Dear Diet Coke, How Do I Miss You?

(Let Me Count the Ways)

First thing in the morning,easing into the day,
The snappety pop of your lid, followed by your gentle fizz
still haunts me as I sip my morning tea.
Three in the afternoon,
when visited by doldrums
and lunch coma,
You Were There.

You ran over my lips,
tickled my tongue,
cold and tingly bubbles pushing their way
through my veins.
I felt Awake.
Alive.

With lunch, with dinner,
with pizza,
your bitter sweetness and slightly cloying aftertaste
paired perfectly with any food, unlike sweet-sour lemonade
or the sharp nip of iced tea.

In the car: on my way home, on my way out,
for Saturday errands, before a trip to the burbs,
Your sweet nectar, lovingly crafted by McDonald's--
home of the best damn DC on the planet--
Such the perfect passenger for the journey.
What do I do with my hands now?
How to punctuate the ride?
What do I reach for when traffic stops,
cars honk, pedestrians cross the street,
drivers flip the bird?
When sun fills the car,
leaving me parched and bored?

On a hot day, after a workout,
Your cold bubbles spread quickly through this
vast body of mine.
Faster than ice water,
speedier than electrolytes,
I felt your cooling effect in my fingers,
my toes,
my heart.

Dear one,

They've driven us apart
with their talk of illness and poison.
Tell me They're wrong, DC,
and I'll take their advice, throw it over my shoulder
and never look back.
Tell me that you miss me,
Tell me that things will be better,
that you're good for me.

That someday, you'll see me again,
To grace my lips,
igniting sensations from within.

Diet Coke: A Tragic Love Story

 “I’d like a large Diet Coke, light on the ice, please.”

The words trip off my tongue like the name of my lover. A familiar zing hits my brain. Soon, baby. Soon.

When I take that first sip of precious nectar, I close my eyes. Cold, fizzy aspartame lights up all the cells in my mouth: on the roof, the cheeks, the tongue. Carbonation tickles my nose. I swallow and the soda cuts its path down my throat and through my body. Molecule after molecule makes its way to my extremities--fingertips and toes light up with tingly joy. I can feel it move through my body, dispersing until the aspartame and I are one and the same.

This is bliss. This is love.

Like all tumultuous love affairs, though, outside influences insert themselves into our relationship and begin eating away at the strong bond we share.

Aspartame is bad for you, They say. Weight gain. Depression. Diabetes. Cancer. All horrors my family has experienced firsthand. My family, long-steeped in the culture and obsession with aspartame.

Since they first introduced Diet Coke in 1982, I cannot remember a time without its sweet-with-a-bitter-aftertaste nectar. My parents, firm believers in the axiom that more=better, were devout subscribers of anything low cal, low fat, low guilt. Our freezer was alternately stocked with ice milk and frozen yogurt; our cabinets housed diet cookies; and our counters always boasted two to three varieties of diet soda in two-liter bottles. What better way to curl up on the couch and watch the latest episode of Magnum PI than with a glass full of ice and the great DC?

Diet soda has been the great constant in a life of chaos and uncertainty. It's there to start the day. Need a pick-me-up? It's there. Need a reward for good behavior? It's there. Nothing cools me down, hits the spot, alights my senses like that fizzy aspartame.

After a lifetime together, it's time to say goodbye. I've tried to break it off before, but like a booty call, some catalyst throws me back into Diet Coke's outstretched arms. Once there, it's like I never left. This time, I tell myself, this time will be it. I will stay strong.

I'm breaking it off tonight. It's not me, it's you.

I will feel the pain of loss. I will think of all the good times. I will struggle to imagine a life without it. And, hopefully, I will move on.

YouTube Spirals

I sit down at my desk, wearing my pajamas, blankly contemplating my plans for the day. Eat food. Work out. Take shower. Write. Look for a job. My only accomplishment so far is getting out of bed, and already I’m overwhelmed.

One step at a time. Focus on getting to the gym.

The logistics of the one simple task seem insurmountable. I’m not sure which day I showered last, but I feel and smell gamey. It would be . . . inconsiderate to go to a gym with people and sweat through this funk. But, it seems like a waste of resources to shower before the gym. Do you know how much effort it takes to shower?

Plagued with indecision, I open my Web browser. You know, just to see what’s what.

Look! Dogs who really don’t want to take a bath. Hilarious! Click.

I let the video pour over me, wash away my morning indecision. It doesn’t matter if I shower before the gym. Right now there are only these dogs.

Then it’s over. YouTube has helpfully recommended some other videos I may find interesting. Oh look, a puppy jumping on a trampoline. Click. Is that really the original She-Ra movie special? MY CHILDHOOD IS ON YOUTUBE. Listen to my mighty, enthusiastic CLICK.

Turns out, She-Ra doesn’t hold up as well as I thought she would. That’s okay. We live in a world with Colin Firth jumping into a lake. Click. And doing an interview on Bridget Jones’s Diary. Click. No, YouTube, I do not wish to see clips from What a Girl Wants. But perhaps just one from Bridget Jones. Click. And another. Click.

My eyes glaze over, ever fixedly watching the computer screen. Strange; I feel no enjoyment, no happiness, even though my face is smiling. Then again, I feel no pain. No anxiety about being unemployed, without a purpose for my life, or even a reason to get off this chair. Letting the screen blur in and out of focus, I don’t feel the uncertainty of my future or that crushing sense of self-worthlessness weighing on my shoulders. There is me and YouTube—nothing else.

Until my dog creeps in the room and pokes her cold wet nose under my arm, as though to say, “What? Are you still here?” I give her a perfunctory pat on the head and return to my screen, because James McAvoy, that’s why.

Here’s that scene from the end of Penelope. You know, the one I’ve seen 152 times. I must see it again. Click. I’ll just rewind this a bit, shall I? Click. Again. Again. And again. Click, click, click.

Something deep inside my brain pings. Nobody spends this much time in front of YouTube. Why do I keep at it? Do I really want to see these things, or is compulsion in the driving seat? I click now, because I clicked before. I click again because there is something to click. If I don’t click, there is something I won’t see.

A distinctly cottony feeling takes over my mouth. I must be thirsty, but that could just be because I haven’t had anything to drink yet. It’s only been three hours. Should the back of my throat really feel all scratchy burny? Once I acknowledge my thirst, I must entertain the possibility that the dull, yet sharpening ache in my stomach is hunger. What am I going to do about that? Is there any food in the house? Do I even feel like eating anything? Too much. I can’t deal.

Dear YouTube, More James McAvoy, please.

Why, thank you! An interview! Who’s Graham Norton? Click.

Sweet lord almighty. Graham Norton is genius. Must. Watch. More. Click, click, click.

It’s been four hours, now. I don’t think I’ll make it to the gym. When I don’t have a job to go to, how is there not enough time to work out? I weigh my options and determine that, in order to eat, I must leave the house. Leaving the house means taking a shower, which means getting up off this chair. I mean, I could do all that, or, I could watch this interview with Helen Mirren.

PAUL RUDD JUST KISSED DAME HELEN MIRREN. Nothing I watch after this could be so good. But look…

Click, click, click, click.

Have I really been watching YouTube videos for five hours? Who does that? God, Megan. You are such a lazy bitch. Get up! Get up!

Maybe after this video.

Okay, just one more. No, this will be the last one. No, this one. This one. Click, click, click, click.

For real! It’s been seven hours! Get out of this chair! You stupid YouTube zombie, there is a world out there and a life for you to live and you’re wasting it all! What is wrong with you? You should be ashamed of yourself. Click click. Zap zap.

Is it really 5? Okay, you can’t let Husband come home and find you like this. If he doesn’t see, he won’t know. No one will know.

Only this fear of someone else knowing how I wasted my day, seeing how worthless and pointless my existence has become, motivates me off my chair.

As I shower the stench of who knows how many days off my skin, I feel like I’m coming to from a trance. Did I really forget to eat anything today? Me?! Images from the hours of binge-watching clips swim in my head, none of them offering insight or meaning, only lost time.

Tomorrow, I promise myself. Tomorrow will be better. I will be better.

I didn't know it was so bad...

Depression is some sneaky ass shit. It wears socks and walks on tip toes, creeping up from behind. The weight of it descends gradually, ounce by ounce, so I don’t notice it hitching a ride. I’m trudging along, slowed and stymied by it, but it all happens so gradually that I don’t notice the extra weight. One day to the next, it feels normal. I lose all perspective, lose track of the fact that all I feel like is shit and it never used to be this way. 

It’s all in my head, anyway. Literally. All. In my head. It’s not like when you break your leg and have to walk on crutches. Then everyone can see your handicap, why it’s been several days since you showered, or why you haven’t left your house in over a week. But when that handicap is the fucked up chemicals in your brain, it doesn’t look or feel like anything should keep you from living your life.

Then there’s a day when I screw up every ounce of oomph and caring I have and pour it into the space inside my brain that controls things like hygiene and leaving the house. That’s the day you see me. It’s the best that things are going to get, the best that I am going to get. I wouldn’t make it out of the house if I didn’t find the part of me that cares about something—you. I’m surprised to find I care about much these days.

Yet, as you sit across from me and tell me about your life, I can’t care about it much at all. I’m running low to empty on cares, all used up in the getting here. I’m already looking forward to going home, to sinking into the sofa and not working so hard. When you tell me your tales, I work to put on the right faces, say the right things, sound the right way. I feel like an alien in my own skin, trying to approximate myself. This face means sad. This one, thoughtful. This one, happy. 

You are my friend. I want to please you.

What’s new with me, you ask? That’s the thing. Nothing’s new. Nothing. I spent my week watching episode after episode of a stupid show on Netflix, caring but not caring. Numb to the world around me, to my own feelings threatening to overwhelm me. 

Misdirection is the best tool of a magician. I’ll use it to distract, deflect attention from what’s really going on, a dark secret that I don’t really want to admit or address. If I don’t look at it, maybe it’ll go away, maybe it didn’t happen, maybe it’s not true. I’ll tell you that I feel numb and wonder what the point is in getting out of bed in the morning, but all in a perfunctory sort of way. 

Quick! Look over here, where I’ve prepared a few anecdotes that the real Megan would have found funny. So I, Not-Megan, tell them to you, move the conversation forward and away. 

Blink and you’ll miss it. 

I feel like I’m faking it. I am fake. So I feel shitty. I am shitty. I judge myself. All of it makes me feel worse than I started out this morning. So exhausting.

I think I need some down time to recover. How many seasons are left in that stupid show?

All the pieces, All one piece

Over the years, I've set aside virtual space for each interest, each facet of my personality: roller derby, nutrition and fitness, quilting and artistic endeavors, the humorous ups and downs of married life. I sorted and segregated interests for anyone who may stumble upon them. Each facet of myself that I offered was only as valuable as those who found it interesting. Dividing and distributing myself into these packets only served to diminish the whole. My interests defined me. I was an artist. No, I was one of those weight-loss nuts. No, I was a wife with funny marriage stories. No, I was a roller derby girl.

Stretching back to life before the internet (that's right, kids), I realize I compartmentalized my life as long as I can remember. Is it because I like things to fit into categories? Is it like how I organized our takeout menus into a tabbed binder? Divide the parts and pieces of me and they'll all make sense eventually?

And what of those parts of me that don't fit neatly into a category? Like what it's like to swim through depression, losing yourself and making your way back. How dreams have changed, and what triumphs lie outside well-defined categories. How, through all of these things, I feel the most myself when I'm writing, yet struggle to sit down and do just that. Is any of that less a part of who I am? Where does all of that belong on the Megan binder?

The reality is, I don't belong in a binder. What I do is not who I am. I am all of these things. I am none of them. I am a woman. A lover. A friend. Someone who exhibits passion and intelligence and creativity. The time has come to stop the compartmentalization. Time for these parts of me to mingle. Time to find the spaces in between. Time to let the writing flow as it will, less defined by the space where it appears than the way it is born.

Priorities

Three years ago, my husband and I joined the YMCA. At the time, my main concerns were losing weight and avoiding the sorts of major diseases that run rampant in my family: diabetes, heart disease, cancer.

I began working out in earnest and using an online program to track my calories in and calories out. This basic formula consumed many of my thoughts and informed just about every decision. I’m tired; can I skip the gym tonight? Check the calorie balance sheet to see if you came out ahead today. I want to have this treat someone brought to work. Check to see if you worked out hard enough to offset that treat. Translation: did I deserve a break? What had I done to earn it?

Following this regimen, I lost weight. And I gained confidence to try new things, like when my friend asked me to join her at the roller rink. I began taking classes at the roller rink, and then with Derby Lite. I lost more weight. I got stronger. And I found a form of exercise that went beyond personal satisfaction and improving myself. Somehow, I had stumbled upon exercise that was fun. Now, here I am: still a member at the Y, but now, a skater for The Chicago Outfit. And those Derby Lite classes I once took? Now I teach them. Me. I teach fitness.

And I’m still overweight.

Over these three years, life happened. I lost a close family member. I was injured and recovered. I was injured again, and recovered again. I’ve gone through a major life change and struggle with depression. I put on muscle and lost fat. Put on fat and lost muscle. I fell off the wagon and clawed my way back on, again and again. Every time, derby was there, waiting for me.

Never before in my life have I maintained a relationship with exercise and nutrition. Any other time I started a workout regimen, boredom or life change or discouragement at a plateau eventually set in, and the gym and I parted ways. It’s not you, it’s me. Life would reset back to sedentary activities, eating what I wanted, and a bigger pair of pants.

But now, when life intervenes and I find myself drifting away from the gym and good nutrition, derby beckons. I’m eager to get back to it. I’m no longer going to the gym and eating well to lose weight. My primary motivation is to get stronger for the things I want to be able to do on the derby track.

I don’t want to eat the “right” foods so I can slim down. I want to eat the foods that will give me the fuel I need for my body to perform all the tasks I ask of it. I don’t want to run intervals because they’ll “scorch fat.” I want to up my endurance so that I can hold my own during speed drills. I don’t want to do a bunch of lunges and squats to tone my butt; I want to gain strength so I can get low and stay low, so I can get more out of my skate strides. I want to be a better skater, for myself and for my team.