What Problems Are You Attached To?

 

Photo by Jonny Caspari on Unsplash

Originally posted on Medium.com here.

It was late afternoon, and I was on my way back to my extended-stay hotel. I’d been working in Pennsylvania for weeks, more than 2,000 miles from home.

I pulled my rental car into the Wawa parking lot without thinking. At that point, it was basically muscle memory.

Finish work. Stop for a Diet Dr. Pepper.

Because, you know, the one I drank at the start of the day wasn’t enough.

You never need soda. I just wanted one. That old craving. I could already taste it: the syrupy fizz, the cold, chemical comfort (makes it sound kind of gross when I put it that way). The hit of whatever fake sugar they use — and the caffeine, for sure — but also the feeling of being twelve again, back in that little warehouse with my mom and my brother, working late into the night on heat-activated, color-change, Tie Dyed t-shirts.

We’d stop at Circle K at the beginning of each shift, mugs in hand. Refill them around 9 p.m. and again halfway through. I used the same red 32oz Holiday Oil mug every time, even though the lid didn’t quite seal. (True story.) I couldn’t fill it to the top or it would spill in the car. To drink, I had to stretch my bottom lip around the crack in the lid. Or just use a straw.

The shirts had to be dried at blistering heat to lock in the color-change effect without creating a shirt that only reacted where you sweat the most. Nothing like a t-shirt that highlights your underarms with bright neon green.

My brother and I made a game out of it — seeing who could pull the most shirts from the dryer before giving up to the pain. Hold them too long, and they’d give you blisters. I used to wonder how much hotter they’d have to get to actually catch fire.

We didn’t have air conditioning, just a bay door open to the night. I can still feel the weight of those shirts in my arms, the smell of dye and fabric softener, the condensation dripping down my mug.

I didn’t know then that I was building a ritual I’d return to when the world felt too chaotic.

But standing in that Wawa parking lot in 2018, I felt it.

Not nostalgia — need.

Not for the drink, really. For the rhythm. The familiarity. The old version of myself I thought I could sip my way back into.

And so I walked in.

(It’s more dramatic in the retelling.)

I stopped drinking soda for more than a decade. It wasn’t some dramatic health decision — I just moved on. But when life got heavier and the travel piled up, the habit crept back in.

I’ve always joked that I blame my mother for the addiction, even though she was a die-hard Coke drinker. But it’s easier to blame someone else than admit I was holding onto something because I didn’t want to let go.

One morning, in Pennsylvania again on a different trip, I stopped at Wawa for a fountain drink on my way to the office. I was on crutches — tore my right hip flexor getting out of a rental car after an awesome run. I’d written about it in my journal the night before: how I was hobbling around, pretending I wasn’t as hurt as I really was.

But there I was, maneuvering a 44oz Diet Dr. Pepper with one hand, crutch in the other, trying to keep my hip from moving while limping toward the car with all the grace of a newborn camel.

I couldn’t carry much that week. But I carried that drink.

And that says a lot.

I’ve carried this habit like it’s nothing. Just a drink. Just a “minor” vice. Something small. Something harmless.

But lately I’ve been wondering: how many things like that am I still carrying?

How many things have long since expired but still ride around with me — quiet, bubbly, comforting?

We all have our favorites. Not the good kind. The ones we don’t talk about, because they’re not dramatic enough to sound like real problems. But they still hold us.

Maybe it’s the 800-calorie breakfast burrito you always get and always regret. Maybe it’s the over-functioning at work because you don’t know who you are without being the fixer. Maybe it’s the scrolling. The snacking. The biting back the truth one more time so no one feels uncomfortable.

We don’t always carry these things because we love them. We carry them because they remind us who we used to be. And that’s easier than figuring out who we are now.

I don’t drink soda because I’m thirsty. I drink it because it reminds me of hard times that somehow still felt stable. Because I associate the sweetness with being useful, known, needed — even if I was exhausted and never got to rest.

I’ve quit a few times. Then picked it back up again, justified by stress, fatigue, or just the need to feel like myself again. And there it is — cold, sweet, predictable.

And maybe a little heavy, in its own way.

I used to make it a joke: “Yeah, I’ve got my one vice. Don’t take away my soda.”

But it’s not funny when I think about how often I’ve used small things to buffer big stress. How quickly I reach for comfort when what I really need is stillness. Or boundaries. Or honesty.

It’s not about the soda. Never has been.

It’s about the little problems I’ve learned to live with. The ones I defend, even. Or the ones I hide behind.

The ones I let define me long after they stopped being useful — if they ever were.

Some problems can seem sweet. But they stay too long.

I’m not here to make a dramatic declaration.

I haven’t given up Diet Dr. Pepper. There’ve been a couple of moments when I tossed a half-full bottle in the trash, determined to be done. Then I’ll stop at the gas station a few days later and pick it back up again.

But now, I pause before I reach for it. I ask what I’m really trying to feel. What I’m trying not to feel. What weight I’m pretending I can carry without consequence.

We all have our favorites, don’t we? The things we try to quit. The ones we manage or hide from instead of face. The ones we set down only to quietly pick up again.

Some of us will repeat that cycle for a lifetime.

And sometimes… it works. Remember, a lot gets done in the drama triangle.

Sometimes, though, we finally stop reaching for the thing that once held us, but no longer helps us. Again, maybe it never did.

Here’s the thing, though.

I don’t want to be someone who carries outdated versions of myself just because they’re familiar.

I don’t want to be attached to problems I’ve long since outgrown just because they’ve been around awhile.

I’m learning, slowly, that some things aren’t meant to be solved or managed. They’re just meant to be acknowledged. Released.

I’m not done learning.

But I am paying attention.

And that is enough.

Thanks for reading, and before you go. . .

I’m Aaron Pace. I write from the middle of things — life, business, fatherhood, faith, and the slow work of becoming someone I can live with. Not as an expert, but as someone trying to pay attention.

If this piece resonated with you, I’d be honored if you followed along here on Medium. I write — not because I’ve arrived, but because I’m finally moving again.