Outside our small safe place flies Mystery... A snake beneath the forest floor, a whisper: Melusine

I was diagnosed diabetic last Friday.

 

It is early on set and, with proper diet balancing, habit changing, and *gulp!* weight loss, I should be able to beat this. The hospital visit I made last Thursday saved my life.  It is a good thing that I listened to what my body was telling me.  Initially, I made the visit due to a persistant pain in my left side which turned out to just be a muscle I tore and, thank the Gods, not a liver or kidney infection.  But got the blood work and urinary tests just in case it was something serious.  And it was something serious, just not the kind of serious I thought it might be.  Besides being diagnosed with diabetes, I also have a nasty baterial infection in my intestines.  I usually try to get a check-up once a year and had been putting it off for a long while because I was afraid -- the usual emotional flare-ups, migraines, and bowel pain I experience had increased, along with a new set of frequent cervical infections -- these warning signs were forcing me to face my mortality... again.

 

It is change or die time. 

 

With this new challenge for my body, I had new medications to swallow.  I was in a world of pain Friday evening through Sunday morning, suffering from the kind of nauesa that I couldn't relieve myself from by vomitting, the kind that only deep sleep can save you from, but only temporarily.  I had made plans to spend a wonderful Valentine's Day with foreverknight and her family, an event that made my head swell up with dizzy excitement.  But my unhappy condition forced me to cancel.  I wept most of the night away Friday (not a good thing considering I was already dehydrated) and Saturday morning I was wondering if and when I would ever feel better again.  I couldn't even watch a dvd or listen to music.  My cat, Mr. Snuggles, was the best while I mourned.  He used his little furry body to wipe my tears away and kept close by my side.  I don't know what I would've done without him!  What also helped was knowing that Rebekah and Josh understood I was sick and nothing could be done to take it away but lots of rest.  There will be healthier days ahead of me.

 

Most of the nausea and dizzyness was caused by the anti-biotic I'm on, but mix that with the drug Metformin (which usually takes patients a few days to get used to anyway) both of which cause gas and I had painful pressure on the side where I tore my muscle.  I just couldn't win.  But relief has finally come to me today.  I feel more alive and free of discomfort, ready to take on the world and not wanting to hide away under my bed covers any time soon.  The best thing is I have my appetite back!  Yay.  I can finally eat again without a dizzy spell.  Bloating in my stomach area has gone down and, the best thing yet, I don't need to have any more blood work done until Friday morning.  Still, there is a lot for me to adjust to.  The key thing is not to get overwhelmed.  To go through things step by step and think positive.  This is not a death sentence, just a life changing sentence!  I have to keep thinking that way.

 

And yet...  I can't help but think of things I have to give up.  My biggest vice is drinking soda.  I've been sorting through my recycling lately and realize I have a HUGE amount of plastic bottles, enough to fill up a dumpster.  I've known all along that I should drink more water, but I'm so addicted to the sugary taste and fizz, I forget to drink water in general.  Just plain water doesn't taste right to me.  I have to have some kind of taste.  Vitamin Water almost replaces my desire to drink soda, but even those beverages can have sugar in them.  As I start to think of just how many drinks have sugar and other chemicals in them, I feel dizzy all over again, and a big part of me despairs.  Is there nothing I can enjoy anymore that doesn't hurt me?

 

When my body was first giving me signs of wear and tear, I sat down and had a serious discussion with myself.  I remembered all of the mean, yet well intended, things old friends have said to me over the years.  Not everyone knows how to approach an overweight friend and say, "Um, you seriously have got to get healthy" it usually comes out as (no matter how they say it) "you are too fat" and it's the one thing you don't want to hear, especially when looking at yourself in the mirror says that to you everyday.  I've dealt with weight issues all my life.  I thought I was really fat when I was only 120 lbs!  My mother was obsese, so being her daughter I was programmed to believe I would naturally be fat, too.  Frightened I would become like her, Mom put me through several unhealthy diets, only to further encourage me to not accept my body would ever be normal.  Shortly after the age of twenty, I decided to not deal with it anymore.  I had had enough with being critized for how much I weighed.  So what if I wasn't skinny, I would be for real, and who cares what anyone thought about me.  Well...  that isn't exactly the best way to think about my body, either.

 

Why is having a woman's body such a battlefield to deal with?

 

Previously I've tried to get healthy for men I loved.  They would badger me and I would feel battered.  I couldn't get sexual satisfaction and had to just be content with pleasing them because I was too self conscious about my body to request that they do something for me.  I blamed my fat for keeping love away from me but also considered my fat a sheild that, if only they could look past it, they would really love me for me and not for what my body looked like.  There was also the family acceptance part that bugged me.  My father would harass me about being fat all the time.  "You're never going to get anywhere looking like that," he'd say, and in that same breath he'd add, "all my other relations are thin!  You could look like a movie star if you just lost some of those pounds.  Then you'll get a boyfriend and a better job..."  I'm also not immune to the looks my cousins and half sisters give me, the same looks I get from strangers whenever I go out.  It's not like I'm a monster, but it seriously keeps me home alone.

 

The worst experience I've ever had in regards to my weight is the reaction a young child gave me one night.  I was just minding my own business walking around ShopKo when this innocent, angelic little kid walked up to me and said, "Momma, that lady is really, really fat!"  Of course I laughed at first.  The poor mother of the child was extremely embarassed and apologized, but the kid wouldn't shut up.  "That's a really fat lady!"  The kid kept pointing his chubby finger at me in genuine surprise.  "He's never seen an over weight person before," the mother told me.  "Oh," was my only reply, suddenly feeling like a swollen balloon that could burst at one more verbal poke.  I quickly rushed out of the department store, my head pounded with emotional pain.  I couldn't blame the child for being a little jerk.  What kid has never seen anyone fat before living in Wisconsin?  It just didn't seem right to me.

 

The second worst experience was falling in love with a man who, despite being unable to answer my romantic longings, became my best friend for a couple years and really tried to play a sort of savior role for me in regards to my health.  He forced me to exercise and pushed me to learn how to ride a bike.  He even had sex with me, but during our entire relationship I kept thinking that how unfair it was that he felt obligated to do all that.  I recently dug out a dress I haven't worn in over six years because the last time I wore it he made some hurtful comments about my body.  The dress was one of those sheer numbers along the arms with a forest printed on it.  I don't normally wear sheer things along the arms.  When you're fat, you've got to be careful about what you wear, but it shouldn't hold you back from occasionally trying on something daring and different every now and then.  Even though the dress was two sizes too small, it had been on sale, the print was beautiful, and I just couldn't imagine not wearing it.  I thought I looked beautiful in it.  So much so that I had to wear it for the first time in front of a man I loved and wanted so desperately to impress.  We were sitting down enjoying a meal at a little diner downtown.  I was eating a cheeseburger.  An especially fat one, of course, when he paused to sigh deeply and say, "Valentina," (whenever he had something serious to say he would usually pause shortly after saying my name) "Valentina" (he'd say my name again for even more emphasis) "I really want you to be more healthy."  I know, not the worst thing to say, but at the moment he said that it came out like this: "Valentina, you are too fat for me to love you and I won't love you until you lose weight."  I couldn't finish the burger.  I looked into his eyes and saw his concern as a kind of pity.  I hated that look.  It seemed to display to me why he couldn't date me.  I was fat.  He couldn't see past that.  The fat prevented him from seeing me as beautiful.  I would not become his girlfriend because I was fat.  Fat doomed me.  To make matters worse he just had to say this next: "You shouldn't wear something that tight ever again." 

 

I would never wear that dress again.

 

Until six years later just a few days before being diagnosed with diabetes I would take a series of portraits -- fat portraits if you want to call them that -- to record this swollen ripeness that I am and present it as something beautiful.  I may be heavy but I don't have to be for the rest of my life.  Here I am.  I am here.  Double chin and all.  At any size I am beautiful, will be beautiful.  This won't kill me.  Let this be a record that I will, as the old song says, survive.  No.  Stike that.  I will persevere.