keep on, keepin’ on

by

adam art

have you ever given something away to a friend and then immediately regretted it? maybe it is a shirt you never wear, or a box of inscents you want someone else to experience? it could be the last cupcake that you really didn’t need to eat because you already had three. you really want them to have it, but letting it go produces this feeling of loss and brief sorrow. there is a moment, well, a mini moment, where you want to grab it back and say, “wait, i’m not ready”. But almost within that same breath, as the exchange occurs, your heart shifts and you feel a warmness. you feel happy and good. .. like you shifted something in the universe, either for yourself or for them.

there is something beautiful about letting things go, and this kind of experience reassures you of that.

i was talking with my boyfriends brother last night and he said something that struck me. Well, he said many things that did, but this bit was special.

he was talking about heather. not me, heather. another heather. the heather that grips his heart and shows him love and care and soul. the heather that he would do anything for and anything to not lose.

he was talking about how special she was, as a person, as an old soul. and then he said it.

he said that the last two months have seemed like two years to him because he has been doing so much emotional self-work, and that struck me. he went on to explain that he now understands that he has the tendency to be good for other people. he has felt placed on a pedestal with no where to go, no where to fall. he said that within the last two months he has eased up on himself. he has let go of the need to be what and where he was expected to be.

like giving something physical away, we also give away non-physical things… like love. like affection. like heart and honesty. when i share something about myself that i don’t find admirable, i feel that same brief moment of loss and sorrow. i feel afraid. i cringe knowing that giving away a moment of honest reflection to someone else might change the way they see me, or worse, the way i see me. but it always happens that within that same breath, i feel a warmness. i feel happy. i shared and it feels good.

when jesse’s brother told me that letting go of that need, which was so essential to him before, was taking so much work, i could sense that warmness in him. i could also sense the brief feeling of loss and sorrow. it was like he was discovering it for the first time. i’m certain he has been feeling this out for a great time, but talking out loud changes something in the way we see ourselves.

being honest means giving something away. it means exposing what is underneath the parts of you that you actively work to show. it means not showing the part of you that you like. it is like taking apart a mosaic, a beautiful crafted art piece to revel concrete below.

but the warmth from feeling understood is immense. it is overcoming, and becoming. its developing your mosaic in contemporary ways.

sharing is difficult. and rewarding. especially, (here comes the diabetes part) when you are being honest about diabetes.

after my boyfriend’s brother opened up to me, i wanted to share too. i wanted to open up and discover things too. i wanted the loss and the warmth all rolled into one.

so i said it. i took the diabetes path and told him my current truth.

saying to someone who loves you, “sometimes i choose to not take care of myself” is really difficult. there is a moment of loss and sorrow. i had to say out loud this terrible thing about ME. this gray as concrete thing, that i hate to face anyway. this thing that makes me feel pain and shame and guilt and tragedy. this thing that swells up in me, trying to get out, trying to get attention. i am never ready to give it away.

but i didn’t want to take it back. i wanted to find warmth. i wanted to change something in the universe as a result.

i don’t know if i changed something, but i did get the warmth. i lost a secret. i was keeping it from me. i wasn’t sharing with my ‘self’.

so, then. i guess i’ll just keep chipping away at what makes me tick and not tick. i’ll keep seeking moments to share and connect with others and the universe.

i’ll keep on. i’ll keep working.

i’ll keep on.

i’m a wild one, ou yeah, i’m a wild one

by

shark beer

have you ever felt an overwhelming need to just get out of somewhere? only, you aren’t sure what you’re running from or where ‘far enough’ is? you don’t know what you need from the distance, but it is the only fix you can think of for whatever it is that is happening in you to make you swell up like a pumpkin with friction and anxiety. it is the panic right after you see your meter that reads 47 and you are no where near food.

i feel like that right now and i want adventure. i want to get outside of normal life and have ‘an experience’. i want to get outside of my usual self and patterns and routine. i want to feel freedom and fresh air. i want flowers and big trees that tower over me and make me feel small. i need to feel small.

i got my a1c back today. i cried. 8.4

i’m bummed…

and feel a sense of injustice. i put a quarter into an arcade machine, and the machine didn’t count it, it just ate it. and then when i went to the help desk to tell them, i was told there was nothing they could do. so i am sitting here, full of some weird misplaced feeling and no outlet.

self pity? maybe.

confusion? perhaps.

disappointment? certainly.

feeling like i need to escape this feeling? yeah.

so despite my awareness of the fact that leaving for a weekend wont change my habits or my a1c results, i am going to run.

i am going to reward myself for going from 9.5 to 8.4, because it is movement in the right direction and because i HAVE been working hard.

i am going to run to rewards because, as a wise PWD once told me, diabetes numbers don’t play by the rules, and because i deserve it….

…and so do you. if you have diabetes or not and you beat up on yourself because of diabetes numbers or something else, join me this weekend in putting a stop to it (or at least one pause).

take a trip with me, get out of your normal space and try something new. let’s see what it’s like to be nice to ourselves. let’s try new coping strategies that may gear us toward better numbers later.

i am going to try something new. something adventurous. something daring and courageous.

lion heart. wild one.

i’m just the same as i was, now that you understand

by

Screen Shot 2013-04-10 at 5.32.28 PM

have you ever bought a book with the intention to read it and then never did? it sits on your bookshelf proudly to this day because you like the title and what people might think of you if they see it on your shelf? do you think that the unread books in your collection say something about who you are or what you are interested in? are you also slightly terrified of that person who walks in, has read one of your unreads and says “oh, how’d you like it?”

i am sitting on my bed. facing my bookshelf, wondering when i will ever allow my titles to become something more to me than decoration. sarte, krishnamurti, robert a johnson, f. scott fitzgerald, eckhart, when will i make time for you? when will i ever choose you over law and order svu?

the person i see myself being, the things i see myself doing, i am not and don’t. well, certain aspects of being and doing, anyway.

gaps. they exist in my life everywhere. this feels like a little one and i suppose i am okay with it.

i am under the assumption that if i allow myself to expose the gaps when they occur to me, when that lightbulb flashes and the horns go ERRR ERRR ERRRRRRR in my head, like the sound of a genetics lab closing down for quarantine, then maybe identfying them will get easier over time.

what i mean to say, is that every time i find clarity and see that there is a gap between how i see a situation and how it really is, an opportunity is born. an opportunity to learn. Each time i peel back a layer to see the layer underneath, i get closer to the seed, and when i find the seed, i find what makes it grow and what doesn’t. when i find out what makes it grow, i can find the right light and give it that too. i can know myself bit by bit, if i choose to remember each piece, each layer, as i go. i may never understand the seed, but that is almost irrelevant.

i can find strength in my ability to identify my gaps and address them rather than shun myself because the gaps ever existed to begin with.

if diabetes were a food, it might be swiss cheese. gaps everywhere. i think i do so much, i think i do everything in my power. i think i work out enough, but thinking about working out isn’t enough. i think i eat well enough, but i can’t remember the last time i ate anything green. i think i check my blood sugar enough, but i lie on occasion to avoid feeling guilty about the fact that i haven’t checked all day and its dinner time.

just like my bookshelf, i choose titles that i haven’t read yet, i claim to be in better control than i am, to be trying harder than i am. like my titles that serve only as decoration, they say more about who i want to be than who i am. but that doesn’t mean i am not trying at all.

and here is the truth, it’s hard to admit to this gap because it is scary to face the possibility that your being doesn’t equate to you “being [ideal]”. i wanted to be those titles, i wanted to have read the books, and i wanted my a1c to reflect how well i told people i was managing. but i haven’t read them, they don’t describe me, and my a1c still sucks. and this is hard because under this model of thinking, i can almost never see myself as ideal.

but, guess what? BAM. i am ideal. BANG. i like who i am. i can find things about myself that i didn’t build into my image of perfection, but that i exude anyway. for example, the ability to articulate. my friend, mike, might beg to differ. but I KNOW i am very good and getting across how i feel. that’s a skill, and a skill i didn’t demand of myself from the beginning. its a surprise, an extra. and something i’m proud to say is a part of me.

and so i’ll end with this…. a quote from a book on my shelf that i haven’t read, that out of context speaks to moving forward in the face of adversity …

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

move onward, my friend, onward.

come up for air, come up

by

jellyfish 2

i was with family last night. a family member who i hadn’t seen in 3 years brought a friend. he is an ‘adult’ adult. by that i mean that no one will question it if he is an adult or not. it has nothing to do with age. but as a reference, maybe 35+ = adult adult. that’s beside the point.

what i am getting at is:
i did something weird when i met this adult adult. i did the diabetes thing. i gave him the spiel after he asked me one question about it. i went on and on about the difference between type 1 and 2 and all the good educational stuff about being sensitive and non-ignorant. and here is the thing, i did it in a teachers voice. i controlled the situation and semi-intentionally held the conversation captive so that i could SHOW him that i was an adult, not a kid. i showed him that i knew a LOT about something. he seemed impressed and i was happy. i felt powerful.

but, in the car ride home, that mostly one-sided conversation really started to bother me. why did i do that? was i being a power-seeking bitch? did it come off that way? am i actually power-hungry?

this is my conclusion:

im 22. … it’s a weird age.

it is an age where you can decide which side of the fence to be on. adult or kid. do i want to be grown up and do grown up things, or do i want to keep being young and do young things? and what’s more, beyond whatever your preference is, kid, adult, or somewhere in between, being 22 means you are getting sized up by adult adults. most adult adults are aware of the fact that people around 22-25 are going through this weird responsibility-growing transition. many adult adults seem open to letting a 22 year old prove them-seleves one way or the other. what i mean to say is that i am 22 and when i go into a room of adult adults, i get to show them whether i am mostly a kid or mostly a adult.

i am 22 and i have trouble with this. i dont feel like a kid, and i dont feel like an adult either. i still call my mom every other day to chat and catch up. i still ask my parents to handle my taxes for me. but i have a job. i pay my own rent and bills. i volunteer. i make my own schedule and take care of my own health. i have a dog that i take care of and a social life that i manage to keep. i am grasping hard to SOME aspects of both. how do i find a balance or decide either way?

this is what is happening on a deeper level:
i am feeling a power struggle. i feel a need to prove that i am not a kid, but an adult…. and more, i want to prove not only that i am an adult, but that i am a confident, going-places, powerful, strong, intelligent, at your-level, adult adult. BUT, at the same time, i also want to achieve things before i become a real adult. i want to have set up insulliance programs all over the country by the time i am ready to set into a career and be a real actual adult adult.

I need someone with wisdom here… what do i do? wait it out? keep trying to prove myself all the while clinging to the idea that im doing more than i should be at my age? im massively confused, afraid of not living to my ‘potential’ and still frightened that if i keep working and volunteering this much in pursuit of being seen as an adult adult, i’ll miss all my “best years.”

help?

but what would i say

by

jellyfish

i’m happy. should i even be writing? i’m busy. how to find the time…

i want to write about something special today. not just my life, but something bigger. today, amigos, i want to write about inner dialogue… which is going to be about my life anyway. sorry. i don’t know anyone’s life better than my own.

i am good at listening. i know how to be a friend and when to use what type of listening. i could teach classes on active listening, relationship listening, evaluative listening, whole-person listening, intent listening. i know listening like i know diabetes.

but for some reason, amidst my self-proclaimed and admittedly self-fullfilled well-endowed ear, i often fail at what is considerably the most important. i don’t listen to myself. i often forget to afford myself the same depth of listening i lend to friends and family, and even strangers.

it takes me ages to sit down and do a little self-recap. it takes months. what do i ACTUALLY want and need right now?

here’s my theory. i live at many levels of being. i seek satisfaction in many ways as a means to, for the lack of a better term, shut up most of the levels that have to scream to get an ounce of attention. i guess it is fair to say i am as good at ignoring myself as i am at listening to others

there is something wrong with that. trust that i see the errors in my ways…

but what to do about it? well, writing helps. i know it does. i know that when i am ignoring myself at more than one level of being, the first thing i do, is put off writing.

i have to face things when i write.

i’ve never been good at bullshitting

when i lie, i have to confess to at least three people almost immediately

what does this mean?

well.. it means that i have not been writing because i have been hiding something from myself, ignoring something on some level that i didn’t let come up for air.

and you guessed it. now i am writing because i have worked through it mostly.
not completely. but i am getting there.

i wont get too deep into it here, but lets just say i have been going through an identity crisis. not about diabetes. but about something seemingly more trivial than that. about something that makes me feel like a lesser human being for feeling. something that helps me let myself fall into a pattern of self-hatred and binging. and when i say binging, i mean in the sense of food, yes, but also in the sense of time. i overdo it with commitments. i dont give myself a second of time to reflect on what is happening emotionally in and around my body. i ignore it.

and this one, this crisis… it was a doozy. i fought it like i haven’t fought anything in a long time. i didn’t want it. i felt icky all the time. i felt like the feelings i was having meant i wasn’t a good person. logically i can easily wiggle out of the feeling and so i do.

but wiggling out doesn’t mean dealing

so i delt, i faced, i cried, and now i am kind of over it.

so here i am

i might write about the crisis itself later

but this is about finally listening

this is about applying my skills for me

so BOOM. doing it.. i’ll report back in process

and in the meantime, i’ll get back to the unexpected blues…

dear mrs. lonelyhearts

by

couch lady

below is a part one of a short story that i have been working on. whhhhhhaaaat’s upppp? 😉

i want you to pick the characters name. leave suggestions in the comment box.
i hope you enjoy the tale

———————- there was a moon involved —————————

There was a moon involved,  that is for sure. It was a bright one too. It was bright- like one of those awful florescent beam style lights. You know, the ones you see in apartment kitchens and industrial warehouse-like stores. It’s an invasive light. Yeah, that’s how it was. Moonlight isn’t supposed to be so intense. Maybe it was the drugs I was on at the time. Probably, the drugs.  

Who else was there? Well, I guess there was a dog park. But there weren’t any dogs. Or at least I suspected so, since I didn’t hear any barking. It was pretty dark, except for that moon. If it weren’t for that moon, I wouldn’t be here.  That’s what I believe anyway.

I’m not very good at making shit up, but the night the moon was invasive I did give it a try.

I was wearing a heavy coat. It was heavy like it weighted on me. It wasn’t one of those that keeps all your heat in and keeps you hot, but it weighed a lot. Felt like I was carrying space on my shoulders, like I was right at the atmosphere. I don’t know. Hard to explain. I was carrying a bag. It wasn’t big enough to hold a body, so don’t be thinkin’ that, okay? It was the size of one of those reusable grocery bags, I like to be green, you know? Ha ha. Oh I got a good laugh that day. There was a gal walking down the street. She was wearing a pants suit. It’s always funny when gals do that. Her suit, it had floral print on it, but like a couch. It was hideous. And her coat and her pants, both this couch looking thing. She looked like a walking couch. And, AND, she had this little pup with her too. One of those ugly little things. Guess what? Oh this was the kicker. Her pup was wearing a matching coat. It was nearly eighty-five degrees out and this bitch had her dog wearing a couch. Who does that? Oh I did get a good laugh from that.

But I was carrying this bag. I wont tell you what was in it, but it was light. Know that it wasn’t hurting my back any to carry, and it doesn’t take much for my back to get all riled up. I was walking the lining of that dog park, the one by that old kids park. The one that those crazy Bezerkeley people fought to keep. They didn’t want the woodchips everyone was trying to bring in. Sand, sand, sand, People just have to fight, you know? It’s in our  nature. People who grow up good and don’t have any real problems, well they make their own problems and fight for something ‘good’. Fighting is fighting, if you’d ask me. But you wouldn’t would you?

So I was walking along this dog park when a guy with no shoes comes running up the way. This was right after I saw the couch lady, and I was still pink with laugher.  But I got a little spooked when he got closer cause his face was all white. Almost like he had taken chalk, like the kind gymnasts use to avoid the blisters, and just rubbed it everywhere. and he had beads of sweat just rolling off his chin like he’d been through the Hollywood staged rain, the kind that it way too heavy to be made by nature unless you live in Indianapolis or something, and he had short hair, so that didn’t help any. But this guy, he just looked at me weird. Like he wanted something. And I guess he did because he stopped right when I got to him, or when he got to me, whichever.

He just stopped and stared at me like I had something to say. When I didn’t say anything, but just stared back, he got all choked up, like he couldn’t breathe, going blue in the face or something. So I guess I felt compelled to ask if he was all right, cause it wasn’t long in this awkward silence that I asked him if he was going to pass out or something.  I asked him and this guy, – he almost screamed back at me. He said one long sentence; it was like he was trying to say as much as he could in one breath, like he was in trouble. But he wasn’t in trouble and I don’t remember what he said verbatim, but it was something like “I was meant to run into you here and you have to tell me where to go next, but tell me a short story now, please I need a story, please, it can’t be real life, please a story, then tell me where to go, I cannot complete my journey without you.” Like I said, his words were probably different than that, but it is what I remember.

I didn’t know a story could kill a man. 

…

the dark days are over, the dark days are done

by

i got questioned by the police today.


Screen Shot 2013-02-11 at 5.12.45 PM
wispy cloud

what a dramatic opening line, no? it’s true, though, it’s true! well, sort of…

i was walking to work today and i stumbled upon a man being pushed into a police car. the man was clearly off his rocker, but through his distressed rumbling and ranting he made eye contact with me. the moment that happened i saw something switch in his eyes… he had an idea.

within seconds he pointed and started yelling “that’s her, that’s her, that’s the girl i ….” he must have kept talking but at this point i was so stunned by his remarks that i sort of tuned it out.

so the five police officers that were ‘helping’ him into the car all turned to me. two of them stepped two feet to the left to confront me.

“do you know this man?”

i snickered. because, no, i didn’t know him. i had never seen him before. and, i snickered like in a bitchy way. i’m not proud of this, but my first thought was “crazy homeless man”…

here’s a confession, i watch way too much law and order SVU. really, it is a twice or thrice daily occurrence for me. and in my law and order tainted mind, i simultaneously got excited and frightened, and then expressed in a potentially suspicious manner, “i never saw him before”

i say ‘potentially suspicious’ because after the words came out they said something like ‘are you sure?’

i said i was certain and they ‘let me go’.

i walked away feeling like a secret agent. this mild, short interaction in my mind turned into a ‘run in with the police’. it’s fun to embellish, when it’s all in good fun.

this interaction has nothing to do with diabetes, other than the fact that it happened while i was walking to work at the Diabetes Hands Foundation.

BUT, it did inspire me to continue writing a short story that i stared while on a flight home from philly, which incidentally is also inspired by law and order SVU. so, look out for part one, airing some time this week.

diabetes
diabetes
diabetes

diabetes hasn’t made its way to the short story yet, but who knows.

that’s how easy love can be

by

feathers
i’m sitting at my desk. it’s messy. i keep shit everywhere.
mom, if you are reading this… ho hum, it might be best if you closed your eyes.

i’m messy like a forest, or like my test kit case. you know, organized chaos. everything is everywhere to an untrained eye.

i like clutter. i like things. i like my things to be around me, to decorate me and my spaces. but on the flip-side… i also like to be in a clean, tidy space.

can’t i have both?

i decided that in my new room, the first one that i haven’t shared since i was 17, i would make this happen.

so folks…

room1

This is my room…

room 2

…and in my room I like to…

room 3

lounge. dance. collect solitude. write short stories. snack (as a verb).

room 4

in my room, i like to be with friends and make art

in my room, i keep diabetes supplies everywhere. can you find which pictures are hiding my diabetes trinkets?

first person to guess gets a present from me mailed to them.