This was a lousy, no-good, horrible, awful, miserable day. One of those kinds of days that start out bad, get slightly worse, and then hiccup, shudder, and take a plummeting death spiral into the deepest pit into the soul-sucking heart of darkness. Not just suck, but living suck. Not just living suck, but day of the dawn of the night of the living suck, coming to eat your brains and tear out every last shred of happiness that was left in your miserable, burnt-out carcass, and then jump on it. And then, set it on fire. And then, put it out with an ax. I'm kind of not happy, is my point.

Usually, when I'm not happy, I have something to blame it on, and I'm more than happy to pull out the Big Book of Blames, look it up in the index, flip to the correct page and find myself the appropriate cure to apply to the The Suck. I have PMS! Please insert chocolate into my head. I have forgotten to take my brain pill! Please insert brain pill into my head. And then, chocolate. It is a sad and terrible world. Insert mental note to spend one of three wishes on World Peace. Medicate with chocolate, in head.

The problem with this scenario isn't so much that I can't eat chocolate any more, though you'd think that was totally the problem. It is a very neat solution, and we will end this story right here. It is so sad, the end.

Except that's not the problem. I can eat chocolate. I am really supposed to avoid chocolate, however. I had this operation, with the intestines and the gut and the digestive juices and the business, where they rearranged me all up with the express purpose of bypassing some of that absorption stuff you do when you eat--I think that might be why they call it a bypass! I should write that down and check on it. Anyway, as it turns out, sugar, the sonovabitch, is not absorbed anywhere near your belly, intestines, gut, digestive juices, etc. You start absorbing it right in your mouth, as soon as you stick it in your head. I begin to understand why it is so addictive.

So sugar, that is one easy-peasy, simple and dandy way to totally fuck up the entire point and purpose of this operation. Start mainlining sugar, and you won't lose a goddamn thing. That is one reason good enough to avoid it. Generally. Sometimes, I have eaten things that have not appeared on any of my nutritionist's A-Okay, Thumbs Up! lists. Sometimes, I have eaten things that would have made her frown very severely indeed at me, and possibly thwack me with a ruler and make me cry. Sometimes, I had to because they were there, and it's a habit. How can you not reach out and snatch a dark chocolate Hershey's Kiss that's been just sitting there, waiting for you to come and love it, as if it has been waiting for you all its life, when that has been the habit of your entire life. Food, face. Easy.

So, back in the early days, before I wised up, I snatched up the Kiss, pilfered a cookie, remembered the bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips rolled up and stashed in the back of my cupboard and climbed up on a chair to dig through the detritus and drag them down ("Honey, what are you doing?" "...nothing!") and take a handful and tip them back into my mouth. And with the chocolate sitting on my tongue, I waited for eternal bliss or at least happiness and good fortune and health, and it was nice, and then I went on with my life, with a little bit of a buzz, some stomach pain, and some not-so-sexy gas.

All of which are enough to stop me from doing it again, for a long time. But I do not mourn it, or worry about it, because I am saving up my chips. I am holding on to my aces. There's some kind of pertinent expression to go right here, one that suggests that I'm biding my time, that I can cash in all my good points for a moment in the future when I am having the worst and most horrible day ever, the kind after which I deserve a fucking cookie. No, not just a fucking cookie, a handful of cookies. A basket of cookies. A box, a bag, an entire grocery aisle's worth of cookies at the end of the kind of day where you do not give a flying, farting fuck whether you blow your tiny little stomach out, or get sick and throw up all over the cat, because that will just be the hilarious icing on the hilarious cake of evil and suck that has been your messed-up, no-good, wretched and terrible day.

I ended up sobbing at my desk, and I thought, fuck it. I am not going to run today, because I am so sad. And I got up and put on my gym clothes and I ran. The entire time, though, I was thinking, what am I going to buy on my way home from work? A DONUT. TWO DONUTS. ALL THE DONUTS IN THE WORLD AND THEY WILL BE MY BEST FRIENDS AND WE WILL HAVE LOVE FOREVER. That kept me going for a couple of miles.

I stormed to the bus and I stormed onto the bus and I stormed off the bus and I stood at the entrance to the donut shop and I thought, fuck you, donuts. And I came home, and ate some fresh mozzarella and a little basil, and played fetch with the cat, and cried for awhile on the futon. There are still chocolate chips in the cupboard, but I don't want them. I don't want to gorge on cheeseburgers or candy or cake or ham or butter. I just want to lie here for a little while longer and be really, really unhappy. And that is supposed to be the super-greatest thing in the world, hooray for me! I have broke the cycle of emotional eating! I am practically totally fucking cured!

 Except I'm angry. I am really fucking angry that I can't just lie here and eat my way through a pint of ice cream and feel better. Where is the justice in the world? I want to want a pint of ice cream. I want my problems to be solved, so easily.