You may have read my Twizzler addiction story with the mad Russian of Brookline and how for four years no candy has passed my lips.
You may have made your own appointment to end one of your long held habits that hasn't served you. You may have read in admiration at how long I abstained from those red twiney rubbery things in the candy aisle of CVS and at every movie theatre across our great sugar addicted nation.
But hold your awe and let out your breath because the other shoe has dropped giving me the lesson I needed to understand how others like me with their own sets of attachments and behaviors that hurt body and soul have succumbed to temptation.
I had put on Facebook on the day Dan died for folks to please send me stories that I may not have heard of my boy. Last Thursday I got a bulky manila envelope with a gorgeous letter with two moving stories about Dan from one of his best high school buddies. Enclosed was a bag of Twizzlers. I had already had marshmallows a few months prior which I aptly called “the thin end of the wedge” so I couldn’t brag anymore about how that hypnosis had worked and how amazing I was to have stuck and held my ground.
I was ripe for what happens next. Yes I ate the whole bag of Twizzlers. Aside from being hung over the next day I got a taste of what it must be like for people who have much greater problems that a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down, for people for whom the medicine is the problem.
It was interesting to see how connected raw emotions are with immediate actions that don’t have the luxury of reflection. Just feel pain... pop in a Twizzler. Feel pain... pop another. Avoid pain... pop a few more. Dull the pain/chew the sadness.
As long as I keep remembering that everything is a lesson and everyone is a teacher I can go forward.
PROMPT 3: Got any backsliding stories of your own???
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