I have ADD, OCD and HFSA

HFSA - an acronym referring to Health Food Store Anxiety, a syndrome in which a person is inundated with panic and/or new-kid-in-school nervousness upon entering a health food store; may be accompanied by a tendency to purchase the wrong product rather than ask questions of a store clerk or the inclination to say that they know what spelt flour is when, in fact, they do not. Often coincides with Farmer's Market phobia and a general discomfort in stores that smell like patchouli.

First of all, you would not believe just how incorrectly I was spelling patchouli.

Second, and more to the point, I had to run to our local health food store earlier tonight to get some milk (we're trying to go grass-fed) and I found myself tensing up at the thought of walking past the Reiki club posters and through the door. This, despite the fact that the people who work there have been mostly lovely and not in that false I have to pretend that it doesn't totally irritate me to come out from behind my clerk station to show you that what you're looking for is right in front of you way. Unless their acting skills rival my Meryl, I truly believe that they are genuinely happy to show me to the milk thistle. Still, I put the task off as long as I could.

The fact is that I enjoy health food stores. I get the same joy perusing their aisles as I do a book store (or Pottery Barn Kids). I like discovering that things like kombu and agave nectar---which sound so very much like bird food---are, in fact, edible. I revel in a giddy perplexity as I ponder what wonders a $14 vial of vanilla extract (which I've bought) could possibly hold. I like clutching a bottle of green tea moisturizer in one hand and goat's milk night cream in the other and asking myself which one will make me look like organics-advocate Alicia Silverstone faster. (Both products are in my medicine cabinet at this very moment and other than saying "whatever" in the mirror every time I see a new zit, I don't see a likeness.) So then why do I always get so nervous surrounding this errand?

The answer?

I'm not a smelly hippie. I so wish I could be but Birkenstocks only ever make my calves look fat and as much as I hope to someday schlep a Korean baby around in a hemp sling, I doubt that I'll be able to pull that off either. Corduroy never falls loosely on my Ben and Jerry-loving ass and I always forget my reusable grocery bags when I go to the store and inevitably come home with armloads of plastic. I don't teach yoga, my mom isn't an artist who taught me to play the sitar and not only is my gray not coming in, but my braid is feet short of my ass. I don't even fit it on the next tier of health food store clientele hierarchy---educated young suburbanites. A North Face jacket does not an outdoorsy person maketh. I'm not the fashionably casual mom in a pair of Keens who is raising her children on organic juice boxes. Nor am I the young professor from the local university stopping on the way home for homemade yogurt and a bushel of swiss chard. I am the awkward girl in J.Crew khakis and a Tina Fey t-shirt whose cell phone is ringing in the next aisle, drowning out the piped in prayer chimes.

To be clear, I know I'm overthinking it. Perhaps I need some Passionflower to ease my anxiety. Still, it is this insecurity---my perceived (read: made up) sense of standing creaseless in a sea of crunchy---that fuels this nervousness (which is funny since my friend Matt has on multiple occasions made me remove my shirt so he could iron it). As much as I am learning about society's seed-y (oh, go me!) underbelly, as eager as I am to avoid the hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and genetic modifications that are all too present on the shelves of supermarkets, as hungry as I am for more changes than I have already made on this front, it still feels a little bit like a farce and that I should just go back to my nachos and Chef Boyardee.

I just went to the website to check the store hours and, I kid you not, their homepage is championing the merit of daily skipping. Like to my fuckin' Lou, skipping. I just don't think we'll ever be a natural fit.

Still, I'm committed to paying attention to what I'm putting in my body, balancing my pH levels and learning what pH levels actually are. Hopefully, someday I'll have the self esteem to go in there strutting my chakras like a peacock.

It will not likely be soon:

When Dan came home tonight he noticed that I was a wearing a hand-knit wool hat that a friend gave to me and asked me if I wore it to the health food store in an effort to get my earth on.

His exact words: "Did you wear that hat to the store, you poser?"

Someone's not getting a yin yang job tonight.