Determined To Succeed

Day seventeen.

Did you ever have one of those days when a whole bunch of stuff happens and your mind is just racing with it all? Thoughts about this here and details of that there and you just want it all to go the fuck away? Shit. It’s enough to drive you buggy (as my mom used to say). Sometimes you’d almost rather have a physically-trying day rather than a mentally-draining one, or worse yet, an emotionally-draining one. Yesterday was like that for me. I don’t know what it was, maybe the moon was out of its alignment or something, but yesterday just didn’t feel right, and that caused my brain and emotions to go into overdrive. I felt lost, nervous and scared. That is when being a food addict sucks. Everything everywhere looks and sounds good (and comforting) to eat and drink, including a nasty-ass soda called Mello Yello.

It had been a long day, and an emotionally draining one, and my old patterns of emotional eating came back and came back with a vengeance. Even though I did a workout I ordered myself up some Chinese food for dinner and, while sitting there waiting for it, I perused the soft drink case. I saw my old friend, Coke, sitting there waving “hello,” but I tried my best to ignore it casting my gaze elsewhere in the cooler. There were many other soft drinks and I tried to be good – Diet Dr. Pepper, Orange Crush, Sprite Zero and the afore-mentioned Mello Yello. I was in such a mental state yesterday I stupidly bought at least one of them all. It wasn’t until later, as I was getting ready for bed and pouring myself the last Mello Yello over ice, did I realize what I was doing.

For those of you who don’t know, Mello Yello WANTS to taste as good and as refreshing as 50/50 but ends up being a cross between Mountain Dew and Sprite (which is not a great combination). The thing that got to me most was the color of it. It looked like an irradiated greenish yellow. It looked nasty. It tasted O.K. but it looked nasty and I sat there and looked at this concoction in utter disgust.

Here’s everything that went through my mind:

“I drank that?!”

“I put that in my body?”

“I can’t believe I just did that!”

“It was awful.”

“I will never do it again.”

Ever since my catastrophic failures of a few weeks ago I look at things slightly different now. I am an addict twice-over. Being addicted to food was how I got to be 400 pounds, and I admit that part of me reverted back to that “needing food” guy last night. But what is changed is how I see what I am doing. Sometimes, you can’t see the forest through the trees. You’ve heard that phrase before, right? C’mon, everyone has. It’s a phrase that essentially means when you’re too close to something you can’t see the big picture. Before when I would eat and drink I was so in the depths of that addiction I couldn’t see the entirety of the cause and effect of it all on my body and health. I just wandered through the forest from tree to tree eating this and that, not looking at it and saying “I’m lost. Please help me.”

Since then, I at least know I am an addict and can stop running through that forest and finally scream out “I need help!” That is the first step in the twelve steps: recognizing your addiction is greater than you are. Sitting there last night looking at that putrid green/yello “soda” I just knew I needed to stop. This goo wasn’t going to calm my mind, a sense of peace was. Sitting there and getting a handle on what the day brought and how to deal with it and how I am going to deal with it in the future brought a peace that quieted my mind as well as my want for food.

At that moment I did something I am very proud of – I stopped drinking that stuff. I got up and threw the rest of it out and I know I will never drink it again. The sense of peace I am finding is helping me finally see the forest and my true path through it.  Today I have two therapy appointments and I am very much looking forward to them. And as far as food goes, I am going to get back to my good patterns, including exercising later, as I pray for today to be as mentally and emotionally peaceful as sleep. That is why these days I am not as lost, nervous or scared as I once was, because I am finally recognizing that the forest I am trying to navigate has been me all along and because of that I will find my way through. It will just take time and knowing I will need help along the way.

Have you guys noticed the retro Pepsi commercials hittin’ the airwaves? Seems Pepsi and Mountain Dew “Throwback” sodas are available through the end of February featuring the same original formulas and real sugar.

Even though I am now a devout Coca-Cola drinker I was taken back to very fond memories of the Pepsi I drank growing up as a kid, finding spare change with my mom and going to the liquor store or the corner store to get ourselves a Pepsi to split.

Back then Pepsi and other soft drinks were in heavy but beautiful long bottles. They came in eight packs and you had to pay deposits on the bottles (even more incentive to get you to bring them back to the stores). You had to have bottle openers to even open them. But no matter how much they weighed and no matter how much a pain-in-the-ass they were to carry with bags of groceries, there was nothing – NOTHING – like opening up an ice-cold Pepsi and having good times talking with my Mama.

I still remember the light cloud of white that appeared at the tops of the bottles when you’d open them. And blowing it away before you’d take the first swig made a cool “whoosh” sound over the bottle’s opening. Then the taste of it, the sweet taste of Pepsi, was like a drug. But more so it was something my mom and I did together. Finding that loose change was incredible. We didn’t have money growing up but we had fun and we could always enjoy a Pepsi together.

Sometimes we’d take bottles of Pepsi to our favorite spot on 53^rd Street in Hyde Park (the old benches at the Hyde Park Bank), on the South Side of Chicago and crack ‘em open there. Or even take them to the park. Sometimes we’d buy cans of them and sit in the Laundromat watching the old black & white TV as our clothes dried on “inferno.” Most times, we’d have ‘em at home watching TV and talking. That was the best.

Why am I telling you all that? Because it’s all of those memories of my mother that made me purchase one of those retro bottles of Pepsi the other day.  I got the coldest one I could find (which was pretty cold). And I was so excited. This was a chance to reconnect with my childhood, my Mama, and taste a sweet soda from my kid-dom. I miss my mom so much and I was just so excited to be presented with a chance to have a comfort food and think about how alive my mom was.

But, as they say, you can’t go home again.

The long-necked glass bottles have been replaced by plastic screw-cap ones. And the taste, which seemed way sweeter, was so different than I remembered. Wasn’t this the Pepsi from my late-70s/early 80s youth? It had the same logo. It claimed to be that old formula. It brought back the best memories. But the taste wasn’t the same and I was at once sad and deflated. I wanted so bad to have that swig of Pepsi and imagine me and Mama sitting up watching something on TV talking about her day at work or what movie we’d see that coming weekend.

But you can’t go home again.

So I finished the 20-oz. bottle of Throwback Pepsi and set the bottle on the table. I sat and thought about my Mama and said to myself “Well, Ma. It’s just doesn’t taste the same.” And I could hear her in my head responding “It be like that sometimes, son.”

I guess so, but I wanted to have that smile again just one more time. Not just from the taste of Pepsi but from the look on my mom’s face when we found that change and bought them. I thought about when my beloved first (and ironically last) cat, Tiger, died how I went to get some comfort food egg rolls from my favorite childhood place and how they’d changed the recipe for those, too.

You can’t go home again.

Oh well. Some things change and some will never change. But thank God for memories. They are truly what we have when we miss our loved ones so very much. It’s been over seven months now since mom passed away and I am still heartbroken over it. The world lost a wonderful and bright star that day in June but I can still hear her wonderful voice, see her bright smile…

…and remember the “swoosh” of the Pepsi bottles we opened up together.

I miss you, Ma. Here’s to you. And I hope wherever you are you are having that nice tall Pepsi we both loved so much.