Taste Bud Game

I'm not sure if it's my tongue or brain that should be labeled traitorous. Two foods placed in front of me.

 A perfect apple. Red, shiny, glistening on the table. You know the first bite will crisp in your mouth. Sweet drops of juice splash on the tongue. The texture of the fruit feels solid, healthy, energizing. You can imagine the healthy power coursing through your body. The energy to take you through a 12 hour day and still want to Float the Wind at Tai Chi.





Next to it is poison. Perfectly round. Delicately golden and sugar drenched Krispy Kreme donut, topped with chocolate and rainbow sprinkles. No resistance as your teeth quickly touch, no substance to the herion like sugar that dissolves in your mouth. The sugar drips down your throat and hits the stomach, providing a brief rush and tingling in the brain. For a moment. Then it quickly fades, becoming a nauseous wave. The energy a mere fleeting moment of pleasure on the taste buds becomes a regret.

So why, with the knowledge, the benefits, the drawbacks. And yet, almost everytime, the taste buds override the brain and the teeth sink quickly into a donut that dissolves and takes a trip to my thighs.  Alas.

Food Drunk

Sometimes revelations can occur despite having had the thoughts many times before. Why it strikes a chord at that particular time is a mystery. It happened to me on a Tuesday, in May, in 2007. When I realized that being an alcoholic wasn't the worst thing in the world. That drinking was. 

Days and years pass and you wake up to realize that you've substituted food as a reward or maybe as a punishment. Instead of the vodka, you use chocolate, donuts, cookies and soda. Eaten fast enough it can almost trigger that sweet buzz that brought oblivion. But the food never made me pass out after that warm, tingly feeling. 

After the months of self examination, meetings, counselors, self-help books, you'd think I'd have figured it out by now. Why do I seek that numbness? That warmth. The oblivion. Why do I substitute sugar?  Why do I feel the need for something external to deal with the hurt, the happiness, the helplessness, the anger, the sadness?

It's so easy for the therapist to say "substitute something healthy like exercise". It's far easier to substitute excuses. It's better to eat than drink vodka. It's too hard to be gluten free, dairy free, egg free and don't forget all the kidney stone generating food.  It's easy to get tired of the gagging sounds people make when talking about your food. They seem to judge when you don't stay on your special diet. It's easy to use the aches and pains, the fibromyalgia, the migraines. 

But by far the most strident, harshest judge is your inner voice. You feel unworthy. Weak. Loathsome. Where do those messages come from. Why can't they tell me how strong and intelligent I am. How beautiful.  How spiritual and comfortable with my soul I am. How I am ready to shed this layer of fat cells that I seem to be using to protect something. What that something is, I'm not sure. 

I've felt that my body is out of tune. Out of synch. In chaos. In denial. In stasis.  But like that day that I knew I could never drink my beloved raspberry vodka again, I know that bad food can be as harmful as the liquor. To my  addictive physical being, it's the chemical composition-the sugar reaction-it's not the form, liquid or solid. Vodka drunk or chocolate drunk. It all leads down the same dangerous path. 

Where was I?

Maybe I should have said, "When was I?". Somehow I seem to have let a couple of decades (not years) slip past me without really knowing where they went. 

Not an unusual phenomenon. Not something I can halt at any rate. So I'll just ruminate about how appealing it seemed to be to be able to pack up the back of a Ford Ranger and head off into the unknown.  The bleak reality is that I now prefer the Tempurpedic ergonomic mattress that allows these overburdened weary bones to sink in comfort every night. I'm not even sure I could climb into the back of the Ranger and bed down on a two inch foam mattress on a plywood platform anymore. 

What makes these memories so fond? Is the security of a pay check every two weeks for the next 14 years so mindbogglingly normal that I escape vicariously to the past? 

Why am I closing in on 50, still wondering what I want to do with my life?  Why am I never satisfied? Why do I always want to look over the next horizon? Why do I have so many ideas, so many things to accomplish, but at the end of the day, I just want to curl up with a book and fall asleep till the clamor of the next day's alarm starts at 0430 hours? 

Is this just the effects of Gemini's ruling planet Mercury in a retrograde phase attempting to lead me astray? Is it the passing to the Other Side of two incredibly strong women in the past few months? 

Why am I experiencing a homesickness that I don't recall from my youth?  Or is it classic Kris  always running away from where she's at to somewhere else? It's harder to run away now with those aforementioned steady pay checks and retirement plan. 

In the past I would have driven several hours to see a friend or a lake (even if it was Superior). Then my trips turned to visits home. (It's winter there now, better think south) I was dreaming of a cruise to Mexico. 

And in perhaps the most frightening sign of maturity (more rudely called old age), I'm researching a food detox retreat complete with yoga, meditation, bio energy mats and some other things I haven't heard of.

Will the alien who appears to have taken over my body and mind, please return the skinny, athletic, 25 year old woman who could eat anything (except onions and mushrooms.)