the anti rush.
Mitch Albom once wrote: 'Lost love is still love.' I used to adamantly agree. But sometimes, life steps in and surprises us with the most jarring of epiphanies. Today I realized that sometimes, lost love is exactly what it claims to be.
Lost.
Last semester, I wrote a piece for my non-fiction class entitled 'Sugar Rush'. It was a fun, light-hearted piece that talked about my love for chocolate and how it lived up to the hype of being a woman's best source of comfort. There was always something in the sugar rush that seemed to make the end of a crappy day slightly better.
Now, this love for chocolate was not just your typical run-of-the-mill teenage infatuation. It was a passion, an obsession. It's a bit embarrassing, typing all this down, telling the whole world that I was one of those crazed-chocoholics. The type that taunted diabetes with an inexcusably reckless abandon.
It sounds hyperbolic, I know. But I was really that into it. Dark, white, hazelnut, milk. Cake, ice cream, cookies, brownies. It didn't matter. I was a crazy, health-be-damned fool in love.
And then one day, and I'm not kidding because it really just happened one random morning when I woke up, it disappeared. The feelings, the cravings. The sweet tooth. I put a Kit Kat in my mouth then felt like throwing up after. I thought it was just a stomach bug. A momentary lapse in my obsession. But it went on. It's still going on.
One day, I woke up and I lost my love (or lust haha) for the sugar rush.
It's a very happy-sad thing. On one hand, I'm sure my body is thanking me to no end. And on the other, I miss it.
If you've been to my house, you'll know that there is always some kind of sugary confection in the fridge just waiting to be consumed. Tonight it was a decadent chocolate cake that my dad bought from Claudette's. He forced me to eat a slice and I obliged. But two bites after and I felt tired already. I finished the cake (rather begrudgingly, to be honest) but my heart just wasn't in it. It was like soulless singing. Or loveless sex.
And it weirded me out enough to get me writing this, the first non-academic piece of writing I've come up with in a long time.
The end of 'Sugar Rush' was intended to be hopeful. A Bridget Jones-esque take on how, in the end, women shouldn't be too dependent on the faux-comfort of chocolates. I wrote about how there was a greater satisfaction in the simple joys: laughter, hugs, a smile. I wrote about saying goodbye to chocolate knowing full well that it was a lie. I didn't know that months later, it would turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I know it sounds shallow. Maybe it is. But I guess I just never believed you could instantaneously lose affection/attraction/lust/love for something you've grown up with, tended to and cultivated as a habit. If it's seen you through the good, bad and the ugly, aren't you supposed to feel indebted to it? Isn't the love supposed to wane gradually? And in the end, shouldn't there be some form of closure before you finally say 'Okay, I'm through. It's over.'?
I realized that no matter how sweet chocolate was to me, it was a lot like the boy - a deterrent of growth rather than a catalyst for it. The only thing that ever changed after consuming a bar was that the world had moved on while I hadn’t. It kept my happiness sustained and served as a haven I could hide in when there was something bigger out there, just waiting to be conquered. Chocolate tied me down to a past I needed to break up with so I kissed it goodbye, said it’s not you, it’s me and went off to find a happiness that was bigger, brighter and better than anything that could be bought from some random convenient store.
Sure, I miss it as much as I miss him but life has surprised me with sugar rushes far more exciting than chocolates and love which probably explains why I don’t feel so cheated. Life doesn’t follow the economy of man and sometimes when you lose, you win.
(the self-fulfilling prophetic ending of an essay I wrote last semester -- hehe, don't mind the part about 'the boy'. that was just a writing device i used so i could drone on and on about my love affair with chocolate. haha i bet i'm going to feel stupid for posting this.)
Lost.
Last semester, I wrote a piece for my non-fiction class entitled 'Sugar Rush'. It was a fun, light-hearted piece that talked about my love for chocolate and how it lived up to the hype of being a woman's best source of comfort. There was always something in the sugar rush that seemed to make the end of a crappy day slightly better.
Now, this love for chocolate was not just your typical run-of-the-mill teenage infatuation. It was a passion, an obsession. It's a bit embarrassing, typing all this down, telling the whole world that I was one of those crazed-chocoholics. The type that taunted diabetes with an inexcusably reckless abandon.
It sounds hyperbolic, I know. But I was really that into it. Dark, white, hazelnut, milk. Cake, ice cream, cookies, brownies. It didn't matter. I was a crazy, health-be-damned fool in love.
And then one day, and I'm not kidding because it really just happened one random morning when I woke up, it disappeared. The feelings, the cravings. The sweet tooth. I put a Kit Kat in my mouth then felt like throwing up after. I thought it was just a stomach bug. A momentary lapse in my obsession. But it went on. It's still going on.
One day, I woke up and I lost my love (or lust haha) for the sugar rush.
It's a very happy-sad thing. On one hand, I'm sure my body is thanking me to no end. And on the other, I miss it.
If you've been to my house, you'll know that there is always some kind of sugary confection in the fridge just waiting to be consumed. Tonight it was a decadent chocolate cake that my dad bought from Claudette's. He forced me to eat a slice and I obliged. But two bites after and I felt tired already. I finished the cake (rather begrudgingly, to be honest) but my heart just wasn't in it. It was like soulless singing. Or loveless sex.
And it weirded me out enough to get me writing this, the first non-academic piece of writing I've come up with in a long time.
The end of 'Sugar Rush' was intended to be hopeful. A Bridget Jones-esque take on how, in the end, women shouldn't be too dependent on the faux-comfort of chocolates. I wrote about how there was a greater satisfaction in the simple joys: laughter, hugs, a smile. I wrote about saying goodbye to chocolate knowing full well that it was a lie. I didn't know that months later, it would turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I know it sounds shallow. Maybe it is. But I guess I just never believed you could instantaneously lose affection/attraction/lust/love for something you've grown up with, tended to and cultivated as a habit. If it's seen you through the good, bad and the ugly, aren't you supposed to feel indebted to it? Isn't the love supposed to wane gradually? And in the end, shouldn't there be some form of closure before you finally say 'Okay, I'm through. It's over.'?
I realized that no matter how sweet chocolate was to me, it was a lot like the boy - a deterrent of growth rather than a catalyst for it. The only thing that ever changed after consuming a bar was that the world had moved on while I hadn’t. It kept my happiness sustained and served as a haven I could hide in when there was something bigger out there, just waiting to be conquered. Chocolate tied me down to a past I needed to break up with so I kissed it goodbye, said it’s not you, it’s me and went off to find a happiness that was bigger, brighter and better than anything that could be bought from some random convenient store.
Sure, I miss it as much as I miss him but life has surprised me with sugar rushes far more exciting than chocolates and love which probably explains why I don’t feel so cheated. Life doesn’t follow the economy of man and sometimes when you lose, you win.
(the self-fulfilling prophetic ending of an essay I wrote last semester -- hehe, don't mind the part about 'the boy'. that was just a writing device i used so i could drone on and on about my love affair with chocolate. haha i bet i'm going to feel stupid for posting this.)