Hospital Rooms

To those few followers who don’t know me personally; I am a Type One Diabetic and have been for about two-thirds of my life. I feel like this is something worth reading about, and if not, then at least worth writing about. I was diagnosed when I was six years old. I consider this an unfortunate thing, being so young, but then I look at my sister and realize she was only four. I have the vague memories of Before which she doesn’t even have. We were in the hospital three weeks from each other. I remember the ocean-themed room in the midst of being painted, and after I was done crying through the needle work on my arm I was honored with choosing the color of the octopus, which stood like an unfinished coloring book on the wall. Purple, was what I said. When I finally left, I peeked my head in to see the finished room I felt I was now a part of. Low and behold, the octopus was pink. It was probably the most upsetting thing I had experienced that week.

Around this time last year, my grandmother and I were talking in the kitchen of my aunt’s house. It was a conversation about mental health, attitudes, and the power of positive thinking. She ended up saying, “You could easily be depressed.” I agreed with her, even though my cousins did not understand why she would say such a thing. Diabetes has taken control of my life because it has to. Otherwise, I would not be here. It is like the child who constantly wants attention, or the annoying ex you just cannot get rid of. It can easily sneak up on you and break you down if you do not look after it, which is excruciatingly hard to do some days, because it is just not fair.

If I didn’t want to be a female anymore, I could get an operation. If I hated having brown hair, I could dye it. My eye color can change through contacts, my environment can change by moving away. My life can change if I stop being lazy, and tolerate the suggestion that wellness isn’t just for health freaks and yoga fanatics. But this? This I am stuck with. No matter what I do, or how much I try, it doesn’t get easier. If anything, the build up of scar tissue makes it harder, and you get to where you don’t even feel like a person anymore. So what do you do then? Doctors and hospitals are suffocating. People tell you how to live your life when all they see you as are numbers. My body is dead tissue under skin, and it’s no wonder your blood sugars are yo-yo-ing because I don’t want to do it anymore. 

If I had of told six-year old me this, she wouldn’t have understood. Hospitals are fun! She thought. Walking through the halls with the suitcase she never had the chance to use before, coloring pictures for the nurses to hang on their walls, room service, free toys, a view of the city lights at night, what wasn’t to like? To be completely honest, I don’t remember any of the bad parts, the scary moments from those first days. I remember making a cloth doll in the toy room, playing with fake food, squeezing stress balls, being incredibly jealous of the boy with the shoes with wheels that would roll on the floor. I remember eating out for the first time since being in the hospital, and walking back in like I owned the place. What I don’t remember is saying what my mother can’t forget; “Today was a good day, except for the bad parts.” The truest sentence I think will ever fly out of my mouth.

Six-year-old me was wiser than 17-year-old me. “Today was a good day, except for the bad parts, ” is the attitude you should have going into every single day. No matter how horrible your life seems in a moment of frustration, or when you are overwhelmed, today can still be a good day, and that is something not just diabetics should remind themselves of. Your outlook on the world you live in affects everything you do, think, and feel. A second of positivity in a moment of darkness can change your entire day. Sure, life sucks shit, but those mantras are tiring and old now. Life is what you make it, and if you want a happier one, or, like me, you want to kick Diabetes where it hurts–just smile. Even when you don’t want to. Smile until you don’t know what else you could possibly be doing. Smile until Life smiles back, because it will, and you’ll both love it.

 

 

(Fun)draisers

Saturday began our first fundraiser raising money for grad year. Being at school for noon on a weekend was not as horrible as I originally thought, but it was still a fundraiser. A canteen where we sold cheese goop on chips and steamed hot dogs to a gym full of exhausted parents and sweaty teenage boys. Two hours well spent.

I know most everybody goes through the same reactions, and I, too, will be one of those “Can’t believe it’s my last first day..” people when the time comes around,  but it is still bizarre. So it begins,  is the only phrase I can use to describe this weekend, for it’s the beginning of an end. An end to childhood, to high school, to an ignorance of the outside world I have yet to realize I have. So much yet nothing at all is this life right now. In the grand scheme of things, the years spent dwelling in the halls of public school are irrelevant and usually not thought of, so why is it that parts of you are scared to leave?

I am excited to start the life I will lead after graduation. I am not excited to graduate. Ceremonies are long and emotional. There is so much in one person, and when faced with leaving a close-knit group of 52 persons behind, it is overwhelming. It feels easier to just not do it, but that’s not how things work, thankfully, otherwise nothing would change and change is important. Everything changes. Everything has an end, and everything has a beginning. It’s true, what Scott Fitzgerald said, about the crisp, new beginnings of Fall, but I am ready for a real beginning. One with new environments filled with strangers, and rooms screaming to be filled with personality. I am excited for an independence I have yet to experience. I am looking forward to the person I will become after I graduate, and all I can do right now is hope she will be more than cheese goop on chips and steamed hot dogs.

Stems

I have been a busy person my entire life.

No, I have not always had a place I needed to go, or work that had to be done. I only went through my day-to-day encounters with the idea that everything needed to be done quickly. I must get to my next class quickly. I need to take these photos because they are needed quickly.  I would move from one project to the next, completing them frantically or not at all, in an attempt to jump to the next thing as fast as I can. As if it is an accomplishment, somehow. As if maybe I am trying to prove myself capable. Of what, I’m not sure. Life? Life is the only thing that comes to mind.

I use to glorify busy. It made me feel important, so much that I placed it into every aspect of my life. I was wrong. There is nothing glorious about rushed behaviors. It is only exhausting. Numbing. I have developed into a state where slowing down is considered both boring and dangerous, as if I will miss everything in the extra minute I take to just breathe.

I am trying to break this habit. It lacks presence.  I feel like I am not even here, or scratch that, I do not feel. Your mind is racing, your heart is racing, your body is racing, and you’re out of breath. I don’t feel. I do not remember to breathe.

It’s this busyness. This rushed pressure pushing you to get things done because you only have a short amount of time to do them, which is a lie. You have all kinds of time, and the only thing you need to do is buy milk, do the dishes, and finish your homework. Or walk down the hall, up the stairs, and into class.

I once read an article from a Colorado online magazine about grounding. In yoga, you visual the four corners of your feet meeting with the four corners of the Earth, and you hold on to that, using it to become grounded where you are.

Today I went for a walk to drop clothes off at my cousin’s. On my way back I realized how fast I was walking, as if determined, or in the process of being late. I stopped. I closed my eyes. I visualized the four corners of my feet meeting the four corners of the Earth. I remembered to slow down. I am here. I thought. I am here. I am here. 

I thought that, if I were to recreate this moment, what details would I need to know? I felt the coolness of the air biting at the tops of my cheeks, the wind curling around my fingers and hair. The sun, filtered dim through the trees, warmed nothing, but danced across the left side of my face. Small, needled branches dotted the path before me, and besides the crackling of the forest around me, the world was quiet. I walked in the middle of the road on my way home without the busyness of thought. Without busyness at all.

Authors note: The original copy of this blog post did not save properly and it took me a long time to rewrite this based on my faulty memory. I almost decided not to post, but I did. I just thought it was important to point out that the words you just read, or are currently reading and you decided to skip down from, had more potential. I might come back and edit this later. I hope I do because the beginning of this disgusts me, but oh well. Computers for you, eh? (Too Canadian?)