Chewing Gum

I'm going to be real with you guys. Not many people may be able to relate to this post, but it needs to be relased from my brain, and I finally have the time to sit down and articulate it.

I have a love/hate relationship with the act of chewing gum. I define a love/hate relationship as something that you do on multiple occations that you don't think you hate until you are in the process of whatever that thing is and you suddenly remember all the things you hate about it.

Chewing gum starts out great. I often put it in my mouth to relieve a bad taste (a.k.a. coffee breath) or relieve anxiety I feel about a situation I am in. The flavor bursts in my mouth, tingling up and down my tounge, leaving my cheeks to absorb the flavor and reverberate it back to my mouth over and over again as the chewy substance pulls at my teeth as if it was it's life mission to make my jaw stick together, yet the incredible power of my jaw yanks the gum up and down on an unmistakable rythm only I create. It's an experience to say the least. This process continues for a solid half hour, making the consistancy of the gum stiffer with each clasp of the jaw, and the flavor increasingly present in my mouth. But this experience only lasts a half hour, at best. My jaw begins to get tired of the chewing, and the bursts of flavor deaden into an almost unpleasantly plastic-like taste. I do not enjoy this taste, and try to distract myself from it by mutilationg my gum in all sorts of ways with my toung and teeth, as if I am going to re-create the same enjoyment I experienced when I first put the gum in my mouth. I weave it in and out of my teeth, make tiny bubbles, etc.... Usually I am unsuccessful and get genuinly annoyed the gum is in my mouth at that point! I find the quickest route to a trash can and as if with every step I take, the gum gets unexplainably worse! By the time I spit it out, the tastes has become seemingly toxic and the gum itself has hardened to an un-pleasurable chewing point.

That is genuinely what I go through every time I chew gum. It starts out as love and tragically ends as hate.