I'm beginning to think that I prepared so well for the sugar detox that I avoided all of the withdrawal symptoms I had read so much about. I'm not even craving sweets at all. Even chocolate, which I used to crave so hard that I would literally consume an entire bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips if that was the only chocolate in the house or run to Walgreens for a chocolate bar at 10 o'clock at night. I'm not sure why this has been so easy for me, but I think the worst part of the detox was the preparation: phasing out foods with sugar, replacing those foods with sugar-free versions and new foods all together. Maybe I am stronger willed than I let myself believe. I did go Vegan (and stuck with it) despite a lack of understanding or moral support from the outside world.
So, what have I noticed so far? Nothing, unless you count binging on hummus and unleavened bread instead of chocolate and the second coming of puberty in the form of major breakouts all over my face. That, and my brain sometimes turns into a bowl of steaming hot MUSH. Take for example, when I went to enter the code for the key to the barn of the wildlife center I volunteer at (a code I've literally used hundreds of times and very recently) and not only could I not think of the full code or any of the numbers in the code, I couldn't even remember how many numbers were in the code to begin with. Three? Four? I racked my brain, but no numbers came. I felt like I had forgotten my birthday or zip code or something. I felt ridiculous.
My therapy session this evening was what I would consider a break through, lame as that sounds. The discussion mostly focused on what many call the Inner Critic. That voice inside you, always judging you, speaking to us either consciously or unconsciously. Formed by the unavoidable scars of childhood, but still here in our adult lives, keeping us down, making us feel that we are never good enough, destroying our self-esteem. The Inner Critic becomes our constant companion, once a survival mechanism in childhood, now punishing ourselves emotionally and physically.
I've always been aware that "I am my own worst critic," but never thought about the real impact of this persistent negative, self-defeating dialogue I've been telling myself for most of my life. It makes for being a great editor of other people's work, but makes it entirely impossible to ever be satisfied with my own. It's such an internalized part of me that sometimes I don't even notice it any more. But I am still affected by it every day, every moment. I could barely finish a sentence during the session without saying "I'm pathetic" or "I'm lazy and unmotivated, I should be doing better."
What was particularly revealing about this therapy session was how I looked back at my childhood/teenagehood and how I could see the affects of the Inner Critic on my life. The perfectionism, striving for straight A's in school. Neglecting many aspects of my life (friends, social life, family, spirituality, etc) to chase the standard of excellence that I had set for myself. Once I achieved straight A's in the last trimester of 8th grade, I could never go back to getting any grade less than that without thinking that "I could have done better." It was just not acceptable to myself.
Now that I recognize my Inner Critic, I can start cultivating a healthier sense of self and disarm my Inner Critic. Couple that with the idea of Radical Acceptance that Tara Brach talks about in her book, if I practice embracing and accepting the judgements of the Inner Critic, rather than ignore or fight them, my whole world will open wide. And maybe I'll be able to love myself and let all the good things I want come into my life. But it's not easy, at all. Giving up sugar is easier, by far.
I want to share with you an excerpt of a journal entry that I wrote back in September of 2007. The tone is angry and the letter is addressed to the part of me that was keeping me down. I didn't have the terminology for it at the time. All I knew was there was this part, this alter ego or voice, that had to be destroyed. Perhaps now, I have the intelligence and insight to embrace this demon rather than try to fight it. Because fighting it only feeds it and destroys me in the end.
I’m writing you this letter to let you know that I am going to kill you. I know that sounds crazy, and perhaps a bit creepy, but I’ve decided it’s the only way to get past you and towards a me that can be happy. You don’t even know what happiness is anymore, and you certainly don’t want to be happy. You make me fear that once I achieve this elusive happiness, it will always be waiting to be lost once again. And you make me feel that I might feel almost silly not for wanting it, but for actually being happy. We all claim to want happiness, but for those of us depressed, angry and sad people out there, we see the perpetually peppy and positive as nothing more than neurotic, obnoxious fools. They should have some respect for those who don’t share their boundless enthusiasm. And you think, is that what I’m trying to become? It’s repulsive and sickening. So we stay in our unhappy place, without any motivation to be happy again. Let me tell you something, you think you have control of this life, this body, you don’t. I control this mind, it’s my mind and I will manipulate it until you are gone for good. I have been waiting and wishing you away for years, but I have to make it happen and take action. So this is how it’s going to be from now on. I am going to kill you. And you will plague me no longer.
I was right about taking action to make things happen, but just wasn't going about it in the best way. I'd also like to share an excerpt from a poem on the same subject of wanting to destroy this unidentifiable part of me that was keeping me down (what I now know as my Inner Critic). It was first written in 2006 as I sat depressed and angry from my dorm room in Australia, watching the rain pummel the dry earth. I was so angry that I made up my own word for how I was feeling, this void I was living in, and thus it became the intoxification of nothingness:
The Intoxification of Nothingness
Can she ever be full
Imprisoned in the cell of her own body
Living alone in her head
Strangled by amalgamated thoughts
And sterile desires?
She screams, but the sound is swallowed whole
She throws an angry fist that brushes the naked air
She cries and the tears teem like rain
Burning her cheeks with a nameless hate
Cast off this guise
And destroy its thirst for her
Stab it with a newly sharpened blade
Watch the blood drip, drip, drip
Congealing in a stagnant, black pool
Feel all her pain
The ache of her strength locked in the
Closet of her own body
Ashamed, self-conscious, inhibited
The prey of an invisible fiend
Douse it with kerosene and light a match
Smothered by her memories
A smoldering mass, shrinking into ashes
Buried alive in the frozen earth
She feels her cells dissolving
As her organs squirm in bloody pools inside her
Imagining spontaneous combustion
Her impossible suicide—
Chunks of flesh splattering against the walls
Her blood drenching the cold, hard floor,
Seeping into each orifice like a snake
Bone and nail blasted into dust
You haunt her—
A foreboding, relentless revenant
Lurking on the edge of her sanity
In the irrevocable silence of your grave
Will anyone help her?
She’s caught in endless suspension,
Lost in the intoxification of nothingness
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