Outwitting Your Personal Temptor

He gently turns your head so you can see them:  freshly baked doughnuts arranged in neat rows. He opens your senses -- visual, olfactory -- and walks you down memory lane, the lane that passes by the bakery, all the bakeries. By now, your taste buds are in a state of high arousal. You are salivating copiously. You yearn to lick the icing on the maple bar, savor the sweet custard inside; you think of crisp, warm apples fritters, sugary orbs filled to the bursting point with jelly...

He knows you are borderline diabetic, that you are at least twenty pounds overweight. He knows you struggle against temptation; that is why he tempts you. It gives him enormous satisfaction when you succumb and he can whisper in your ear, "junkie, junkie, junkie..." Later, he will direct your gaze to anything -- polished table tops, random mirrors, car doors -- anything that gives back the reflection of a bloated, sugar-saturated, post-binge food abuser. "Fat," he will whisper, "corpulent, blubbery, tubby, morbidly obese..."

Sometimes you can resist him, but a victory or two or three won't motivate him to back off. In fact, your success redoubles his determination to dominate you, to render you helpless before the thousand temptations he summons to attack and overwhelm you.

Essentially, he is trying to poison you, send you to an early grave after a period of acute suffering. He wants you to suffer and that is why he lines your path with temptations. He is a sociopath whose only genuine emotion is a sense of triumph. He is a junkie, too, a power junkie, a malevolent, contriving imp, a malicious micro-devil assigned just to you.

The only way you can outwit him is on a case-by-case basis, by saying, "This time I won't," and turning away from the bakery case filled with doughnuts.

If, on the other hand, you say, "Never again!" he will twist your declaration into a whip and flog you with it endlessly, repeating as he does so, "Never! never! never!

The only way to trick him is to keep him in the dark as regards your intentions. Thus, when he sends you, salivating like a St. Bernard, in the direction of your local cafe, you will turn abruptly right instead and go through the door to your fitness club where you will exercise until your body dissolves into sweat and...yes!...the blessed endorphins come.