(no subject)
today i had a hollow, sad, distant feeling, a new feeling:
today i wanted to rip my pump off and chuck it off the freeway.
i feel guilty even writing that.
i recently realized that i never feel absolutely, positively nude unless i am changing my pump site. there are rare afternoons when i decide to remove my pump sticker while i'm showering, and there's a little glimmer of time - an insulin wormhole - when my body is truly, completely naked, untouched by needles or tubes or external anything, where it just IS. it's a mischeivious, almost flirty sensation, like i've been pulled over for indecent exposure.
when this happens, i usually shut the blinds and turn on my favorite song and dance.
for fifteen minutes.
because after fifteen minutes, my internal panic begins, and i busy myself with more sticking and poking and applying until i'm all hooked up again. and i might not be wearing anything at all, but still i'm tethered to this constant reminder that my body is a red herring.
i got a phone call this morning about my most recent blood exam.
it was terrible.
my blood sugar patterns are just...
humbling.
and then i felt naked.
not nude. not sensual. not alive.
raw. embarrassed. vulnerable. exposed. ashamed.
the physician's assistant had left this annoyingly cheerful message on my answering machine:
"hi, this is catherine! Dr. X has asked me to tell you that your blood sugar is too high and that you should cut out fatty foods and high carbohydrate meals from your diet. Oh, and you should really remember to exercise at least half an hour a day, four days a week."
i missed her call because i was on a run.
i have been running about four days a week.
before that i did bikram yoga for ten days.
dad and i did a 10k race on labor day.
i've stopped eating desserts.
i test my blood sugar more times a day than i care to admit.
and i could list the hundred and fifty factors that made my blood sugar results so dismal, but that would make us all depressed, so i won't. but the fact of the matter was, it wasn't for lack of exercise. and i certainly don't need to be reminded of the "risks of my disease."
oh, fuck that word.
"disease."
dis - ease.
without ease.
whenever my ego crashes back to earth, as it does on days like today, that part of me that is still sixteen and bitter returns. i resent ice cream parlors and pro-lifers who think stem cell research is cannibalism. whatever my mom says i instinctively want to contradict, even though she's my strongest advocate. i want to break something, and then i want to fix it. i want to read the comics and forget any of it happened.
my mom said to me today, "what can you get from this that is positive?"
and i thought suddenly of a poem that jennsox wrote me freshman year. she described me "impossibly optimistic." sometimes the impossibility of optimism feels real.
today i wanted to rip my pump off and chuck it off the freeway.
i feel guilty even writing that.
i recently realized that i never feel absolutely, positively nude unless i am changing my pump site. there are rare afternoons when i decide to remove my pump sticker while i'm showering, and there's a little glimmer of time - an insulin wormhole - when my body is truly, completely naked, untouched by needles or tubes or external anything, where it just IS. it's a mischeivious, almost flirty sensation, like i've been pulled over for indecent exposure.
when this happens, i usually shut the blinds and turn on my favorite song and dance.
for fifteen minutes.
because after fifteen minutes, my internal panic begins, and i busy myself with more sticking and poking and applying until i'm all hooked up again. and i might not be wearing anything at all, but still i'm tethered to this constant reminder that my body is a red herring.
i got a phone call this morning about my most recent blood exam.
it was terrible.
my blood sugar patterns are just...
humbling.
and then i felt naked.
not nude. not sensual. not alive.
raw. embarrassed. vulnerable. exposed. ashamed.
the physician's assistant had left this annoyingly cheerful message on my answering machine:
"hi, this is catherine! Dr. X has asked me to tell you that your blood sugar is too high and that you should cut out fatty foods and high carbohydrate meals from your diet. Oh, and you should really remember to exercise at least half an hour a day, four days a week."
i missed her call because i was on a run.
i have been running about four days a week.
before that i did bikram yoga for ten days.
dad and i did a 10k race on labor day.
i've stopped eating desserts.
i test my blood sugar more times a day than i care to admit.
and i could list the hundred and fifty factors that made my blood sugar results so dismal, but that would make us all depressed, so i won't. but the fact of the matter was, it wasn't for lack of exercise. and i certainly don't need to be reminded of the "risks of my disease."
oh, fuck that word.
"disease."
dis - ease.
without ease.
whenever my ego crashes back to earth, as it does on days like today, that part of me that is still sixteen and bitter returns. i resent ice cream parlors and pro-lifers who think stem cell research is cannibalism. whatever my mom says i instinctively want to contradict, even though she's my strongest advocate. i want to break something, and then i want to fix it. i want to read the comics and forget any of it happened.
my mom said to me today, "what can you get from this that is positive?"
and i thought suddenly of a poem that jennsox wrote me freshman year. she described me "impossibly optimistic." sometimes the impossibility of optimism feels real.