Genetic tastes

What I've fought against for so many years now has finally entrapped me. I am defeated. I swore after the abuse that I saw in that restaurant, I would never go near it again. I've turned my nose up at abusers of that white stuff before. I myself have had my hands literally caked in it, in its pure, unadulterated form. It's allure is...it's difficult to resist, is what I would say if today were "Extremely Underdescriptive Euphemism" day.

And to think that it came from within my own family. I was completely blindsided! I was taken off-guard, ambushed by an act of twisted psychological warfare so depraved that...it...had me. Suddenly, it all seemed so simple. Just a dab, just here and there. That's how it always starts. That's how it's...started before. And then you blink and the next thing you know, they're trying to restart your heart. "What a tragedy. Too young."

You ever see those mortality statistics, the proportions of people who succumb to "lifestyle choices"? They'll call it "preventable", lump a bunch of other dead saps into it, but the number's always bigger than you'd come to expect. You probably do what I did, maybe a chuckle, but a definite slow shake of the head, part in pity, part disgust...and part wonderment. Is it like a blaze of glory, you wonder. Or is a life a life, does it feel the same no matter the length, so what looks like a premature crash is really just as long and drawn-out as the time to an octogenarian's last breath? If the peaks and valleys all cancel each other out in the end anyway...well, isn't that all we can hope for, really? At the very least, that the good and the bad cancel out? A zero sum? And so what if the valleys are a little deeper, if the peak's a little brighter at the top, and there are perhaps just a few less of them in all?

I'll tell you true, you never really notice once it starts. Somehow, those quizzical, ultimately ignorant thoughts from before are answered, quietly, because most people don't realize they don't really want them answered. Soon the numbers are just numbers, just like every other number: none of them are you, and even if they were, they don't know, they don't even mean to know. They're just other people's excuses to slowly shake their heads.

I guess there is one that does persist. It is actually the first one posed once the process has begun, and it's the last one that stays once the others are quietly answered and shuffled away behind the curtain. It's, "how could I have been so..." Wrong, blind, dumb...quizzical, ultimately ignorant. The constant nagging reminder of Before. Before it all began. Before That Muse You Didn't Know You Needed came bounding into your life with presents of knowledge and arms wide open.

It ends up being the last remaining lifeline, silver rope, then thread, piercing the enveloping dark. It's only a memory, that of Before.

But that one fades too, just like all the rest. And the searching, remembering, ceases. All you can hope--though you don't know it anymore--is that That Muse will come back again, to reset the score, to even the field again.

But the first time...the last time...took a lifetime.

Damn you ranch dressing. I never wanted to see you again. And then the little squiggle atop my mom's bowl of salsa...I resisted, but it looked so good, that pure white creasing rift through the shinydark luscious beans and tomatoes...

Teehee!