Moving On?

I need to remember for future reference just how bad bad was. I don't want to forget because I don't want to let denial or carelessness or frustration take hold in my life. I can see that happening. But this cannot be a short fling of passion. This has to be a lifetime commitment. I have to let go of the past and move into this life finally and permanently.

Uh, well, okay, commitment has never been a favorite word in my vocabulary. And no, that's not the reason I'm still and always have been single. Shut up. Anyway, I never cared for the concept of commitment; not to anyone or anything. Hell, even the animals, if you think about it, are a short term thing. The dog at the outside will live to be 16 if she's lucky. The cats, may the Gods help me, could live to be 20. I have no clue how long house finches live, but I'd say since Fidget has already survived what should have killed her that she's been on borrowed time since I met her. The point is, I've never said "Forever" to anyone or anything in my life before now, most particularly to myself. I can't even imagine how extraordinary a man would have to be for me to agree to that whole "Till death do us part" thing. Me and forever do not have a stellar track history.

But we're talking about my physical life on this earth in this incarnation. I'm here for a reason and I know I haven't finished up here yet, not even close. I'm also positive that this whole experience is part of that grand sick twisted plan the Gods have for me. I've grown to hate their sense of humor - truly. At any rate, I would prefer to die quietly in my sleep at 98 than in pain from some horrible malady at 50. So in many ways I'm up against a do it right or die enemy. I've never contemplated that before. And in truth I always figured cancer or diabetes would be the bugaboos that would eventually come along to frighten the crap out of me. I was so not prepared to face an enemy masquerading as soft chewy golden brown and warm out of the oven. The enemy is supposed to be dark and menacing. It is not supposed to arrive in the person of a loaf of crusty french bread. How do you take an enemy like that seriously?

But the lifetime complications of gluten intolerance read like a who's who of chronic disease and disorder. The complications I've already experienced are chronic diarrhea, indigestion and acid reflux, severe anemia and vitamin deficiencies, brain fog, depression, extreme exhaustion, nausea, horrible joint pain, kidney disease, chronic bronchitis and various and assorted minor auto immune issues. I'm lucky. No - really. The real nasty complications can kill you.

The depression was probably the worse side effect. I suspect that it's colored my entire life, how I've lived, the choices I've made, all of it. It leaves me to wonder when people throw around the phrase "chemical imbalance" if they even get the implications. Do they get how profound a link there is between what you put in your body and how you feel? Body and mind are not separate entities. Vitamins and minerals play a big part in how well the brain functions. Gluten intolerance destroys the small intestines ability to absorb many crucial vitamins and minerals which in turn effects the thyroid and hormone output which throws everything out of whack. It's a cascade effect. The perfect balancing of the body's mechanisms is so fragile in some ways. I wonder if some day we won't come to understand that we create the chemical imbalances, all of them by not understanding our physical bodies, our very genes?

I came across a diet concept the other day called the Paleolithic diet. It's the idea that man evolved as a hunter gathering, and his genes are programmed to a hunter gatherer's diet. Then there are my genes which specifically do not allow my body to process gluten. Genetically speaking I was never meant to eat grains. So what else is there we don't yet understand about the human body? We know it needs sunlight, some people need it more than others. What else are we as individuals genetically programmed to need that we're not giving out bodies, or what is it we're giving our bodies that they can't handle? Western medicine wants to hand us a pill, all of us, the same pill and be done with it. I don't think it's that simple.

I'm not knocking the pill. I took an anti-depressant for about a year. I remember the profound sense of relief when it kicked in. The lows were gone, there was just this calming steady plateau suddenly in my life. I began to understand for the first time what life without depression is like. It saw everything with new eyes. It was a tremendous lesson. But it came to the point where I couldn't afford it. With no insurance to pick up the cost I couldn't manage the $120 dollars a month. But just knowing that life can be like that was a revelation and later, there were many days when that knowing sustained me.

As the effects of Celiac Disease got worse and worse over the last year the depressions came one on top of the other, just piling up, incredibly dark. I could feel it coming most days, and it had started to scare me. It was all I could do to breath, to sneak a breath in between crashing blows. It was no longer just a vague grayness that colored my life, but sudden, devastating descents into pitch black holes, over and over, like riding a roller coaster that periodically got close to the light, but never really saw it. I was scared and puzzled and devastated by it, and that was on top of all the other bodily effects going on. Once I began to understand what was happening to my body I began to see the patterns in the roller coaster ride. Hell, I can now see the pattern running throughout most of the last ten years of my life.

Yeah, then a new kind of depression took hold. Once I went gluten free the sudden descents into the deep dark holes stopped, but it was replaced by a persistent anger fueled depression. I'm still trying to find my way out of that. But that's okay. It's not the bleak insane darkness, and I prefer it. I don't know exactly how to explain it. Behind the anger fueled depression is a calm backdrop. The insanity is gone. I'm not on the roller coaster anymore. Now I just have to come to terms with the anger.

And that's where letting go and moving on comes in. I've got to find a way to do it. I haven't watched cooking shows for awhile. I tried watching one last night. Bridget goes to Belgium or something like that. Well, in Belgium they eat a lot of gluten. Turns out waffles, well duh, are the national food. Fortunately I've never really much wanted to visit Belgium. Cross number 94 on the list of places to someday go off the list. I suppose someone not understanding reading this would think I was just a big baby. So you can't eat everything Paula makes, you can eat some of it so shut up. What's your problem? The problem is every single time I see something I can't eat, I can't cook, I can't bake I'm angry and I'm hurt. And boy, let me tell you, I'm freaking surrounded by anger and hurt. It's everywhere, on TV, on the radio, in the paper, on the Internet, on billboards, in stores, everywhere. Here it is, and you can't ever have it again, nahhhh nah na nah nahhhhhh. Yeah, there damn well better be some big meaningful all encompassing outstandingly significant cosmic lesson in this. If this is just a joke guys, I'm not amused.

So I'm still casting around, trying to find a way to be happy with what my life is. I need some way to make it all right that doesn't involve me sneering at everyone who deigns to eat a croissant with their morning coffee, or breaking down in tears during a Burger Bust commercial. I have to find a way or I'm doomed to fail.

Irony

I stumbled across a bit of irony today. I was doing the usual early Sunday morning ROTW reading when I stumbled on a thread about fast food places. I live on a mountain. Most of the communities up here are small. Big Bear is the largest at somewhere around 15,000 full-time people. Course that number varies depending on who you ask. Anyway, most of the smaller communities up here in the San Bernardino Mountain communities don't rank a Taco Ding Dong or a Burger Bust.

Used to be those conversations about what new restaurant/fast food place may or may not be going in and where mattered to me. Obviously they don't anymore. I still live in fear of any food not personally cooked by myself from whole foods with known ingredients, so I could care less what restaurants are or aren't up here. Well, with the notable exception of Starbucks. I love decaf espresso coffee. I can't drink fully caffeinated coffee anymore. The "buzz" is physically painful to me now. So I've chosen to mitigate the damage by drinking decaf. A buzz is still possible, but you have to drink one hell of a lot of it. But I love Starbucks, and I love the variety of decaf coffee's they keep in stock. For variety they beat anything the stores up here have to offer in the way of bean varieties and availability of decaf. So I love Starbucks and wish them all the good luck in the world taking over this planet.

Later as I was standing over the stove slicing and frying potatoes in olive oil and scrambling eggs for my special Sunday breakfast I got to thinking about all the things I've put in my body over the years without thought or consideration. My body had been rejecting so much of it in it's own small subtle little way and I hadn't been listening. When it couldn't take it anymore and subtle wasn't getting through that's when things got ugly. It had to get as bad as it did for me to finally hear what my own body was telling me. I just hadn't been listening.

Just then a line from a Gordon Lightfoot song came to mind: "See the ocean wild and blue, think of all that's in her, she will not surrender to the likes of us, but then she must, they tell us, wise men tell us . . ." That's from a song called "Too Late For Praying." Mankind tends to view the ocean as this wide vast place, too vast to be affected by one single man. But we have misjudged the damage millions of humans over the course of a couple hundred years have done to the oceans, from over fishing to pollution to the dredging of inland water ways and bays. She's not invincible, she can be destroyed. Just as water wears away stone over time.

Ironically, I've been doing the same thing to myself all these years. I think perhaps I've viewed my body as some marvelous adaptable creature that enables my life and will always be here. Or maybe I just never thought. Yeah, most likely I never thought. Ironically if you had asked I would have said I'd treated it fairly well. I never did drugs or smoked or consumed more than one or two vodka martinis a week - dirty vodka martinis being my weakness. But in realty I've been damaging it daily for my entire life. Celiac Disease had to win; of course it did. I've been polluting my body all my life with basically toxic substances and not knowing, not caring, probably not wanting to know. I've been as careless with my body as the human race has been with the planet it lives on. Here I was so passionately aware of what we were doing to this planet, yet oblivious to what I was doing to my body. How does this planet ever stand a chance when humans are so busy blindly polluting their very own bodies?

I suspect that most everyone has that same schism, that same disconnect from their bodies that I had. They must. Otherwise how could the Taco Ding Dongs and Burger Busts of the world survive, grow and prosper? They'll recycle bottles and cans and talk endlessly about global warming, but in the end I wonder if there is truly anything we can do about the shape this planet is in when we won't even safeguard our own bodies?

Damn . . . well just DAMN!

Life is a double edged sword. I have come to that unequivocal conclusion. There are no exceptions, period. All of life is give and take, get and give, good and bad, dark and light. All good results come with unwelcome conclusions. In theory the good outweighs the bad, though I sometimes think good gets extra points just on account. Then there's also that mischievous brain function that makes it so much easier for the body to remember good and forget bad. Bet you remember more about your last orgasm than you do your last bout of indigestion? The body is programmed to remember and want the good stuff over and over again, and jettison the bad body memories in pursuit of even more good stuff. The deck is stacked.

So here I am. A 44 year old woman trying to read labels in grocery stores who is at that age where she is not only extremely near sighted, but also now far sighted. In short, there is no acceptable workable distance at which I can hold a label with teeny tiny itsy bitsy print and actually be able to read it. I take my reading glasses to the store now, and sometimes even that isn't enough. Anyway, having to read labels is a pain in the ass, and by most accounts bad. Still it's an eye opener when you read label after label and realize you do not recognize two thirds of the things in most canned, frozen, boxed and jarred foods. The more I read labels, the more articles I read, the more amazed I am by what we put in our bodies daily. I think that's both a good thing and a bad thing. I know it frightens me.

Reading labels is one of those distance creating exercises. Having read Gods knows how many labels in the last several weeks, I now look at the food in the grocery store from a whole different place. There is me, over here standing in a vacuum with the wind whistling through my ears, trying to eat a gluten free diet and not bore myself to tears, and over there is this whole ugly, messy, dark, frightening building full of chemical preservatives, flavor enhancers, anti-caking agents, soy additives and gluten thickeners. I'm afraid of food. This is a new experience for me. I've taken to shopping around the outside of the aisles these days in the dairy and meat and veggie places. I make an occasional forage into the aisles for rice noodles and club soda, but mostly I'm buying whole foods and making from that what I need. I spent an hour last weekend cooking up a batch of salsa. It's not bad and I know exactly what's in it, plus or minus the bug spray they used on the tomatoes. So I can spend five minutes reading labels on jarred salsa trying to pick the one that I hope truly has no gluten in it, or I can spend an hour making my own salsa from whole foods and know it's gluten free. Spend five minutes reading and then toss a jar in the cart - good. Spend one hour mixing raw ingredients and cooking - bad. Or is it the other way around?

I'm amazed now at all the people who unconsciously shuffle their way through the aisles tossing things into their cart. Had you told me I was one of them three months ago I would have denied it. I learned to shop cheap several years ago when my gross personal profit went down drastically. I never much changed my habits after that no matter how much was in my bank account. I thought I was a good, aware conscious shopper. But in truth I had no idea what I'd been putting in my cart and my body. I'm by no means standing up on a soapbox here and screaming "ORGANIC OR DIE". I don't care much for people like that. They're the ones that keep insisting I should eat Carob instead of chocolate . . . Pffthhhhhhh . . . But the sheer weight of chemicals and preservatives I've consumed in my life now saddens and scares me. The thought of driving by a McDonald's makes me want to hurl. I don't want to risk breathing in the putrid air of frying chemicals ever again. Yeah, I know they sell nice salads that are probably safe, but being that close to the chemical vats would make me puke, I just know it. I feel like I'm standing on the edge of a precipice watching train after train hurtle towards each other from opposite sides of the same track. And down there in the valley people are quietly saying in between crashes "I don't understand why these trains keep running into each other." There is an almost horrified resigned acceptance about it. This is the way it works after all. Corporations make convenient products for you, sparing you hours in the kitchen, and in return you pay them vast sums of money. You don't ask and they don't spill the details about that trade you've just signed off on. Good and bad. But again, which is which.

But that's not even the worst of it. No, not even. I feel wonderful these days. I'm told it will take six months to a year for all the side effects to work their way out of my body and for me to feel normal. I don't know what normal will feel like having never been normal, but it should be interesting. I no longer get bouts of extreme exhaustion. The other bodily effects have diminished. I'm more alert and have a better memory that I have had in quite some time. The huge vicious mood swings are gone. It's been such a relief. It's all good. Right?

I've been menopausal for about a year and a half. I've been told repeatedly by other women and doctors that my sex drive will diminish or disappear all together with menopause and it may or may not come back. That was the one cheery bit of news to come out of the whole surprise menopausal revelation. That was supposed to be a good thing. When you're a single woman, living on a mountain, surrounded by some of the scariest single men on earth, being horny is an exercise in terror and frustration. But it turns out menopause had the exact opposite effect on me it was supposed to have. Instead of my desire for hot sweaty dirty sex diminishing, it increased. Noticeably increased. When a 300 pound man with a gray beard down to his crotch in overalls with a stud in his ear starts to look good, well, Huston, we've got a BIG problem. Still I retained some hoped that as time when on I'd get some little relief from the ramped up sex drive. Sure enough, slowly last year, as I began to feel worse and worse the sex drive pretty much disappeared. I was thrilled. I had no idea at that point about the gluten intolerance. I just thought "Score, finally menopause is coming through for me with something I can use!"

Yeah . . . you can probably figure out the rest. DAMN! So, I feel better, healthier, stronger than I have in a long time, and now I'd willingly jump the bone of any man who can get it up and keep it there for more than 60 seconds. Yes, I cry myself to sleep most nights. The cord on my favorite vibration is starting to go too. It's just not fair! Why the hell can't I just be normal? Why can't I have a normal menopause where I spit on strange men and turn all my vibrators into foot massagers? My whole life seems so far to be an experience in being different. I used to think that was a good thing. I used to be proud of that. Now it's turned on me so abruptly and cruelly that I'd kill for the opportunity to unzip the pants of Jethro's second cousin's uncle. I feel so good I think I'm going to go cry now.