Yeah, It's Personal

Wow. Was yesterday ever one of those days. High highs, lowest of lows. Not much in between. I feel like I was dragged kicking and screaming through the emotional ringer!

Now, I'm not going to rehash all of it, but just one particular part.

The part that gets the most personal.

I don't talk about being gluten free very often on this blog anymore, as I feel there are plenty of other bloggers out there who do it so well, and as their main focus. And really, we have so much going on in our lives that I generally have more important (and interesting) things to talk about here than my gluten intolerance.

That said - it's a big part of my daily life, and key to my personal/physical well-being. Of the many problems I had that can be contributed to gluten - the worst and most difficult to deal with was the emotional rollercoaster - high highs (borderline mania) to the low lows (depression) and the constant swing back and forth. And that is the thing that I missed least of all since giving up gluten. So let me be clear - I am not gluten free because it's a fad. I am gluten free because I was sick. So sick.

If you've been following this blog for a while, you'll remember that last season on the ranch we had a chef here who was super accomodating to my gluten free diet. I was very supportive of him, always friendly, helped him in any way that I could, and always willing to feed myself if accomodating my needs became an issue with a particular meal.

I found out last night that he'd been deliberately slipping gluten into my meals all of last summer.

It's devastating. And so personal. So very personal. Deliberately messing with a person's health is awful. I can't imagine what I ever said or did to him that made him feel like he needed to be so cruel.

And, of course, because I don't report my bowel movements to the chef, he thought I was just fine, so he kept lying to me and feeding me gluten.

But what he didn't know is that I had some serious digestive issues last summer, which I entirely attributed to the food being too rich, or maybe my body didn't like the dairy.

And, while I try to keep it positive on the blog (after all - it's important to be positive!), I was on a serious, borderline BiPolar emotional rollercoaster last season. It was scary - I had manic highs and then would be severely depressed and sobbing uncontrollably several times a week. Many times I experienced both extremes in one day.

No one knew. Except Jason, who was worried sick about me. My degree is in acting, after all, so I just put on my best face most of the time. Sometimes you've just gotta fake it till you make it. But Jason thought I was miserable, and couldn't understand why I got so overwhelmed and upset all the time.

As soon as I told Jason last night - the light dawned in his eyes. It all suddenly made so much sense - my emotional rollercoaster, my terrible stomach problems, all things that changed when we left the ranch in the fall. Suddenly my emotions leveled out and I stopped having extremes.

Wow.

So that's where we're at. Jason wishes he could beat the pulp out of that chef. I feel violated.

But we're a team. And we're going to keep working at keeping me healthy.

Still, though... Wow.