While my headaches continued to plague me daily, we had grabbed a hold of my anxiety and irritation and have been able to calm them down. The only problem, in order to make it through a day, I had to take a supplement. Every single day.
In the beginning it wasn’t so bad. I just took it with all the others. Every morning, a few at night, as directed. Yet as the months dragged by it started to feel like I’d never be able to live without it. Take the pill and I’m happy, calm, anxiety free. Without it I'm irritated, fearful, unknown to the world. It didn’t take a genius to figure out which was better.
I could count on one hand how many times I had a true migraine. But that count went up near the end of May.
Two days before we had arrived at the beach for our yearly vacation, and as the Thursday sun beat down on us, me and my mom walked along the rows of houses.
She was talking about there being a likely chance that she had found her birth mom (a beautiful story for another time) when I started to get the weird dots again. Eyesight went whack and by the time we got back to the house it felt like a thunder storm raging in my head.
This migraine brought nausea.
I couldn’t eat through the nausea, couldn’t sleep through the pain. It was a long long day which only relieved itself when I did finally fall asleep.
And finally it was over.
For the first five months I went about my routines. Check the ingredients. Avoid the temptation. Take the pills. Not cheating once. Even as my birthday came and passed we stayed away from the birthday cakes and ice cream bowls.
It wasn’t until mid-June when I cheated for the first time. Mostly because I had no other choice. I had gone on a mission trip with my church and it wouldn’t have been extremely easy to work around the restrictions. But to give requires to take. I was given my freedom of food back for a week and in exchange had to take yet another pill–this one before every meal.
I would be insane if I said it was the worst week of my life. I LOVED it! There were pancakes, waffles, burgers, eggs, hash browns, muffins! It was delicious. Totally worth it! (Even though by the end of the week I was craving a salad so bad XD)
That Saturday we came back home and by Sunday everything was back to normal. The problem was that after feeling the freedom of life without the diet again it was hard to return to it. It was as if the walls had been broken down and now were being rebuilt as I stood and couldn’t do anything about it.
To make it worse, the doctor had said six months. And yet six months came and went and still the end kept getting pushed back. Farther and farther away. It was irritating!
Throughout the summer I mostly sat about on my phone or in front of my computer. Doing nothing whatsoever. Yeah… that by the way is terrible for your health.
I had also gotten into a reading slump, which of course led to a writing slump. It was a slow season.
Among all this, even as the end seemed to be getting farther away, one thing kept getting closer. Dance. The year before, when I was in the deepest pit of anxiety, I had brought up to my mom not wanting to dance anymore. I remember coming home from dance multiple times, wanting to cry or just being angry with everyone because I was so done with it.
My mom suggested finishing out the semester and then we’d talk again as, like I said, I was in a pit at that point and it could just be a result of that.
The truth was I still have no clue what happened. I finished out the semester, finished out the year, and then didn’t bring it up for a long time. I still came home and cried occasionally. Still sent daggers toward every single family member when I returned. Still wanted to quit. But I didn’t bring it up again.
Until now.
It was the end of July, beginning of August, I remember it as if it had happened yesterday. My mother and I had been out almost the entire day. Having gone to a play my friend was in, we stopped by a few stores and shopped for a little bit before heading home. When we did get home, my older brother had some friends over and I helped with the food for dinner.
Once everything was cleaned up the rest of the family sat on the deck while the teenagers played board games in the dining room.
I was sitting there, facing my mom when I finally brought it up.
“I don’t wanna dance this year.” I finally said it. I. SAID. IT. And I immediately choked back tears. My mother kept asking why, why. But I had no answer except that I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. I dreaded the thought of going to dance. Hated being there when I was.
Yet that didn’t seem to be enough. They kept asking if it was the studio, the dance teacher, the students. But I just kept shaking my head. I had said what I meant. I didn’t enjoy it. It had nothing to do with the studio or who I danced with. It had to do with me.
As a period of silence elapsed I stood and entered the home. Avoiding the crowd in the dining room, (which was hard as the stairs were right next to the table) I ran to my room. Closed the door and cried.
It wasn't the pain of regretting what I said. Wasn’t the pain of not dancing the coming year. It was the pain of the devastation in my moms eyes. I had been dancing for over ten years. Every single recital my parents, and everyone else, went on about how they loved watching me up there dancing. I knew this would affect them more than it would affect me. And that hurt.
They tried to negotiate multiple times, “Maybe one class instead of four?” “Which is your favorite?” But I had made up my mind. I didn’t want to dance. At all.
If I hadn’t been continuously ranting to my best friend about how much I didn’t want to dance anymore, I’m not sure my mom would have agreed. Maybe she believed that I just didn’t want to leave the house, work hard to do something. But this wasn’t something I had brought up out of nowhere. I had been talking about this for months. Just not to them.
Finally, the week before dance started, they agreed. With one condition, I had to take something else up. I had to be doing something.
And of course, my best friend came outta nowhere, seemingly reading my thoughts and pulled me into working out.
(Before we continue let me just make this comment, the doctor had in fact told me to workout a little, move around, and exercise. But we were eight months in and ya girl had done NOTHING.)
And so when she proposed the accountability idea I immediately jumped on it. One workout everyday. For the entire month of September and October I stuck with it, sometimes with someone else, sometimes by myself. Obviously I had a few days I missed but I also bounced right back on schedule when that happened.
I was out of my slump and actually doing things. I got back into writing. Reading. And with the addition of the start up of school I had something to do during the week that kept me busy. Kept me occupied.
Around the beginning of November I stumbled a little, but by January I was back to exercising; though not as frequently. I realized that I had been juggling too much. I was doing what I enjoyed. But it was too much.
It was getting harder and harder to balance school and daily workouts along with fitting writing into my schedule. Correction: it was getting impossible. Middle School seemed like a puddle compared to the ocean of High School work.
But I didn’t slump again.
Thanksgiving and Christmas came. A season of joy for others. A season of freedom for me. No, unfortunately the diet didn’t come to an end. BUT! I was forced, and completely willing, to cheat for Thanksgiving day, and from there, the weeks leading up to Christmas.
In almost a roundabout moment, when the beginning of January, 2025, came around, I was preparing myself for another couple of months of the diet.