Coffee Love

Coffee Love

I picked it up and I brought it home

Just its presence seemed to light up my life

In a way that just milk or sugar alone could never do

But there it waited, surrounded in sheer plastic

Allowing me to see everything it was

And all that it contained

For only me to enjoy.

Suddenly, I was subject to global warming

My pulse heated; inside my mouth the ice caps were melting

As the slender straw drew nearer and nearer

My sense ran up a wall

It had me at first sip; I was hooked.

Guess who wrote that?

Me. Yup, the girl who can’t drink coffee. Least not the way she likes to.

Medium iced coffee, light and sweet. Everyday for a good long while during high school. I was homeschooled, and my mom and dad are big coffee drinkers so it was easy enough for me to pick it up.

It wasn’t too bad at first; it was just a coffee a day in the morning to get myself going. I didn’t have too much of a “2:30 feeling” either; my body handled it well.

However, when I began to cut out sugar, I managed to cut out the sugar in my coffee. Medium iced coffee, light, no sugar. (Why I had to actually say “no sugar” I still don’t understand. The coffee people just couldn’t get it right otherwise.) My new order worked for a good long time, till I figured out a good deal of the uneasiness and discombobulation my stomach was experiencing was due to dairy.

I’m sorry, I love the taste of coffee, but I am not my mother, and I cannot take it black. In the words of a dear friend, Esparto (a nickname, derived form the meaning of a shortened version of his real name), addressing my mom’s coffee order, “Wow, she’s a strong woman” and I, dear friends, am not. I like it sweet and creamy. So…There went coffee.

Bye, bye delicious love! It was scrumptious while it lasted!

Painfully, with much withdrawal and heartache, I went cold turkey.

Since I wasn’t having it every day, my body grew accustomed to no caffeine. Which was fine, it’s not like doctors everywhere are recommending caffeine for hypoglycemics. It’s been difficult knowing that I can’t drink coffee at all. The definite no made coffee all the more alluring.

Thankfully, because of dairy pills, I can still have some dairy. I don’t go crazy, it just means if I splurge now and again I won’t deal with a week of discomfort. So I tried a coffee a couple times. And trust me, it wasn’t pretty.

I went CRAZY! I could barely keep my brain under control. You name it; I got it. The shakes, mental instability, emotions running up the wall, and a giant crash to finish it off. But for my pure love of the drug, I persevered. A couple tries later, and I could basically tolerate it. I still get hyper and sort of shaky, and it definitely keeps me awake if I drink it too late.

The wonderful thing is though, now that I know I can drink it, I don’t crave it all the time. I don’t want to break the rules each time I drive past a coffee shop. I’m able to say no without having to feel like I’m depriving myself.

I still love coffee, I always will, but even in the euphoria of love, you need to know when too much is…too much.