Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

After a long love affair with Diet Coke, I made the decision as of Thursday to give it up. Somewhere between not being able to sleep, incredible heart burn and crapping my gutts out, I realized that it had to end. Yes, Diet Coke is sexy - the idea that I'm young and invincible, wind machine blowing my hair as I jet set from event to event with my size six body, gripping an icy beverage in the palm of my hands. The truth is, I am not young and invincible. I am 35. I am a size 14 (on a good day) and I spent more time in the past month on the toilet than at any rock star show, art opening or movie premiere. I am not flat stomached with a diet bubbly brushing my abs. I am more akin to my daughter's build-a-ring set (The kind where you put the multi-colored circles on the yellow plastic phallic symbol): Sitting down, my stomach goes from small innertube, to medium innertube to big innertube. Sure, my jiggly wigglies iron out nice when I stand and stretch in my best pair of Gap Long Bootcuts - the beneift of being six one. But put me in a bikini, and what you have is a butter body ("She's got a pretty face, butter body!")

I could give a rat's hoo hoo about a few jiggles. After having two kids in less than two years, I sill look pretty decent. I don't really care about being some tight assed, over baked teeny bop. I proudly wear my pants at my waist, don't own a single g-string, and own more hats for my Casper white face than Amelda Marcos owns shoes. Still, I don't want to be one of those plus-sized Dove Girls that's getting the media all fired up. "We're fat, we have mustaches, we have freckles and cellulite, but we're clean!" While I'm not a Dove Girl, maybe I'm an Ivory Girl: I'm white. I'm tall. And I've just fallen off my tower of Diet Soda. And I'm hurt.

Bad.

Someone help me...

The bottom line is that I just can't handle the acid anymore. It was affecting my marriage. Who wants to be romantic with a woman who can't get off the pot? It was affecting my mood, because I'd go from mildly needing just one 12 ouncer to jonesing for that jacuzzi size AMPM truckers' mug. And it was affecting my budet: $1.71 for a McDonald's bubbly. Times that by 7, that's $10.00 a week, $40.00/month, $500.00/year. That's my entertainment center. Or my ticket to Texas to visit Liz. It had to end.

I gave it up on Friday morning.

Friday afternoon, I arrived promptly at my mom's door with my two kids in tow and proceeded to sleep like the dead.

Saturday, my husband gave me a quick kiss of support, then smelled my vile breath and made me promise to give up coffee, too. One look in those concerned, green eyes, and I promised to stop cold turkey.

I also figured what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. I was buzzing around town perfectly content.

Until I pulled into the garage Saturday eve and he caught me red-handed. Maybe I wanted to get caught. I don't know. What I do know is that it wasn't a pretty scene. James: "You're an addict!" Me: "So I had one cup of coffee. Big deal!" James: "It is a big deal! You can't function without it. You're like a crack whore!" Me: "Gimme a break. You drink beer here and there. I'm not calling you an alcoholic!" James: "I don't drink beer ten times a day. And I don't spend four hours a day on the crapper only to end up with a burning butthole!" (No joke. He went there. That's when I saw the third neighbor's garage go up for a better view. You gotta love our street.)

Sunday I agreed to stop on the coffee.

I was a bitch to live with.

Monday I went back to three cups/day, half decaf, half regular.

I'm still a bitch to live with.

I think everyone has a hole in their soul that need to fill. Call it fear, call it loneliness, call it anxiety. Some fill it with work. Others with drugs. Others with alchohol. Still others,with Diet Coke and coffee.

I want to live a healthy life. But there's something so depressing about going through life like one of those rubbery bodied yoga instructors that swear by ginseng and their 20 cups of water/day. I don't want to be the idiot at the party who orders the Hansen soda. It wasn't a good band, and it's not a good drink.

Maybe if I give up the soda but keep the coffee in check, I'll be half way liveable again for myself and my husband. At least now I'm not farting ten times/minute. Talk about a wind machine.