Chocolate is addicted to me

Chocolate has a serious obsession with me. Every time I look around, all I see is chocolate – chocolate cookies, chocolate cake, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, chocolate chocolate!...argh. It’s in my drawer, on my desk, by the coffee machine, in my purse, by the laptop, in the fridge...I feel it is calling to me and laughing at me at the same time.

I think chocolate’s obsession with me started when I was a child when my parents introduced me to my very chocolate snack (we all blame our parents, you know you do!) and my love-hate relationship with chocolate started. This obsession carried me through the various rites of passage of high school – the good grades, the bad grades, the gossip, the tryouts for various sporting activities, the really hilarious but unsuccessful attempts at cooking in home economics, thesis writing, PROM and the big day - graduation (where we were not valedictorian and we didn’t want to be but secretly we did). Oh chocolate, how you consoled me during those turbulent years!

And then, came college. College. Really, that word alone sends me back through the wormhole of time to moments that were fun, tedious, stressful, blissful, happy, miserable, daunting, painful and triumphant. I think that pretty much describes College. ‘Nough said. Not enough chocolate to go around.

And then, reality sets it. The 9-5 job. The routine of commuting, working, working out, seeing friends, cleaning house, cooking, watching tv, laundry - the sheer dreariness of finding out that a 9-5 existence is tedious and boring and monotonous and [fill-in-the-blank-with-appropriate-adjective]. The days merged into weeks and the weeks merged into years. Thank goodness there was chocolate!

Now, many years later, life is flowing along nicely. There are still routines (some dull, some not so dull), passions are pursued, time with friends are cherished, work is something you do between 9am-5pm so that you can do what you really want from 5pm-12am. Food is enjoyed not rushed, music is listened to not criticized, yoga is used for meditative purposes not just for gossip and laughs.  Family time is cherished time. And, through it all, my true friend and companion Chocolate, has stayed by my side and in my desk and in the glove compartment and in the fridge and...

Oh, Chocolate! How you get me. Sometimes I think I keep the chocolate industry in business all by myself. And I’m ok with that. 

Oh, look at the time! Please excuse me. It’s time for my friend Chocolate and I to catch up.