What I am giving up?

I am thinking a lot lately about what I am giving up. This new way of eating requires giving up a lot – pastries, sugar, chocolate!  Maybe beans, eggs.  Yogurt.  I have eaten yogurt since I was little.  Long, long before it was popular.  When it was only Dannon and a few flavors on one shelf.  I don’t mind  no bread or pasta.  Sometimes I walk past a stand in the train station and the odor of butter and sugar is heady and intoxicating.  I walk by.

But giving up— four summers ago, shortly after all this started, I was faced with giving up. My ability to walk freely was going away.  I was told I needed a brace.  The man who fitted it told me I would never be able to wear heels again or skirts.  Really?  Well, I wasn’t having that.  How I look is very important to me and an extension of who I am.  Not to be facetious but it’s part of putting my best foot forward.  Then I was told no more hot baths.  I adore my baths. They are how I decompress.  I sink into a tub with bubbles,  a novel and a snack.    It soothes me.  No hot baths?  I felt lost.  The doctors finally said well maybe you are different.  Aren’t we all?  So, I was able to go back to my bubbles.

I am known for my smile. People miss it.  I like to smile.  Yes, it’s very aggressive, one of the few facts I took away from my Hopkins education.  Buy it gives me joy and I know it gives others joy as well.  Something started happening inside my mouth.  It hurt me to smile.  I couldn’t.  This literally hurt inside and out, every day.  The doctor’s take – I swear he was 12 and surfed the ‘net:  herpes, stress, menopause, the condition.  Again, really?

Well, it started to clear and I heard that my mother was dying. It flared again.  My mother died.  She had been my best friend but she had dementia and there were issues with my brother so in many ways I had lost her before.  Another part of me that I had to give up.

So, if I think about it, what’s giving up food in the scheme of things? Especially, if I can give up wearing a brace and not being able to walk.   I am giving up in order to get.  Isn’t that the way things are supposed to work?