And then I stopped calling her altogether.
I let go.
**
I thought of Billie often and continued to quote her to the women I sponsored. I held her voice and the memory of our hundreds of conversations close to my heart. When I thought of my recovery from bulimia, I counted myself as blessed to have met her when I was so sick and in desperate need of a gentle hand on my back.
I stayed in my therapist’s group and became a lawyer, a wife, and a mother. I continued to share my whole life with my group.
When I held my baby daughter in my arms, I thought of all the times Billie guided me away from self-abuse by invoking my hypothetical daughter. Now, bundled in my arms, was a real daughter, one on whom I hoped to shower all the wisdom and steadiness Billie offered me.
**
I also became a writer.
Nineteen years after I last spoke with Billie, I published a memoir. In an early chapter, I referenced her under a pseudonym. My publisher sent me to a literary festival in North Carolina, where I sat on a panel. After my panel, I sat in the audience to enjoy the other panels. During a break between sessions, a young blond woman with a stack of books on her lap asked if I would save her seat so she could stand in line to get her book signed. I loved her instantly for buying so many books and for having an unmistakable Texas accent.
When she returned, I had to ask. “Texas?”
“How’d you know?”
“Me too.”
We swapped stories about our respective hometowns. I mentioned I’d graduated from Texas A&M University.
“My father-in-law was a professor there in agronomy—”
My whole body trilled. I knew of only one agronomy professor. What were the odds?
“Is Billie your mother-in-law?”
This sweet stranger’s eyes grew large as serving platters. “What? How did you know—”
I held my hand over my mouth. Right then, author Stephen Rowley took the stage to thunderous applause.
“Billie helped me turn my life around,” I whispered to the woman who’d married Billie’s daughter. Tears filled my eyes as I struggled to concentrate on Rowley’s presentation. I wrote my number on a piece of paper and asked her to pass it along to Billie. Less than an hour later, I had a text from Billie. Hi! I’d love to catch up.
**
“Hello,” Billie said, and her voice sounded exactly the same. Those East Coast vowels, that unmistakable serenity. Tears welled up from the deepest part of me. My voice trembled with gratitude for this unlikely reunion. I had so much to tell her, so much to express. Mostly this: Thank you for being someone who loved me steadily and mightily when I was at my most vulnerable. Everything I know about showing up for other people in recovery I learned first from you. I’m so grateful for the gifts you gave me all those years ago.
And I started as I always had: “Hi, Billie. It’s [name redacted].”
Over an hour-long call, we caught up on the two decades we’d missed in each other’s lives. She’d moved back East to Vermont and now had four grandchildren to dote on. I still lived in Chicago and now had husband I met at my first law firm job and two kids in middle-school.
“I hope it’s okay if I call you sometime,” I said, unsure of how to end the conversation. I felt shy, unsure what shape a renewed relationship might take. When we’d met, I was a sick, needy young woman who needed daily assurance that I could build a productive, fulfilling life outside of bulimia. I was no longer that girl, but who else could I be with Billie?
“Of course,” she said. “And you’re always welcome to visit. The skiing’s great up here.”
**
I sat a table in the middle of a bookstore in New York City signing copies of my second memoir. I engaged each person in my signing line in conversation because I was grateful they showed up for the event, and I get chatty when I’m nervous. My best friend who lives in Catskill caught my eye and waved goodbye as she darted out the door to catch her train. My literary agent blew me a kiss and said she’d be in touch. The bookstore emptied and the night wound down.
When the last person peeled away, I leaned over to grab my purse and caught a glimpse a woman sitting on a bench next to the New Arrivals table. She smiled at me. The snow-white hair was new to me, but that gentle gaze was as familiar as my own signature.
“Billie!” I screamed, nearly knocking over an innocent bookstore patron as I bounded toward the woman I hadn’t seen since July 1995. “You’re here!”
I’d forgotten I sent her the link to my book tour stops. And I hadn’t considered that she’d make the trip from Vermont to New York to see me. We’d reconnected over a year earlier, and I’d made good on my promise to call and text her periodically, but I hadn’t yet imagined how we might come together again in person. And yet, now she stood before me in a plain black hoodie and cuffed jeans, looking exactly the same as she did when we were both residents of Texas except for that shock of snow-white hair.
I hugged her and then hugged her again. Then, I insisted over her protestations that we take a selfie.
“Look at us,” I said, as I showed her the image on my phone. We beamed our lights at each other, and I understood at last that there was language for what we were. “Two old, dear friends.”
“That right,” she said, and she held me tight one more time.
Christie Tate is an author and essayist who grew up in Texas and settled in Chicago. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Carve Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. Her debut memoir Group was a New York Times best seller, and her second memoir, B.F.F., was published in February 2023.
