The Jell-O Without the Fruit.

One of my favorite pastime desserts during the Easter weekend was the Jell-O, jiggler eggs. These babies were a thick gelatinous mix through and through. Pure, unadulterated, collagen, color, and sugar where there was no chewing no breaking down involved and quite honestly I had attempted to swallow whole eggs at my peak.

What was best about these thick, Jell-O creations was that the consistency was throughout and there was a lot of it. One of the reasons these overly-large candy bars, like the 2 pound Reese's or the 5 pound Hershey chocolate bars don't entice even the chubbiest of memories inside of me is because I image the texture has to change to make a bar, or a Reese's that big. There is no way the ratio of chocolate to peanut butter is the same, just bigger. Just like when I used to eat Macaroni growing up, I hated the shapes because they seemed to taste different, like some kind  of ingredient was in the noodles to help them hold their cartoon shape. 

The ratio is all off. 

When was the food ever enough? Like, I know my eating habits are coming in after food had already been adulterated, but from where I started, plain noodles to noodles with EXTREME cheese and BACON CRUMBLES and BITS of SOMETHING inside has been the case. What about inside of us, what about who we are though? Like, are WE good enough without having to be, "larger than life," or leaner or more accolades, or funnier, or learn a magic trick to impress people, for our conversation skills suck? 

"Yes, could I please have the French Toast, with powdered sugar, ice cream on top and sides, and chocolate syrup, along with what appears to be cookie crumbles, I think that might get the ol' heart a pumpin." 

Transition from food to us as people is an easy one for me, because I think people are like food; there are never enough variations, and sometimes the food alone doesn't seem to, "satisfy." Now we start to enhance ourselves through careers, through family, through bettering our bodies for, "ourselves" we claim and I believe to be true for many, however, if it was, "for ourselves" would we need to post photos? 

Like my wife has asked me before about writing, "If you like doing it so much, do you have to post it?" So it got me thinking, "Am I doing this for me, or for attention from others?" Am I enough? Do I need you to read these things because I am no longer this, "young stud" if I was even then? Am I OK with irrelevancy? Who am I and what am I doing this for? 

I am enough too. 

All great questions I contemplate every day and little by little as I continue to write. That is my journey, however, and not yours. No, yours might be more complicated than that. Yours might involve some trauma from the past, some inadequacy felt from a child scorned or feeling unloved by family. Your past my have had you in survival mode thus preventing you from growing, maturing properly and now you are left with the recoil of it all. 

The reason we add fruit to Jell-O sometimes is to alter textures, add to the dessert (after all, it is dessert). We are trying to take a treat, and make it better. I have even had Jell-O mixtures where gummy worms were inside of the grape mixture, like dirt and worms I guess, horrible, the gummy candies begin to break down by the way. So, being, " in addition to," is not always better, when the Jell-O is good all by itself. 

The post isn't for relevancy, for I have checked that, but for at least the one time you read your Facebook feed to see something that hits the right spot, telling you, "you are not alone," and "you are enough," two things that we might struggle with on a daily, hourly even, basis, thus, interfering with meeting our max potential in this world. 

I had written a book also regarding my own body image disorders, and how lacking muscle, or more importantly, seeing lack of muscle from the sufferer affects life and detriments the quality. This book is a self-help/Memoir with treatment ideas in the back and anecdotal stories from my life, click HERE, or let someone you know and care about that this information does exist and things can get better.

God Bless.