My brain wants to compose a light little verse (perhaps airy?) for someone called Anni. Or maybe it should be for Anne, with an “e”. On third thought, it could be for anyone.
I got a notification this afternoon that it’s been a year since I set up this WordPress blog. During the week of Thanksgiving, I noticed it had been five years since I started my journey of learning to live with sugar addiction. During the month of November, I attended the weddings of both of my daughters–the precursor to anniversaries. I’ll include them as significant. Other might wonder.
Speaking of wonder. I wonder how I managed to get through the first four weeks of November–two weddings and a colonoscopy–without having any trouble controlling my sugar addiction. And then, on the final leg of the trip home, I fell down. Nuts. And dates. The dates usually come before the weddings. But the wedding dates were moved up from May to November. And there weren’t, or wasn’t, time for dates. Nuts. I used the nuts to stay awake while I was driving. So I could stay in control of the car. But it was the beginning of an out of control week for me. Unfortunately, I had dates to get into at home. And that’s what I did.
In case you’re wondering where the rhyming is, please don’t. It would be much verse than it is already.
My last post was brilliant. But it got lost. Three times I tried to post something to go with my picture of the intersection of N. Sugar St. and Newell Ave. After three times having the words disappear into cyberspace, I gave up. (Well, we were also visiting with relatives for Thanksgiving and it might have been relatively rude and thankless to keep trying to post a blog entry on my phone.) Perhaps that’s why I caved into nuts on the way home. Had I persisted in writing, I might have been in a better frame of mind to just stop and take a nap instead of taking a nut. And then another and another and another. Writing has been proved (by me) to help me manage my sugar addiction.
But I digress. Or detour. A picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words. I think each attempt to post words involved about 300 words. Perhaps the second 200 words of the fourth try would have shown up. Or not. Or nut.
If you’re still reading and trying to make sense of this blog post, thank you. I’m still writing and trying to make sense of this, myself.
I feel like I’m finally getting back to myself after a week of grazing and getting closer and closer to eating sugar. I got as far as dates the first day and scared myself silly. As late as yesterday, I was still dabbling in white bread. But that seems to be over. I threw the rest of it out. I’ve never indulged in drugs, but I wonder if that’s what it’s like. Looking for the next hit. Out of control. It’s not about just saying no because no thing else seems to matter at the time. Even if it does.
Back to that crossroads picture. Another way to abbreviate North Sugar, is No. Sugar. The Newell Avenue spoke to me as New Well. That’s the crossroads I was at five years ago. No Sugar and turning onto New Well. I had read Potatoes Not Prozac (K. DesMaisons, PhD) and recognized myself as a sugarholic. I quit sugar cold turkey the week before Thanksgiving. It wasn’t recommended in the book, but I was convinced that was my problem. I took my clean insides (from a colonoscopy prep–the rite of passage into my fifties) and committed to a New Well for me.
By the new year of 2012, I decided to sign up for Weight Watchers online so I would make sure I ate enough to lose weight. (I didn’t know if I could lose weight even though I medically needed to–the motivation for ditching sugar was to feel better.) The guidelines for managing the sugar addiction included tracking food and moods, and the Weight Watchers trackers for food and mood (blogging) seemed to be ideal for my purpose.
Fast forward a few years, I had enough blog entries and encouragement to publish a book. I opened a WordPress blog to have a platform to drum up excitement for my book launch. At the end of February 2016, The I’m Possible Journey: Learning to Live with Sugar Addiction hit the shelves.
Fast forward to this past summer. Weight Watchers was replacing their blogging community with a fast paced twitter/book option (well, it seems like a combo of twitter and Facebook, but the moniker twitbook doesn’t really work). I floundered a bit when my neighborhood of support was being demolished. It felt fishy that the community support system that worked so well for me was deemed unimportant by Weight Watchers.
It was during this period of time that both of my daughters met and got engaged to their now husbands. When their wedding dates both got moved from May 2017 to November 2016, I felt like I had a renewed purpose to control what I could control: my eating, more specifically, my sugar addiction.
The weddings were put together at warp speed. I helped as much as I could. By some definitions, I could have been considered the caterer for both weddings as well as the MOBx2. They both were lovely events. And I hope for the best for both marriages. Lots of happy anniversaries and all that.
Back to that crossroads. I really didn’t want to go back to that intersection, but I was there this past week. Not actually on sugar, but really close. And not well. But I’m writing again. Righting again. Not rioting with sugar and grazing.
Although this has been the biggest slip up in a long time, I feel hopeful. Because I’m on my I’m Possible Journey.
PS. As I punctuated that end sentence, I noticed my word count was exactly 1,000. Picture that!
PPS. The intersection picture was in St. Clairesville, Ohio. My husband and I were making our way back home from the wedding in St. Charles, Missouri. We treated ourselves to running local trails the first three mornings of our journey. When I heard the GPS announce a turn on North Sugar Street, I pictured the sign reading “No. Sugar.” The Newell part was an added bonus that played perfectly into my history. Actually, mystory. As I read my post to my husband before it (not he) vanished, I commented that the crossroads thought was deep. He thought I was punning on Newell. But I hadn’t noticed. Perhaps it was too dry.
OK. That’s probably enough. If you have any reactions to this piece, I’d love to know what they are. (Including you, Anne V!)
Thanks for reading my righting. Best wishes to you.
impossiblejourneyblog 