To avoid seeing the syringe and pointy metal objects coming at my face, I painstakingly try to fixate on a ceiling poster of furry puppies scampering in a hazy spring meadow. WhrrrrWhrrrWhrrr. Eureka! It’s a cavity — lucky cavity number 21. The dentist wipes off the enamel residue accumulating on his spectacles, shakes out his wrists and drills further.

“Charissa, are you brushing regularly?” he asks with a raised eyebrow. I slightly nod my head, trying not to disrupt the excavation party going on in my mouth. I think back to the half-dozen chocolate chip cookies I ate the day before, to the pineapple cake I ate for breakfast all last week, to the countless Sylas and Maddy’s ice cream outings and mini Snicker bars, and I wonder if it’s all been worth it.

For a long time I was in denial about my addiction. I remember when I was just tall enough to climb onto the kitchen counter to steal extra helpings of Oreo cookies from the cookie jar. I also remember my transparent denial when my parents confronted me about the stuffing-less chocolate shells left behind. I’d stash bags of candy from a recent shopping spree behind books and in my dresser drawers. I hid my hankering for sweets because my parents emphasized self-discipline, and I was eager to please, plié-ing all over the studio in ballet class, tripping over my own feet playing soccer and eating in moderation at their urging.

The school lunches my mom made for me in grade school were the worst. Not only did I have to go an entire day dessertless, but my lunch also lacked popular appeal. Against school rules, students would smuggle in junk food, reinforcing their godliness among deprived sweet fiends like myself. To my awe, they quietly, yet proudly, displayed their contraband of tooth-rotting cans of Dr. Pepper and candy bars alongside their creamy peanut butter-and-jelly crustless white bread sandwiches. I frowned as I tried to quietly unvelcro my thermal lunch sack for my sensible meal of bologna on wheat bread, crusts intact, washed down with a mysteriously flavored Capri Sun, rounded out with an apple or occasional pudding cup for the finale. Dessert, my ass.

I found release in openly feeding my sugar appetite when I visited my California Grandma. When I’d hear Pavlov’s bell ringing on a distant ice cream cart rolling across the boardwalk, my grandma would urge me with a $5 bill to buy fudge-centered drumsticks. Extremely shy, I rarely approached strangers, but I was not one to miss out on an opportunity for dessert. For my grandma, ice cream was practical relief from the sweltering heat. I was as giddy as a kid on Christmas morning as I tore away the ice cream wrapper and bit into the chocolate shell, careful not to drop a morsel.

It’s not as if my parents forbade me to eat sweets (I was a twiggy thing and could have used the extra calories), but their constant harping on moderation and sensibility led me to feel guilty about my addiction. As a young adult, I began to taste my sense of independence — independence from my role as the abiding daughter, represented by me no longer restricting my diet. When I moved to Kansas for high school, I became known to my friends as “Sweet Cheeks,” thanks to my penchant for sweets as I hoovered up their birthday cakes each April. I no longer felt the need to hide my addiction.

Now, out of my parents’ house and their supervision, I eat enough sugar-laden products to induce an insulin coma. I make it a point to eat dessert with each meal, sometimes replacing it as a meal altogether, and it serves as an indulgence, a simple pleasure, in my life of moderation.

I admit that the pendulum of my addiction has swung into an extreme overconsumption of desserts, with my poor parents footing my dentist bills. I don’t know if my parents know the extent of my addiction, but I assume that they recognize that my frequent dentist visits are not the norm. I may have not grown up to be the graceful ballerina or goal-scoring Mia Hamm that they had hoped I would be, but I am indebted to them for their unwavering support throughout my life, from the failures to the toothaches. I am a sugarholic and proud of it, even if it means another drill session — the pain has never been so sweetly worth it.