Kryptonite

May it be marked in history that last night this girl had the craziest hankering for ravioli of all time.  That’s all I could think about.  My current gluten and dairy free gotta-fit-into-that-bridesmaids-dress-diet does not allow Italian treats.  OR any treats of any kind for that matter.  [insert single teardrop down my cheek]  Can’t my body ever crave celery?  Or how about NOT FOOD?  Don’t you know I’m trying to get back to my high school body I never appreciated?!  Cravings are weird like that – it’s a need you can’t explain but you want it.  You have to have it.  It’s a double helix of passion and desire.  A carnal need takes over your mind and your muscles.  It’s all consuming.  A gravitational pull you can’t escape.  Laws of attraction are real.  Some of the things we love become more than just cravings – they become our Achilles’ heel.

We all have weakness within us.  Even Superman had a weakness.  Even a Greek hero of legend had faults.  I’m sure if you’re my age, you’ve identified several by now.  It isn’t a fun feeling to admit .  But we have them and we have to live with it, just like everybody else.  Not eating cheese has been painful, so I get it.  It can be a vice, a habit, an addiction, a passion, an obsession – it rules us all.  We fall victim to it time and time again.  Chick Flicks…guilty.  So very guilty.  It’s the lover in me.  I just love LOVE, as absurd as that sounds.  I am a huge sucker for romance.  Sparkling rosé – bye!  Catch you on the other side of the bottle.  I can’t say no – it’s too delicious.  Sports fanatic…my hand is raised high and confident.  Traveling – check!  Put it on my CC, don’t care.  Where are we going?  Books and reading – see you after the last chapter!  We are motivated and driven by the things we desire and the things that makes us feel alive – many times to our own detriment.  I’ve always been told everything in moderation, but I’m an ‘all in’ kind of gal.

Speaking of things that make you just swoon and lose all sense of rationality and purpose, I’ve been hanging with the puppies non-stop.  My neighbor has now let me into his apartment more times in the last two weeks than the last 8 years combined.  If that door is open and a puppy looks at me, I’m dead.  There goes an hour of my life.  There are seven of them and my heart just summer-popsicle melts every time I see them.  TRY being in a bad mood around puppies.  I dare you.  It’s impossible.  I mean…COME ON!  How am I supposed to get anything done knowing THIS is on the other side of the wall?!

Apparently I like saying HI to dogs.  Ugh, I hate my voice.  Anyway, that’s a kill shot.  If you just watched that and felt nothing, you’re a monster human and we don’t need to be friends anymore.  Puppies make everything better.  That’s all I’m going to say.  They’ve woken me up every morning this week as they are trying their hardest to figure out how to bark.  If you haven’t been pulled out of slumber by the sounds of puppy whimpers, you’ve never experienced the conundrum that is fury, irritation and euphoria all at once. #ProjectPuppy

Okay, back to our shortcomings.  Perhaps the most alluring and equally frustrating of them all is when you find your weakness in another person.  You know they are a million reasons of wrong but when they walk into the room, you can’t seem to come up with a single one.  You break all your rules and their face becomes the cover of an album you can’t stop listening to.  You crave it.  It never makes sense until you’re together.  Your smile shines brighter, your veins come alive beneath your skin and the world as you know it shrinks into the space between you.  Maybe it has been going on a few months, maybe years, but it has an inevitable hold on you.  You’ve put in your notice time and time again but it never sticks.  No matter what you do, you always find yourself back at square one.  It’s a wicked game of snakes and ladders.  Perhaps you loved them in a different life.  Perhaps you’ve spent lifetimes together.  Whatever it is, you can’t fight it because you’ve tried and it’s useless.

The word weakness has such a negative connotation and I don’t think that’s necessarily correct.  I think our weaknesses define us and drive us.  No one is invincible – everyone has Kryptonite in his or her life.  It’s what makes us human and builds character.

Distortion is character, basically.  In fact, everything we call ‘character’ is the deviation from perfection.  So perfection to me is characterlessness

-Brian Eno

We are all drawn to different things in this life.  One woman’s trash is another man’s treasure as they say.  I think this is why humans are so magical and why life is so beautiful.  We are delicate and intricate beings with individual wants and needs.  Don’t let your weaknesses get the best of you.  I bet the majority of you have heard of Achilles’ heel, but I bet most of you don’t know much about him outside of that.  He went down in history for his one flaw, not his triumphs.  We are a thousand things including our imperfections.  They’re just pieces of the puzzle that is you.  In the words of my good friend Winston, keep on “Puzzle-ing”.