At the height of my addiction, I was having something sweet after every meal. Yes, even after breakfast. Sometimes it was my breakfast. I also had sugary sweetness in between meals as my snacks. And during the holidays? Hell, double that. The scary thing is, I was able to justify it all with the fact that I eat relatively healthy (lots of greens and veggies), I don't care about alcohol or weed, and I've never done any hard drugs, nor do I want to. But sugar? Why the hell not? It's socially acceptable and hidden in foods you'd never think to put it in. And to put the cherry on top, you won't ever kill anyone from gorging and driving.
While I may not kill anyone else, though, I can sure as day kill myself. One day, I noticed my joints were beginning to feel really inflamed, which didn't make any sense to me since I'd been practicing yoga religiously for about three months. Other issues then started surfacing so I decided to Google my symptoms. Want to know what I found? I was on the road to early on-set diabetes, arthritis, and I definitely had full fledged candidiasis. Wonderful. I was slowly but surely sabotaging my youthful health. While I do know that the internet can sometimes blow things out of proportion, it scared me nevertheless and I knew something seriously had to change.
I've done a lot of work into understanding this addiction, and over the years I've discovered many of the reasons why I choose to numb out with sugar. My relationship with this substance started at a very young age: I grew up with chocolate constantly lying around the house, made easier by the fact that my grandma on my dad's side owned a chocolate shop up in Rexburg, Idaho. This meant unlimited access to free goodies, especially on each major holiday, which all of us always looked forward to.
[Side note: seriously though, they are the best damn chocolates I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. They are all hand-dipped and ten times better than See's, in my opinion--and I love See's. If you want to try them for yourself or give a delicious gift to your loved ones for the holidays, check them out here]
Aside from simply having it around, I often times had to sneak it, seeing as I'd get in trouble with my parents by being too much of a pig. Countless nights I would stay awake until everyone else was asleep, quietly slink down the top bunk, and claw my way through the dessert drawer, careful not to make any noise. It became habitual, and something I could claim all to myself. It felt like a triumph to get away with eating the last of the mouth-watering Reisens without anyone knowing or calling me out on it.
Once I developed into my later teenage years and started becoming more spiritual, the deeper and more emotional reasons began making themselves more clear to me. Back then, I hated myself, never felt like I fit in, and was wildly insecure, so I used sugar to avoid feeling or thinking about my pain. It was an escape, a temporary high to make me forget my problems. But they would always come back, and I'd start all over again to try and fill the gaping holes inside of me.
I've come a long way since I first began my journey to wholeness, but I've not yet been truly able to let go of my attachments to this affliction. After a short ebb, it has once again reared it's ugly head in full flow, and I'm now left with two choices: truly get to the bottom of why I have cravings and stop eating so much of it, or continue the way I've been going and end up fat, sick, and nearly dead--hah.
Naturally, I've chosen to make it my focus to heal this part of my psyche, even though mostly out of necessity. This choice led me to ask for help: help with better understanding myself, help with letting go and surrendering whatever it is that keeps me in this vicious cycle, help with being gentler with myself when I slip up and binge, and help with accepting myself exactly as I am, right now.
Like it always does, the Universe beautifully provides exactly what I need, in it's own divinely timed fashion. This past week, I had a conversation with a friend who has battled an alcohol and drug addiction, and has been through years of AA and soul searching in order to get back to a healthy, balanced lifestyle. She had so many amazing nuggets to share, and though she was speaking of her own experience with a different substance, her words struck me profoundly and shed a much needed light on my own. I was finally able to make a connection between my greatest fear and my greatest frustration.
She helped me realize that I abuse sugar when I feel two things in particular: when I feel unworthy, and when I feel fear. Not just any kind of fear; fear regarding opening myself up to be vulnerable with a man, fear regarding loving and being loved, fear of being hurt the same way I was in my past, fear of being seen for all of my beauty and all of my flaws, and the fear of eventually losing that love and not being enough. The thought of falling deeply in love with someone scares me more than anything else in this world. I can no longer deny (with additional help from the signs my body has given me) that I am absolutely, positively terrified...more than I was willing to admit to myself before that fateful chat.
Uncovering this fear led to the realization that I harshly judge the men I'm attracted to, finding every possible thing I can wrong so that I write off all possibility of dating them. It keeps me safe: if I judge them first, they can't get close enough to hurt me or leave me. I also noticed that I judge other people's relationships, only paying attention to the dysfunctions they appear to have and wondering why on Earth they stay together. The problem with this way of looking at it (other than being a plain ol' dick), is that it feeds into my own dysfunctional belief that I have to be perfect in order to be loved, and that I must hold a man to an unreasonable and impossible standard of perfection to match my own. I will never be perfect, and I can't expect my future man to be, either.
I sometimes get caught in the trap of thinking that I've overcome all of my issues, never to have to deal with them again. But life is wise and usually tends to find a way to bring me to my knees when my ego gets the best of me. I am reminded (not always so gracefully) that I am never completely done, but that at the very least it will never be quite as intense as it was the last go round. With each cycle, I become stronger and cultivate better tools to deal with the demons that resurface, but that's it.
I'm done lying to myself. I'll never have everything figured out, and I might not ever be completely rid of my core triggers. All I can ask of myself is an acute awareness of when they show up, and the softness to love away each new layer. My friend graced me with two incredible gifts; the gift of understanding myself more profoundly, and the gift of a new perspective on life: progress, not perfection.
Right now, my addiction is real, but so is my ability to surrender and choose something else. I'm taking it one day at a time. I don't know what tomorrow will hold, but today, I choose freedom.
