I went grocery shopping last night. In the middle of the frozen food’s section there was a display of candy. I glanced at it and thought, “Yeah right.” Then immediately my stomach did a double flip-flop as thoughts of my love life washed over me.
I was frozen there, in the frozen food section, holding onto my cart and waiting for the melancholy radiating from the hole in my chest to subside. From the outside it must have appeared that I was overcome by choices of frozen broccoli spears. But truly I was overcome by fear. Fear of loneliness. Fear of a sugar-free life.
When I was a teenager I went to Wal-Mart and bought some Skittles and Trojans. I kept the receipt for a long time in a scrapbook because it was so disparate and humorous. And it seemed a perfect reflection of my life at the time, caught between childhood and adulthood.
Love and sugar are often interchanged in my life. I’m currently abstaining from sugar, and craving love. The absence of sugar, pronounced, triggered a moment of longing–for kisses, for late night pillow talk, for…chocolate.
I settled for a diet Sunkist and People’s “50 most beautiful”. But I still went to bed with an empty stomach and an empty heart.
