The Good, The Bad, The American Glutton

I can vividly recall getting into mischief with my friends, as an adolescent, that I later clung to, simply because my friends were able to do them without much obvious fallout. I had this idea that right and wrong were absolute and universal. So, if my friends were drinking, then I could drink. If my friends ate whatever they wanted, then I could eat whatever I wanted.

I found myself, in my early 20s, an obese drug addict and had to begin to unravel the way I’d been thinking about all of this.

I can recall the first time I drank alcohol and the first time I snuck food, out of sight of my grandparents. Both were meticulously wrapped up in rationalization but the alcohol and drug use was far more cut and dry. The first time, I was knowingly doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. I had to talk myself into it a bit, a gentle push, a couple “don’t be a wuss” and I was from then on able to rationalize it with a bit less effort, all the way until it took over.

With food, there was definitely a moment for me, with my back to my grandparents, walking away from their small dining room table and into their kitchen, that I was able to shield myself from their gaze and stuff the unfinished remnants from one of their plates into my tiny mouth. That moment happened very quickly and without too much debate, but I was doing something that I felt I shouldn’t have been doing.

The line from trying to unravel all of this, into becoming a person who doesn’t do those things he believes to be harmful is a real Gordian Knot, impossibly tangled. That first moment, had I not done the wrong thing, would I have built up some strength for the next? And had I succeeded in correct behavior on multiple occasions, would I be immune from bad behavior today?

I think these ideas of “good” and “bad” are deeply and entirely personal. I don’t think anyone else can determine what is “good” or “bad” for you, but I do think with some introspection, we can all figure it out for ourselves.

Today, having fought my way through so many urges towards “bad” behavior, I do feel somewhat buttressed for the future. The trick for me has been in having my own understanding of what I want.

Health as a metric, or good health as a goal, is definitely a part of my behavioral process today. It holds some weight in the hierarchy of how I structure my life. That is true today, but it wasn’t always. When people would sit me down and plead with me to change, health was often their goal. When I take apart why anything is good or bad for me today, health is in there, but it really has nothing to do with why I began working towards this behavioral structure. At the time all I wanted was to be able to go on walks with my girlfriend, to feel less embarrassed about people seeing her with me in public and to be able to go with her to the beach. Those were the reasons that I was eventually able to even make the distinction of something as “good” vs “bad” for myself. Before all that, it was meaningless. And no amount of anyone else giving me their reasons, made any bit of difference at all.

The biggest change I have experienced has been with regard to who I am. Am I some amalgamation of my friends, up to and including behavior that isn’t destructive to them, but is quite destructive to me?

Nope, I have my own path, and I know that no matter anyone else’s, I’ve gotta stick to my own.