Ummmm, you guys.
I haven't had a diet coke since Tuesday.
Do you know what today is????????
friday.
tgif (remember tgif? awesome.)
Do you know what this means??? 3 full days. 72 hours without a hit.
My body is confused
as is my mind.
10 a.m. is a confusing time of day as that's when I usually cracked open my first one.
2:30 p.m. is also confusing and the hardest time to just say no.
How do I get through the mid-afternoon drudgery without a diet coke? I drink a black coffee. because I read somewhere it lowers your chance for stroke and diabetes. And I don't want either of those things. obviously. Whenever I read health facts, they stick with me for life. regardless of whether or not it is proven wrong later, it stays with me.
I've been drinking multiple diet beverages, daily, for about 8 years. I often wonder if I have any stomach lining left. Maybe not. But, fingers crossed stomach lining grows back. I am too afraid to google the damage I have done to my body with my nearly decade long addiction.
because whenever I google things, I get anxiety. Like the time I thought for almost a full year that I probably had herpes. Even though I had never done anything that could have given me herpes. I don't even think I high-fived anyone that year. And yet, I was convinced I had contracted it. There were no symptoms, no possible way, it was just a feeling.
Where the feeling came from, I am unsure. Hugging someone too close maybe. Or from a restaurant. I'm always afraid what happens in restaurant kitchens. Not everyone is nice and who knows what disgruntled people do in kitchens. Who knows.
I am not a hypochondriac. Or a purel user. I don't trust purel users. I just have...strange fears.
Unnecessary anxiety is my specialty. The way I always cover my face when I turn on the garbage disposal, for example. I have concerns that something is going to shoot out at me and take out my eye. I have never heard of a garbage disposal attacking anyone but I'm sure I will be the first. I think maybe it's the sound a garbage disposal makes. Aggressive. The mind is an interesting thing.
Anyway, all I really wanted to say is I am 3 days clean but as per usual I found several tangents. Really though, no diet coke in 3 days. My leg won't stop bobbing up and down because of all the coffee I am consuming, but, at least I am off the aspertame. Progress.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
The Last Season of Just Me
I peeked at the weather forecast for this weekend: 67 and clear. All weekend long. (I tend to avoid the weather forecast in the summer because guess what it's going to say? It's hot. Avoid clothing). But 67 and clear. You know what that means. Fall is a-comin.
I can feel it creeping close--coming to see me again like an old friend. Telling me to buy sweaters, dig out my boots, and start baking things. Fall soothes me. The season appeals to every single one of my senses. I mark my entire life by falls. Autumn is my compass. Where I am in the fall, is where I am in life.
And it hit me the other day as I considered the arrival of this fall in particular that this is my last one as Megan Bergkamp. I mean like, Megan B., just Megan B. Next fall I'll be married Megan. And then maybe some fall in the future I'll start having babies and I'll be wifey and mama Megan and I'll be making Halloween costumes for kiddos and dragging them to every local high school sporting event and trying to prevent them from assuming nasty habits like their mother's diet coke addiction.
And it's funny to think of that--how my life has been just so, for so long. It's just been me and that's been good. Really, really good. But this is the last one like that. Come December, I'll belong to others.
This is the big fall. This is the fall that will mark the end of the original me. I know I won't change but everything else will. And I realize as I face this last season that I am about to experience one of those perfect and terrible moments in life when it hits you that nothing will ever be the same again. It's one of the moments when you look at what is in front of you and feel excited and good and happy, but also very much afraid. You are tempted to just plop down in the middle of this path you've chosen and not move because say what you will about the mundane but sometimes, it's nice to feel comfortable and settled.
Basically, it's terrifying to grow up. No matter how happy the event (a marriage, for example), the idea of change and perhaps having to leave pieces of yourself behind, is painful.
I remember falls past: I think about being 11 years old and playing volleyball over our brick sidewalk with my sister every day. Going to high school football games on Friday nights and holding hands with a boy in the bleachers. I think of college and moving back to school and homecoming and Thanksgiving breaks. Of tailgating and hours and hours of sitting with friends in coffee shops, thinking that we'd always be together like that--talking about what we would do if we ever, ever, ever actually graduated. I think of my first fall in DC--that was when I met him and I think I knew then who he would one day become to me.
And here I am, after 25 falls of being just me. This is the last one and it's the best thing and the saddest thing all at once. I've spent so much time in my life thinking about how nothing ever changes and feeling claustrophobic about where I am and now suddenly it hits me how much has already changed and how much more will.
The real fear for me is not that I am about to get married. That, I am prepared and thrilled to do. The real fear, the fear that keeps me up at night, is the way time passes.
One day you’re 11 and at your best friend’s house and her father, who is a minister, is pretending to marry you to whoever you have a crush on that week. You’ve fashioned yourself a veil out of a dish towel and you’ve stolen your mother’s mascara for the event…
…And then you start dating for real. Or sort of for real—you have ‘boyfriends’ anyway. You imagine what your married name will sound like with these boys. You are passionately in love with each of them for 2 weeks at a time until you get your next issue of Seventeen Magazine and find a celebrity who consumes your emotions. It seems completely normal to fall out of love with a real person for a face in a magazine. You daydream, you fantasize, you doodle baby names in your notebook…
…And then a few years later you swear you will never get married. You swear it. Because marriage means giving up everything, it means giving up yourself. You’ve seen it happen. You’ve seen identities and dreams disappear. You are in your early 20s and determined to break the mold, to avoid becoming a casualty. You will not be that person. Ever…
…And then one day you meet him. And you love him so much it hurts. And then he asks you the question. You say yes because nothing, nothing, nothing would make you happier and you buy yourself a real veil, but still consider stealing your mother’s mascara, because she always has the best kind.
You've grown up and no one questions it, but you.
This fall, I find myself reflecting over the first quarter of my life. I suppose this is normal, to look back when you are on the brink of a big change. I can connect the dots perfectly. I can see clearly the 8 or 9 decisions that brought me to this point. If someone drew a map of my life they would include these points. Looking back, it is all so clear and concise, so neat. A yes here, a no there, and suddenly, these are the decisions that have defined my life thus far. And now I am to the point when my line is no longer singular. It combines now, with another, and the lines are woven together forever. Every fall from here on out, it will be like that.
Where I am in the fall is where I am in life. This is the last autumn and next year will be the first.
I can feel it creeping close--coming to see me again like an old friend. Telling me to buy sweaters, dig out my boots, and start baking things. Fall soothes me. The season appeals to every single one of my senses. I mark my entire life by falls. Autumn is my compass. Where I am in the fall, is where I am in life.
And it hit me the other day as I considered the arrival of this fall in particular that this is my last one as Megan Bergkamp. I mean like, Megan B., just Megan B. Next fall I'll be married Megan. And then maybe some fall in the future I'll start having babies and I'll be wifey and mama Megan and I'll be making Halloween costumes for kiddos and dragging them to every local high school sporting event and trying to prevent them from assuming nasty habits like their mother's diet coke addiction.
And it's funny to think of that--how my life has been just so, for so long. It's just been me and that's been good. Really, really good. But this is the last one like that. Come December, I'll belong to others.
This is the big fall. This is the fall that will mark the end of the original me. I know I won't change but everything else will. And I realize as I face this last season that I am about to experience one of those perfect and terrible moments in life when it hits you that nothing will ever be the same again. It's one of the moments when you look at what is in front of you and feel excited and good and happy, but also very much afraid. You are tempted to just plop down in the middle of this path you've chosen and not move because say what you will about the mundane but sometimes, it's nice to feel comfortable and settled.
Basically, it's terrifying to grow up. No matter how happy the event (a marriage, for example), the idea of change and perhaps having to leave pieces of yourself behind, is painful.
I remember falls past: I think about being 11 years old and playing volleyball over our brick sidewalk with my sister every day. Going to high school football games on Friday nights and holding hands with a boy in the bleachers. I think of college and moving back to school and homecoming and Thanksgiving breaks. Of tailgating and hours and hours of sitting with friends in coffee shops, thinking that we'd always be together like that--talking about what we would do if we ever, ever, ever actually graduated. I think of my first fall in DC--that was when I met him and I think I knew then who he would one day become to me.
And here I am, after 25 falls of being just me. This is the last one and it's the best thing and the saddest thing all at once. I've spent so much time in my life thinking about how nothing ever changes and feeling claustrophobic about where I am and now suddenly it hits me how much has already changed and how much more will.
The real fear for me is not that I am about to get married. That, I am prepared and thrilled to do. The real fear, the fear that keeps me up at night, is the way time passes.
One day you’re 11 and at your best friend’s house and her father, who is a minister, is pretending to marry you to whoever you have a crush on that week. You’ve fashioned yourself a veil out of a dish towel and you’ve stolen your mother’s mascara for the event…
…And then you start dating for real. Or sort of for real—you have ‘boyfriends’ anyway. You imagine what your married name will sound like with these boys. You are passionately in love with each of them for 2 weeks at a time until you get your next issue of Seventeen Magazine and find a celebrity who consumes your emotions. It seems completely normal to fall out of love with a real person for a face in a magazine. You daydream, you fantasize, you doodle baby names in your notebook…
…And then a few years later you swear you will never get married. You swear it. Because marriage means giving up everything, it means giving up yourself. You’ve seen it happen. You’ve seen identities and dreams disappear. You are in your early 20s and determined to break the mold, to avoid becoming a casualty. You will not be that person. Ever…
…And then one day you meet him. And you love him so much it hurts. And then he asks you the question. You say yes because nothing, nothing, nothing would make you happier and you buy yourself a real veil, but still consider stealing your mother’s mascara, because she always has the best kind.
You've grown up and no one questions it, but you.
This fall, I find myself reflecting over the first quarter of my life. I suppose this is normal, to look back when you are on the brink of a big change. I can connect the dots perfectly. I can see clearly the 8 or 9 decisions that brought me to this point. If someone drew a map of my life they would include these points. Looking back, it is all so clear and concise, so neat. A yes here, a no there, and suddenly, these are the decisions that have defined my life thus far. And now I am to the point when my line is no longer singular. It combines now, with another, and the lines are woven together forever. Every fall from here on out, it will be like that.
Where I am in the fall is where I am in life. This is the last autumn and next year will be the first.
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