Day 24: Redo

If you could pick one year of your life to give back and start over, which one would it be?

I’m leaning strongly toward this past year. It has, well, it’s stunk. Actually, to be honest, the year before from November on pretty much bit. All my troubles started when I made simple little cleaning mistake. I turned my dining room chairs upside down and put them up on the lip of the table so that I could clean the floor easier, the way they do in restaurants.

Long story short, I bent down to pick up something and hit the chair, which turned over and hit me square on the head. These are solid wooden chairs and I felt dizzy and weird afterward but I never lost consciousness or anything like that, I was just out of sorts.

What I did feel was my neck crunch downward. That’s a big deal for anyone but for me, someone who’s already had a broken neck, it caused a lot of problems. That one mistake would have been huge to take back. Everything after that went downhill, nerve damage, random numbness that led to panic attacks and eventually, my breakdown. I made some lousy decisions and my mood began slipping only down.

It’s true that I should have taken better care of myself, respected myself more, taken  more time off to recover so that I could fully heal. Then maybe things wouldn’t have snowballed the way they did. If I had fully focused on myself, things would have turned out much differently.

Of course, now I’m finally dealing with some things I truly need to. It wasn’t all bad, but I could have gotten to the same place a lot easier.  I could have eased off my relationship, given myself time to grieve something that showed signs of ending instead of holding on to false hopes. The emotional turmoil has been truly overwhelming. Without a chair to the head, I imagine the whole world looks much clearer.

I could redo a bunch of years. Stopped myself from getting married, decided to finish college, moved away from everyone and started over somewhere new when everything fell apart, taken better care of my teeth… though all of those things have made me grow as a person. My regrets show me what I value. I can still change some of those things, but the health things are huge. The self-care, the self-respect, the need to truly take care of yourself. If anything has been the big thematic lesson of the past year, it’s the importance of  care and maintenance.

If you love something, show it, take care of it, spend time. attention, and effort. Don’t let the important things slide. Don’t put it off and most importantly, take care of yourself! Nobody else will…

Bio-Shock

It’s not often I get riled enough to sound off on something, but when I do (OK, I sound like a Dos Equis commercial)  I get really riled. As funny as I’d like to be, it’s more of a sudden realization deserving of a proper rant. So, I finally realized the reason for my sudden fall off the wheat wagon. It turns out it wasn’t all that sudden after all. It’s been a slippery slope of little slips here and there but I get ahead of myself.

About two years ago,  I decided to try a gluten-free diet to see if it would help my son with his hyperactivity. I’d read an article and at that point I was so done with the whole situation I would have tried nearly anything. We gave it a shot. I got a recipe book that was grain free and within a few weeks, though I felt rotten, my son started improving in his attention and his presence. I didn’t truly notice anything until one day, with a lack of options while out, I gave in and let him have one of those big, hot pretzels that I remembered from the holidays downtown as a girl. We were ice skating. It seemed ok.

It so wasn’t.

Within a few minutes, and I mean it was barely a few minutes, he started back to spinning and running all over the place unable to deal with the simplest of things. It was rather dramatic and I knew then that there was a huge connection. As we went on with it and I became hyper-vigilant about anything containing wheat or gluten, I started to feel better as well. My cravings stopped. I felt nourished and I no longer had any desire for any of that old stuff I used to eat. In fact, it quite literally made me sick whenever I’d slip.   One weekend we gave in to having pizza. The pain it caused me was the worst food hangover ever culminating in red hot pain that made me wonder if I was having a heart attack. The nerves in my back lit up like the 4th of July. I vowed it wasn’t worth it right then.

Fast forward to a few months ago. I was a full 100 pounds down with very little pain on my part. It came off effortlessly. I wasn’t hungry all the time. I felt good. Then I thought that gluten free stuff would be ok. It was after all…well…gluten free and I could have a cookie or a cupcake without the furious side effects. It was all fine, I felt fine, but then it expanded to wanting a few things here and there. Certainly a little wouldn’t hurt in moderation. WRONG! The second I started on grains again, there was a huge difference. I was hungry and craving. My blood sugar I imagine was the culprit there.

I started with corn chips, graduated to gluten-free baked goods, then on to the odd sugar laced piece of this or that, then on to candy because the sugar cravings got so intense. (I never eat candy and I’ve never much cared for it so that should have been a red flag.) I then slipped off into cake. It didn’t seem to burn me too badly, which was awful because it encouraged me to think maybe I was over it (whatever “it” was). This week, two burritos and 10 to 15 pounds up from where I was, I feel miserable. I’m achy. I have headaches all the time again. My sinuses are acting up and I’m tired. Although I realize what’s going on, it’s still hard to stop. My body has to detox again off this stuff that makes me crave food all day long. It’s so tempting to take the easy road and just fix it with some more caffeine and sugar, but I don’t like the way I look and more importantly, I don’t like the way I feel.

It’s a non-stop evil merry-go-round of a vicious circle and I’m getting off this over-sized eclair I’ve been riding around on. My brain and sinuses will certainly thank me in the end as I hope will my growing wheat-belly. It’s an apt term and though it might sound kooky, new age, or like a hippy fad, I would have to say that it’s definitely worth a try. I’ve spread the word far and wide and heard good results. Now it’s time to listen to my own advice! As long as I have guacamole, it’ll all be alright…