Unknown Ingredients

Ignoring and not knowing (and hiding) doesn’t work long term.

Hard but true.

I didn’t need more tea, I knew this, but "somehow" I found myself in the tea aisle at the grocery store. I should have kept walking. I knew this too.

I stood there browsing, and blissfully dropped three boxes into my basket: decaf black chai (been into spicy chai lately), detox dandelion and burdock root (been wanting to try dandelion, not sure why), and everyday wellness with lemon, ginger, and manuka honey (fancy).

First action when I returned home: put the kettle on. I unpacked the groceries and brewed my first pick—everyday wellness, the fancy one. I don’t want to admit it to you, but it was $8 for the box. The others were less.

First sip. What the hell is this?

I knew exactly what it was, actually. I didn't need to ask. Licorice.

I grabbed the box to look at the ingredient list: licorice root. Second ingredient. Seriously?

Irritated, I dumped it after trying a second sip, just to be sure (what's that about?), and promptly brewed the detox dandelion. First sip, and it happened again. Licorice root. At least it was last in the ingredient list.

What a waste of money. What a waste of time. What a waste of bliss.

I get that my disappointing tea experience was my own fault, that I should have read the ingredients listed on the side of the box. In my Tea Bliss State at the store, I did not think of this prudent step. It was not the first time this had happened either: same scenario with the oversized zeal buying tea, same scenario with the oversized licorice surprise. I probably still have that old-licorice-disaster tea in the back of a kitchen cabinet. Just in case my tastes evolve, which could happen. Really it could.

The fronts of tea boxes should have warning labels for licorice, like “Hot” for salsa. And if a tea doesn’t taste like lemon, ginger, and honey, if the main taste is licorice, shouldn’t licorice be named on the front of the box? Did the tea makers ignore this important fact or did they really not know their tea tastes 97% like licorice?

Ignoring and not knowing (and hiding) is how I used to feel, about myself. I didn’t know my inner ingredients, and I suspected they were oversized (like licorice) in the undesirable category. Who wants to "discover themselves" and find a surprise like that? I was not a box of cracker jacks. But ignoring and not knowing (and hiding) hadn't worked out. The unknown inner workings of me had built up over the years and had leveled me to the ground.

Stuck and shut down from life (and from myself, by the way) for years, and without a horrific past to point to as a reason why, it was easy to think something was wrong with me, like basically I was wired incorrectly and couldn't handle regular life. Life just wasn't for me. But by doing the scary work of digging around in the unknown, I discovered this: I personally was not in the undesirable category (most days), it was just inner pain that was undesirable.

Just inner pain. Like there's anything just about it.

But I could handle pain—in small doses, around small things, in small steps. And over time through dealing with that layered, stuck pain, I was no longer unknown.

PS Inner licorice can transform and dissipate. Real licorice cannot. Read all tea labels.

PPS The new 97% licorice tea is now jockeying for space in the back corner of a kitchen cabinet. It might taste better if I try it again later. Really, it might.