(Song Dedication: Pour Some Sugar on Me by Def Leppard)

So last week I had to talk myself up to a write about well…something…and in all my infinite wisdom, it did indeed serve its purpose for me personally.  Why I write.  It simply makes me feel better.  It’s like carefully releasing the quick release valve on my Instant Pot, after the initial jump and recoil my body always makes, I find it satisfyingly settling to watch that potentially harmful atmospheric pressure violently dissipate upwards.  But in my reflections of my current life situation – which at the time used the trite analogy of a good hair day – I overlooked the importance of what might be otherwise viewed as not enough, inaction, or nothing.

If you’ve read some of my early day’s blog entries, you’ll know I’ve struggled with a sugar addiction my entire adult life. But in case you weren’t privy to my past musings about this self-proclaimed life altering issue, the Coles Notes are as follows.  1) I fucking love refined sugar. 2) I will eat it until my blood-sugar level becomes the consistency of slow-to-no flowing molasses. 3) I am an adult with a fully functioning pre-frontal cortex that knows this level of intake isn’t advisable for any human, or dog, or other creature for that matter. 4) Because I know how bad it is for me, and later discovering, courtesy of my Naturopath, that I am actually intolerant to sugar, I would hide it in stashes around the house or car or even my teacher’s desk to save myself from the judgement of others, as I was apparently just fine with the harsh criticism of my own self of myself, cause really what does she know anyway?

It was Halloween yesterday.  We seem to get few kids every year.  I learned yesterday that’s because they flood the downtown core and hit Candy Goldrush going from store front to store front.  I took my Ghostbusting son downtown to quickly visit a friend and let him grab a sucker from where she was working without any inkling of the impending mayhem we were about to walk directly into.  The only thing worse than children running around in costumes and 4-abreast and as-far-as-the-eye-can-see-deep on both sidewalks, is pouring some sugar (the match) on the situation and my sudden onset of anxiety (the tinder dry kindling). Let’s light this B!*ch up, yo!

We made it to the store, popped in quickly, watched the revolving parade of cute and horrifying costumes for about 5 minutes and then both my son and I made eye-contact which was our safety to pull the shoot, like now.

We came straight home, the entire drive silent and peaceful, where we had room to breathe.

Lucky for me he didn’t beg to stay and take part.  What kid doesn’t want to work their ass off for free candy, no matter the working conditions?  My kid.  Because, like his mother, he loves candy deeply in every cell of his being but doesn’t love that type of chaos. We are peas in a pod.

Needless to say, between his booty of earned trick or treats, our left overs and my issue, this image is my real-time situation…notice the dead soldiers in the background.

Four.  4 mini chocolate bars.  I admit it.  I ate them because I could only walk past the bowl so many times before my self discipline caved in on itself.

But here’s what’s interesting for me and my patterns.  Before, as in years of Halloween’s passed, I would have scooped 2 or 3 morsels every walk by.  I would have rationalized it.  I would have hid the wrappers. I would have felt increasingly like shit, until my chronic pain worsened due to the inflammatory nature of refined sugar in my body, or even moreso, I would have eaten myself straight into a migraine.

I have walked past the candy bowl and our son’s candy bag multiple times today and every time…until just now while I ironically writing about the detriments of eating candy…I was able to refrain.  I have no wrappers to hide here.

That action, or rather inaction, speaks volumes to what my mindset use to be like.  I am learning that sometimes doing nothing is just as powerful as doing something.  It is difficult to consciously choose this inaction over reaction.  This response over reactivity.  But I keep practicing.  It makes me feel anxious and uncomfortable.  I am not a very strong be’r, I am however a very strong do’r.  My mind has trained itself in valuing the busyness, the doing the striving to make changes.

This, as in all my posts is about much more than the particular subject matter.  This isn’t about my relationship with food.  It is about my relationship with self.  It is about this next chapter of my life that has been morphing and shifting and finding a new way for the sediment to settle, so that my purpose and values reveal clarity and allow me to be true to who I really am.

The more I value doing nothing as a viable, and yet most challenging option, the more the silt and illusion shift to the bottom and my beingness, free of anxiety and should’s, rises from the pressure cooker to bring that long awaited release of tension and misaligned frequency.

Free of doing.  Free of striving. Free to stay in the middle as the chaos circles.  My choice to move, or not, in any given direction is mine alone.