I think many, many people have been there before…
Those first tenuous moments of understanding.
Is it…?
Oh my God, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way before…
Some people come to it early in life, being forged and guided by the interior fire it provides. Its presence literally charging and changing the atmosphere around them, and those they love.
Others don’t discover it until much later, not even realising what they’ve been feeling for so long or having felt and recognised; simply failed to acknowledge.
The little nervous sweats, the faint stirrings in the abdomen…
That sudden rush of realisation…
It dawned on me this morning as I was jogging across the bridge with one of the girls from my morning boot camp.
How could this possibly be right, when it feels so wrong?!
That sudden awakening, the full and unequivocal understanding…
I’m lactose intolerant.
Those crackers last night (the crackers are innocent in all of this, please don’t blame them, they merely introduced us) topped with Double Cream Tasmanian Brie and Heritage Blue from Jindabyne.
As delicious as the moment seemed at the time, the cheeses’ true intentions were more strongly revealed with each additional step across Lake Ginninderra. My once delightful dairy friends were rapidly expanding, both figuratively and practically in my lower intestine. Their savoury creaminess had turned on me and now demanded immediate release from my person.
The irony of being able to use my well honed, boot-camp-built, core muscles to hold back this tidal wave of milk sugars was lost on me at the time and occurs to me only now…
So, what way forward for me?
Does my life now become a series of tawdry little affairs where a furtive latte in some Belconnen back alley is followed later in the car by raging guilt, high velocity wind and the taint of death?
Must I look with suspicion on every ice confection, asking it, ‘Are you dairy free?’
…or do I go on to act as so many others have done before me; continue to enjoy the forbidden fruits of the cow, proudly crowing to all and sundry of the recent dalliance, regardless of company or olfactory sensibilities?
I know that my boot camp colleagues, I suspect, would vote for complete abstinence; or at least on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings as well as the occasional Tuesday morning.
My family, I discover, have long been party to my charade and have made excuses for me for years.
What was, just last night, a delightful, enlightening interlude now becomes a pivotal point in my life.
Does this warrant its own space on my Facebook timeline….?
Which way forward indeed.
A Change in Perspective 