Up until the last week, I passed through a very dark month-long depression. For over a month, I cried when I did dishes. I cried as I drove to meetings and errands. I burst into tears at the most inopportune times. There were a few bright spots, but mostly I was in a very bad place.
Then, one day, as I was in the kitchen, some of those dark thoughts passed though my mind (the kind you don’t want to voice out loud), and I had a moment of clarity: “This isn’t me.”
And it wasn’t. I’m normally a ‘silver lining’ kind of person, not a ‘woe is me’ Debbie Downer. (My apologies to any actual Debbies out there.)
My next thought of clarity was, “The only time I ever get this depressed is when I eat chocolate or get a chemical fragrance exposure. But I haven’t been in any ‘fragrance situations’. And I avoid chocolate for this very reason. When and where could I have possibly consumed chocolate?”
And then I looked down at the homemade dinner roll in my hand.
The dinner roll that was part of the 6th or 7th batch that my 13 year old son had made in practicing for his entry of bread in the yeast bread division in the county fair. The dinner roll that had just won him a Reserve Champion prize ribbon.
The dinner roll whose secret ingredient was 2 heaping tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa.
Suddenly, the dark mood I’d experienced for the last month made sense.
The world wasn’t a horrible place. I wasn’t a horrible person. I was simply experiencing an allergic reaction to a very tasty ingredient.
And so, much as I loved those delicious rolls that I had been enjoying for the last month, I stopped eating them completely. After a few days, my psychological sky cleared and it was sunny again.
Sometimes, it seems like too much of a sacrifice to refrain from certain foods that I know aren’t good for me, because they just taste so good. It’s hard to put off the temporary enjoyment for the future benefit.
But, as I discovered, when my ‘why’ is big enough, it becomes much, much easier.
I really enjoy the sunny sky! Not eating chocolate is a small price to pay.