coffeebarconfessions

A telling sequence of events unfolded recently. It clearly revealed how far onto the health-nut bandwagon I have climbed. For my bedtime snack I would eat a few dollops of yogurt with a small handful of granola. Long ago I learned most store-sweetened yogurt was full of sugar and/or chemicals. Mixing stevia, vanilla, cinnamon, and a drop of honey into plain, low-fat yogurt, makes a pretty healthy tasting concoction. But the granola was either super expensive, or full of sugar and/or it's evil twin, high-fructose corn syrup. So one day I found myself on the internet researching home-made granola recipes, and decided I'd positively lost it. When the final verdict of my recipe search was to improve the health of my midnight mastication by scratching granola altogether, and instead throw a handful of raw trail mix into the mildly sweet and relatively spicy yogurt, I knew I'd entered an entirely new realm of neurotic.   For that reason it is vitally important I clarify the gapin...

It's hard to believe months have passed since I pushed the "power down" button on my social life. At that time, everything was spiraling around my world in utter chaos. I was one hot mess, and needed to retreat and regroup, before everything I knew and loved went up in smoke. Initially, the silence was golden. Once the clutter started settling down, I was able to separate my issues from other people's. There was tremendous freedom in not feeling responsible for the weight of the world! But that was just the tip of the iceberg. As I found me, I discovered so much more about the world at large. The pressures, expectations and control dramas people force upon each other bitch-slapped me with profound ridiculousness. While I was driven to understand this dynamic, and the function it serves in society, it also propelled me into a world of my own creation. Suddenly, my pressures, my expectations, and my control dramas, were all that really mattered. The day I discovered I c...

I'm so angry at my motivation today. Hanging in this strange balance between sick and capable is overwhelmingly challenging. One minute I feel optimistic, and like I can accomplish anything. The next I'm befuddled by how much work is required to simply NOT be sick. So I drown my anxiety in a distraction, where not only do I accomplish nothing, I get further behind on life's responsibilities. I've been on an upswing for long enough now, certain patterns are starting to reveal themselves. The biggest of all; if I skip my kale-rich fruit/veggie juice for more than one day, I flare. Big time. The 'getting the flu-don't want to get out of bed-life seems hopeless' kind of flare, which is always accompanied by an odd symptom or two. Things like bad mental fog and confusion, or feeling like my bra is made of sharp wire cutting into my flesh. Now, if I stay on the juicing bandwagon, I feel good. Really good. The 'haven't felt this good since I got sick' k...

Nothing shines the flashlight of scrutiny on my flaws quite like admitting to them. From that point forward I can no longer bury my head in the sand, rely on denial, or let excuses placate me into doing nothing about my problems. It's overwhelming, how utterly undone my life became. The more I do to organize, simplify and progress it, the more I realize how far into the land of the lost I sunk.  A few years back, when I was coming off high-dose Prednisone to treat two hemorrhagic strokes, I fell on my knees. It was winter, always a more painful time of year for me. Fibromyalgia and I were entrenched in a reunion of epic proportions, after the blissful psychosis of living on steroids for six months, relatively pain-free. When I tripped I landed with the full impact shooting up my knees, something like 100 daggers spearing into an egg. It was easily a good six months before I could do more than stiff-leg it down the stairs, and pray I didn't lose my balance. That was when I lived...

Well I have definitely found my drug of choice, writing fiction. Like a true addict, I can spend days absorbed in the world of my creation, completely ignoring this thing called reality. While I'm making great progress on my book, everything else in my life is suffering. But this seems to be the way it goes. If I'm productive and stick to a schedule, like going to bed on time and keeping the house clean a little bit each day, there isn't any time to write. If I write, I get all cracked-out, and don't care about the laundry piling up around my feet, or fact that there is nothing in the house to eat. When I do break out of sheer necessity, I complain. As I'm cooking, I'm loudly proclaiming how much I hate cooking. Putting off my 2 hour juicing marathon until 10:30 at night is a great way to ensure I don't go to bed until at least 3am. And please, for the love of all things holy, don't even mention paying the bills! All I wanted, for the last few years, is ...

As far as weeks go, last week was overwhelmingly stressful. This Monday I woke up feeling like a crackhead who hadn't slept. Being the extreme creature of habit I am, this means I buried my nose in writing my book all day, and ignored the totality of my responsibilities. It's just so much easier to bypass reality if I'm not actively thinking about it! By the time I checked off every excuse in the book it was 2AM, and I still had to do the dishes, pack my husbands lunch, take the dogs out, brush my teeth and straighten up the house. I also hadn't showered, juiced in 3 days, or done yoga for 5. Sigh. Where did all my progress go? I finally drag my sorry self off the sofa to do the dishes, but I'm feeling so terrible at this point I couldn't even stand up. Like "had to sit on the floor so I didn't pass out" can't stand up. As I sat on the kitchen floor feeling like the walls of sickness were closing back in on me, panic kicked in. An overwhelming ...

I just found out a girl I went to high-school with passed away from a horrendous battle with leukemia. She wasn't someone I reconnected with in recent years, so I had absolutely no idea what her life turned out like. To say I am taking this news hard is an understatement. All I can picture when I think of her is the wild, boy-crazy party girl we all were, back in the day. When things were simple, the blemishes of life's trials not visible to the naked eye, nothing but a future to sail off into. Did anyone get what we thought we would? I know my friend sure didn't. And while I've spent the better part of nine years sick, almost died a couple of times, and devoted far too much energy to stewing in epic amounts of bitterness and anger at the unfairness of it all, finding out my friend lost her life put my experience in blaring perspective. It could have been any of us, how were we to know? This journey called life, it's no joke. No guarantees, nothing promised. As much...