There are times in life where a little moment happens that catches you completely off guard and makes you see how much you have changed and grown as a person. For me, that moment came when I walked into a grocery store for the first time after having just landed. As I was browsing through all the products available, I realized that I had something that I didn't have on my last trip.........awareness.
There have been times before when I meandered into a grocery store and all of a sudden an ominous feeling came over me. But in those instances, the feeling was along the lines of "Do these people know something that I don't?" whenever I saw a line at the supermarket from one end of the store to the other. And if any of them could have read my mind and answered me telepathically, they would have said something like this "Yes you silly girl, we do know something that you don't. Like the fact that tomorrow is one of Argentina's millions of national holidays and no grocery store is gonna be open so you had better get a cart and fill it with food or starve."
No, this time upon entering the grocery store, the feeling was different. It was one of déjà vu, like I've been here and done this before and things are same yet somehow different. As I strolled through the aisles, there was a new level of consciousness when it came to knowing and understanding the needs of my body and I was able to shop accordingly with that new knowledge. For those of you that don't know, on my last trip I began to experience fatigue and I didn't know why. It was during my time back in Canada that after some careful, thought, research, and experimentation that I came to the conclusion that I have high metabolism and low blood sugar.
Recently Elisabeth Hasselbeck was a guest on the popular food show "The Chew". She talked about the story of how her whole life she kept getting sick and no doctor seemed to be able to give her a proper diagnosis. However, her life changed when she was cast in Survivor: Australia in 2001. Interestingly enough when she was out there deprived of all her comforts, her body started to get stronger and stronger. All around her the other teammates were dropping like flies but she never felt better. Then after the show ended and she went back to the U.S. and started eating normally, the symptoms resumed.
At that point she knew it was something in the food that was causing her illness. Eventually, someone was able to get to the root of the problem......Elisabeth has celiacs disease. Her body got super happy in the middle of the outback when there was no gluten to be found :) But it took her a major life experience for her to discover this about her self as it did me to find out what my body needed.
Coming back to Buenos Aires for the third time, there was a sense of déjà vu. Everything was the same but at the same time not the same. While I was in Canada, nearly every single one of my relationships with people here changed. I changed as well and the needs of my body changed. So the key to coming back was to ease up on any expectations I had of my relationships with friends here as well as expectations I had on myself. The secret to season 3 is to keep it real, hope for the best but at the same time not have fantasies like Ariel the little mermaid about what it is like to be part of another world.....
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