Mint Condition

I've been mildly addicted to lifesaver mints, wintergreen flavor, for just over a decade.  You know, the ones that populate candy dishes at reception desks. I hate how much I love these motherfucking cavity bombs. The mint flavor is concentrated and sugary--a delicious, spiky intensity. I crush them between my teeth, slide my tongue over and around them, let little shards break off and crunch them delicately, suck on them until there's nothing left. There is something deeply soothing about their solid round heft, the transition from whole, chunky perfection, the little ridges of those letters stamped into every fucking one hard against the roof of my mouth, my rough tongue smoothing the edges, into a dissolved mass of crumbly, electrically charged mint.

I'm not sure when my love affair began with these killers of oral hygenie, but by god has the obsession lasted longer than it should. I remember buying bags of these with my twin sister and mixing them in with the other candies we bought for long car trips, the whole bag getting infected with their minty intoxication. My mother used to find the wrappers all over the house, our slightly forbidden habit a source of housekeeping and parental consternation. We were indeed ruining our teeth with them. But to this day when I break down and buy a bag--usually when I'm feeling depleted, out-of-control, at loose ends--I feel a frisson of rebelliousness. Health be damned, these things are goddamn delicious. It makes me feel connected to my twin when we are far away, though she's far more successfully broken the habit---a little spark of nostalgia and love blooming with every insidious crunch.

 I'll go days or weeks or months without giving in, then spend a weekend in an orgy of mint-crushing, a graveyard of rustling wrappers collecting in my jacket pockets and the corners of my room, soothing my oral fixations with a distressingly manic intensity. I've eaten them until the taste turns ashy and dead and then back again into savor.

Obviously there are some conflicting emotions at play here. How frustrating, that breaking oneself of bad habits is so piecemeal--I wish I could sever the neural pathways for all my vices at once, be done with the whole parcel of them, freed from conflicting desires. I wish there was labor involved, less sifting of which habit is of the highest priority to change, less need to understand the myriad impulses behind the push-pull I feel every time I catch a whiff of wintergreen and my mouth begins to water, each time I drift to the candy aisle seemingly unconsciously.

 But my drive for self-improvement is packaged with my drive for self-destruction, and the space between is what I must inhabit to leave compulsive behaviors behind. I have a stubborn and sometimes perverse pride in  allowing myself the indulgent purchase of these confections, despite the obvious detriments to my health, in the name of pleasure, in the name of the freedom of choice. Combined with the physical triggers I've developed, this is a feeling that is hard to replace with the less immediately satisfying thrill of restraint and discipline.  My choice to persist arrives not only out of an instinct for hedonism, but is also tied to feelings of shame about still having such a childish vice. It is easier by far to spend two dollars and several hours happily, if guiltily, munching away, than to deal with this fragile sliver of ego so enmeshed in this cycle of self-determination and self-loathing.

There's a part of me that is loathe to give up such a quick fix, and part that is weary from a few years spent breaking myself of far nastier habits. For some of us, self-harm is a matter of degree. It's hard to admit that while chewing lustily on mints, as my teeth suffer the consequences, is just as much an action of self-loathing as cutting myself. The two behaviors vary in degree, but not content--I buy packs of mints under similar conditions to when I used to punish my body in more dramatic ways-- when forceful emotions gorge my throat, when I feel powerless to fix the larger problems in my life, when I'm fucking sad and lost and confused. And hit of sugar and mint, to be blunt, is far less satisfying than the opiate rush of cutting myself, less effective at deadening the immediate pain. Of course it's also less obviously destructive.

And so, here we are, in a new year. I know that I have to turn the same practices of gentleness and self-love that I used to break myself of the self-harm habit toward this lesser evil. There was no way I could bully myself out of that behavior, no amount of negative self-talk "This is weak, this is foolish, this is selfish" that could stay my hand, no amount of grief that I witnessed in the eyes of the friends, lovers, and family, who winced and wept and cajoled and freaked seeing my cuts, no power on earth that could stop me. There was only me, and at the time, I could not recognize myself as being enough, felt the isolation of this truth only rather than the purity of its power.

In the case of my self-harm, I had to learn the reasons behind what I was doing with a competent and professionally detached therapist. I had to learn the peaks and valleys of the brain chemicals involved in the addiction. I had to learn to notice the patterns of self-talk that led to a relapse, painstakingly accounting for each moment that occurred before ultimate action. Then, I had to learn to let the impulse come up and pass without taking action, and further, without judging its existence. I had to learn how to wait it out, how to sit with myself and let the feelings come without attacking or running, let the agonizing moments pass until finally, the next moment came, until normal time caught up with me again and I realized I had successfully done nothing. I had to deal with the sick, sad part of myself that took such inaction as evidence of further weakness, further shame. I had to embrace the part of myself that took immense comfort and even a sort of pleasure in the stinging, bleeding evidence that I was still alive despite my pain, that I had this strange power to mar and harm and continue on, to seize some control of chaos. I draw a connection between this darkness and the sheer animal pleasure I take in rolling that mouth-watering mint flavor between my teeth and crushing it to nothingness.

My brain is a much nicer place to live these days. The habits of attention I have cultivated come to my aid. When I feel the increasingly rare impulse to cut, I am able to notice it almost immediately, cut the urge off at its source with compassion. Those thoughts come up and I nod at them with a familiar, almost casual love. I do not hesitate to stop what i am doing and send kind energy to those parts that wish to wreak havoc. I recognize that these impulses come from a part of me that has done its poisonous best for years to help and protect a small, neglected, vulnerable part of me from feeling pain in the only way I allowed it to, not realizing the consequences, ignorant of the toll this takes on my other struggling parts. That protective part of me knows now that there are other, better ways to do its job.

And so here we are in the new year. The time is right for me to challenge myself to love the demonic child within who cannot get enough sugar, enough attention, enough love, enough raw sensual experience. I must turn the same patience and benevolent regard to mediating this lesser evil of a habit. I have to do better by not trying to be better. I have to accept the brightness of demanding more of myself, of letting the cream of my self-love rise until it's not as scary to take charge of my life, schedule the damn, expensive dental appointment, to have enough respect for myself to treat myself well from toenails to tooth enamel.

I have to meet myself where I am, one two-dollar bag at a time, one miserable. rainy, tired night at a time, one moment by one moment until the next moment finally arrives. And I will realize I have done nothing, and left a candy aisle empty-handed. Gratitude will be there, and simultaneously despair will rush in. I will want to go back inside, quell the inner storm with swift, chaotic action. I will notice this despair and love myself for it, and I will let out a shaky breath, or a soft laugh. I will pause and hold that darkness up to the light.  I'll stand in the parking lot, and there I'll be, still myself, with more habits to begin and break, as many as there are parts of myself to love, running my tongue over the slickness of my perfect, damaged teeth, running my fingers over my perfect, faded scars.