The Heartbreak Project

I am going to be publishing a lot of stories on here. Many of them will be based in true events, but they will be mostly fiction. Some of them will come from my personal experience, but many of them will be stories that people have shared with me.

Heartbreak is an emotion we have all dealt with. Whether romantically or some other relationship, losing someone you love, either through death or other means, is one of the most difficult things we face as humans. We are made to love, to share, to care for one another. We are not made to be solitary creatures. Humans have always lived in colonies, packs, communities. We are a species that is nurtured by our parents for 18 years. That’s a crazy long time, when you think about the animal world. We are born into community. We long for it, we search for it. The relief we feel when we find where we belong is indescribable, the hurt we feel when we lose where we belong is unbearable.

I’ve experienced a lot of heartbreak. My personality lends itself to becoming attached to people, quickly, easily, and deeply. I care hard, and I expect it back. It’s taken a long time to accept that not everyone functions the way I do and not everyone values relationships the way I do.

Heartbreak hurts me deeply. It hurts everyone deeply, sure. But even listening to other’s stories hurts me more than I can possibly bear sometimes. Recently a friend shared with me a deeply piercing story of heartbreak. Her own story, which had every piece of a fairy tale puzzle. Except it was like one of those modern movies where the ending isn’t happily ever after. The ending sucks.

In life, the ending often sucks.

K is not the only person who has shared this kind of story with me. I would also love to hear your story, in the comments, in an email, or on facebook.

More to come….

The Gift

Last night, I was given a gift.

My friend most likely didn’t think anything of it. She likes for things to be used. She had something that wasn’t being used, and I was expressing a hope that I’d be able to purchase this item in the near future. Talking about my goals, acquiring this item was part of my steps. To recovery, to health, and to dreams.

Last night, she brought this gift to my house.

It was a laptop PC.

This gift was so important to me. There are lots of reason I wanted a computer. Mostly that mobile browsing when researching things like grad school had really gotten old. I missed the stability of having an actual computer. And writing on a phone or tablet had gotten nearly impossible.

Several years ago I was burnt out on writing. Blogging, in particular, had left me feeling tired and pressured. I suffered from writers block, having ideas in my head for posts but not being able to get them to come out in the form of words on a screen. I had put too much pressure on myself to churn out quality writing, writing that could solidify the place in an online community I had worked so hard to achieve.

Things happened. Personal things, things you may hear about in the near future. I was struggling with “The other D,” big time. (The first D is diabetes, the “other D” is depression).

I feel like I have been through hell and back emotionally the last few years. But I am ready to talk about it. I am ready to share about it. And I am ready to journey into the future, with you, dear reader.

This is no longer a diabetes blog, although diabetes may be mentioned.

This is going to be a place where I share with you my struggles with mental health, and my journey out of a hole.

If you chose to join me in my journey, welcome.

Writing is freeing. I am in a place where I do not care about an audience, I’m going to write anyway. These posts will be scarcely edited. But they will be from the depths of my heart and soul.

 

My friend V did not know what kind of a gift she was giving me when she gave me this old laptop. But she gave me the gift of freedom.

 

Thank you V.

Here we go again!

Guys, it’s 2015! My blog, despite it’s chronic underuse, will turn six years old this year. My diabetes will turn seventeen. My relationship will turn one and I will turn 28. But ages and years are just numbers. What’s the important thing? I’m not really sure. All I know is I miss blogging and I think it might really help me keep my head on straight this year.

Here are just some of the things I think I should/can/will blog about in “the 2015”

EXERCISE

Pain Diagnosis and management!

Going gluten free again….

Diabetes (of course)

CGM again

Shots vs pump

U500 insulin!

WEDDING PLANNING

Engagement?! Eeek!!

CATS

Running

Depression

Anxeity!!

WORK BURN OUT

Broken healthcare systems

The Bible?

Reading!

DOCTOR WHO.

And many other sajablarific things.

STAY TUNED.

“You can eat whatever you want.”

That’s what they told me. I don’t remember who exactly, but it was someone at Mercy Children’s Hospital’s diabetes center in Kansas City circa 2000. After 2 years of taking regular and NPH insulin, which to be brief, put you on an insane diabetes roller coaster, I was switching to multiple daily injections and taking insulin to cover the amount of food I ate instead of eating to cover the amount of insulin I ate.

It was supposed to prepare me to get an insulin pump, but it would be nine years before I’d actually complete that process. At this time, I was rejoicing in eating, well, whatever I wanted. Every time my parents would say something to me, I would retort back with, “I can eat whatever I want as long as I take insulin for it.” Cakes, cookies, candies, even slurpees and ice cream, anything was fair game.

It was then that the weight gain started, I know. I mean, the two years before that my body had been recovering from a huge shock where I had been so thin I was almost dead, just before diagnosis. But eating whatever I wanted – no limits, no restrictions – this was heaven. And somehow, it caused habits of disordered eating that have been following me ever since.

I still remember those first two years. I remember snacking on cheese and diet coke when I would get hungry. I remember forcing myself to eat just a little bit more when I wasn’t hungry enough for the amount of food I needed for a meal. I remember hoping my blood sugar would get low, just so I could eat some of the orange slices my dad had in the cabinet.

I remember sneaking food and lying about my blood sugar. I remember being found out by my doctor when my A1C results came back and how ashamed I felt. And I remember not really caring that much.

I don’t know when the eat, insulin, nap started with the binging but I imagine it was somewhere around my junior year of college. This was the time when I put on the most weight. This was the time I broke 200lbs and went far beyond. This was the time I struggled in a long distance, slightly abusive relationship and sought food for comfort. This was the time when food seemed to be my only friend.

After that dark place I found the DOC. I started taking care of myself and low and behold I felt so much better. More energy. Less anger. Less low blood sugar. Less scary.

I am happy with where I currently am in my diabetes management, though I wish things were a little bit cheaper, and I’m not sure I’d like my a1c if I took it today. But the weight sticks around, a shameful reminder of a time gone by, and an excuse to return to old habits when life gets hard. I did manage to lose 30 lbs toward the end of 2012. My a1c at the time was over 10. I’m not sure how much of that weight loss was me actually trying or was the high blood sugars. (I can’t believe I’m admitting this on the internet). Nevertheless, it’s all back now.

It’s difficult. I’m working on being overall in a healthy mindset, taking care of diabetes and making healthy food choices and making sure I exercise and eating low-carb because I’ve seen the difference it makes in my Dexcom graph. It isn’t easy. In fact, it’s damn hard. All of it. Eating healthy, actually COOKING things? I hate cooking. Dragging my butt to the gym or convincing myself to go outside for a run? When I feel like I do today, not so easy. Low carb? Might be easy, were it not for my massive sweet tooth. Cigarettes? Diet soda? I know these things are bad for me, but they are my vices, especially in times of stress.

I have learned, especially in the last two years, that the best thing to do is to take things one day at a time, one meal at a time, one decision at a time. If you make a decision that isn’t ideal, all it means is that is the decision that you made at that point in time. It doesn’t mean, by any means, that you have to make another less than ideal decision later. I can do it. You can do it. Together we can help each other do it. One step at a time.

I miss writing. Here’s a story.

Life is a balancing act. It’s work, it’s leisure, it’s relationships, it’s church, it’s diabetes management, it’s financial management, and then it is just plain sitting and thinking about it all. We’ve all gone though phases where everything seems extremely unbalanced and when we try to balance it it seems to just topple over.

At the beginning of January, I was very near having a nervous breakdown. I couldn’t hardly sleep, and only did so by being heavily medicated and focusing my brain on television shows. My relationship fell apart in a super dramatic fashion, and then the relationship I immaturely tried to replace that relationship with also fell apart. I moved out of my apartment which I had graciously agreed to share with someone I once cared about. And while all of this was going on, my work life was suffering. And if you’ve ever worked in sales, not being able to focus on work means more meetings with supervisors, more ultimatums, and ultimately less money – which doesn’t help anything.

I took a good look at my life and asked what was stressing me out the most. I decided it was two things: my relationship and my job. So obviously, I decided I should remove those two things from my life. I broke up with my boyfriend. And that was hard, because boy did I love that man. But one lesson you learn growing up – that isn’t always enough. We had come to a place where we just made each other’s demons worse, and we needed to move away from one another. So I left.

Then I had a sit-down with my boss. My then-boss is the best boss I have ever had in my life. He is not just a great supervisor who produces results, but he is also an absolutely good person and takes time to relate to his agents in a personal manner. I told him I wanted to leave. He, being more logical than Emotional Sarah Jane is, told me to work for two weeks. So I did. And guess what. I didn’t leave. In fact, I noticed a job in another department was open and I applied for it. And guess what else? I got it. And guess what else else?  I love it. And I’m still with a fabulous company and I still get to work with some of the greatest people in the world.

It kind of blows my mind when I think about how different my life is than it was three months ago. But it’s also at a strangely familiar place. I’m at my parents house, again. This is the third time since I moved out the first time I have come back. And that’s ok. Sure, 27 year olds seem a little old to be living with mom and dad, but it’s not like I’m struggling financially and it will change soon. I just have to be patient.

Removing the thing that took up 90 percent of my time and energy from my life has left me feeling so free. I feel free to be myself. I feel free to find myself.  I also feel free of the need to have someone there to depend on. I have plenty of people I can depend on, but when it comes to self validation, I’m now leaving that up to me. It has been incredibly difficult at times. I have only grieved one other relationship as hard and long as I have grieved this one. But it has also made me so strong, and strong was not an adjective I would have ever used to describe myself before 2014.

Strong and happy. Welcome to adulthood.

Restart. Again.

It’s time. I have spent many, many months battling “the other D,” battling denial and battling my deamons. Writing didn’t come easy for a long time, and then when I could literally feel the words pouring out of my brain I was without a laptop for a few months. It’s actually a bit hard to write a blog post from a tablet or phone that isn’t just a few sentences long.

My blog has been slightly revamped. It will continue to change, but this works, for now. Updates soon. I promise.

The Realizes, or, Things I’m Remembering While Navigating the Mid-20’s

Sometimes life just makes me feel this way.

Blog no longer abandoned, just rarely tended to, I am starting to come back around. And while I realize that maybe this whole mess of the 20’s will be one big black hole when I come out of it, at least, knowing that I still have three and a half good years left before I hit that dreaded 3-0 point, that the whole experience, albeit stressful and downright crazy, will be something I look back on triumphantly, and say, “Hey, I did that.” 

Tidbits on my mind tonight: 

1. Diabetes may be a little sh*t, but it’s easier if you do. 

So somehow over the last 5 months I managed to drop my A1C by almost 3%. Last summer it was at a 10. Over a 10. If you don’t know anything about diabetes, a ten is bad. I was scrounging to buy insulin and I was stretching it to its limits. When I quit using my pump it took me a good while before I actually broke down and got a script for lantus. You can imagine how that went. But just taking insulin, eating better, exercising, and testing my blood sugar, not even really “trying,” or even obsessing, got my A1C down to a 7.7. And I feel good. And even though at the time even taking insulin on time and frequently sounded like a scary thing at the time, it’s now just what I do. And it’s OK. And I can do it. Maybe my denial days are over, though I’m sure they’ll return. But for now, I’m gonna tell myself that I am worth taking care of. 

2. Sometimes jobs are just jobs, and that’s okay. 

So working in the travel industry sounds fun and glamorous, and I’ll admit that I’ve learned a lot about the industry and, as Tom lovingly reminds me, have turned into a “hotel snob.”  But sales is not necessarily a fun thing to do. Sometimes it’s downright awful, especially when it’s over the phone where people feel, much like the internet, that you aren’t really a person and hurting your feelings is OK. But it’s teaching me to be less offended, which is somehow helping my self esteem? I digress. More on this at a later date, but for now, I’m making a paycheck, paying my bills, and if I don’t live to get up and go to work in the morning, that’s OK. It doesn’t have to be forever. 

3. Mountaintop moments wouldn’t exist if they happened all the time. 

   So I have all these memories from high school and college that make me extremely happy, most involve sitting outside with a big group of friends singing songs, and almost none involve beer (except a couple). I feel like I don’t have these experiences anymore. Remembering them makes me feel sad, and old. But just because they aren’t happening with the frequency doesn’t mean that they won’t ever happen, and it doesn’t take away from the defining nature of those moments and times in my life. If anything it tells me three things that define who I am and what I love: being outside in the evening, being with good people, and music. Knowing those things I can look for opportunities to create these moments, and treasure them when they happen.

4. We are still young, but not as young. 
   Sometimes I’ll joke about feeling old, or getting old. Facts remain I am older than I have ever been. But so are you. Just because I hang out with 22 year olds sometimes doesn’t make 26 “old.” I am still young, but yes, I have to get up and go to work in the morning, and yes, I have to pay my rent, and no, I can’t stay out drinking until 1am three times a week and still manage to do these things. So I will still enjoy moments when I feel young, I will still relish in the fact that I am still (legally) single and childless, but I will still be in bed by midnight so I can actually function like  a human being. 
5. Love isn’t easy. 
   And I don’t mean just romantic love. Loving yourself is hard. Especially when you have things constantly thrown at you saying you aren’t good enough (cough*media*cough). You aren’t skinny enough, or curvy enough, or fit enough, or smart enough, or you don’t have enough. But if you don’t love yourself, you will continue on this miserable existence and eventually nobody will want to be around you. So if you’re extroverted like me, you better learn to love yourself or you will hate yourself more. Because you’re OK. You’re just a human, and you make mistakes and you can’t expect to be perfect. 
   And yes maybe I’m taking about romantic love, because your 20s are crazy in this factor, and in today’s world if you’re not engaged by the time you graduate from college chances are you will go though a string of not-so-good relationships before you actually settle down. You are not abnormal. But when you do find someone you kind of like, and want to like, hang out with a lot, you should realize it’s actually going to take a lot of work to make that work. 
6. If you hate your life, change it. 
   Like for a while there, I seriously hated my life with a burning searing passion. Then I realized I had two choices: I could learn to enjoy where I was and what I was learning, or I could change my life. The only option that I wouldn’t allow myself to take was the one that kept me where I was. So now, yes there may be something on the horizon that will change my life completely. Some things WILL be changing, and soon, and some things might stay the same, but either way I plan on doing my best to be OK with whatever happens.   
7. And it’s OK to be sad or lonely sometimes, because you are human. 
   Understand that emotions are emotions, and they aren’t always “good” or “bad.” 

 

I kind of had an epiphany today.

I’ve always been hard on myself. I tell myself that I will do things right, differently, correctly, good, whatever, and constantly screw things up. I’m always disappointed when things take more work than expected, or when I fail to do something. That sounds really general and nonspecific (and also redundant?), so let’s come up with some examples. I make myself a lot of goals. Lately those goals have been related to work, housework, and fitness/nutrition/health/diabetes/migraines/depression (yes they are all connected). 

So let’s get back on topic here. I quit doing a lot of things because I disappoint myself. I quit blogging for that reason. I put a lot of pressure on myself. “I WILL blog three times a week from here on out!” Well guess what, for me, and my life and my schedule, that was an unattainable goal. I didn’t do it. And so instead of giving myself some leeway, I quit. 

Let’s take the example of cleaning or housework. My house is, more often than not, a mess. My mom hates it, my boyfriend hates it, hell, I hate it. And every so often I tell myself, , “I WILL NEVER LET MY HOUSE GET THIS MESSY AGAIN.” And I come up with a plan to clean a bit every day so it stays clean. Like a normal person, right? Or I just tell myself I will clean it every Friday/Tuesday/Saturday/Whatever day of the week I happen to have off this month. And guess what? I do it for a while, then I don’t. And it’s not because I don’t want to or I’m lazy or I don’t care. It’s because I can’t. Sometimes I simply cannot force myself to do it. Sometimes I cannot force myself to do the laundry or the dishes or take out the trash and sometimes I can’t even force myself to take a shower or brush my teeth. I just can’t. It might be a headache. It might be that my blood sugar is 300 or 45. Or it might be that I just feel down about myself and the world and I spend all my free time sleeping. The same thing applies to working out or cooking healthy meals or actually working to do really well at work. Sometimes I just can’t.

What is the epiphany then? The epiphany is that that is okay. I will have days when I am down or when my blood sugar is out of whack or when I have a migraine and telling myself I am a bad person or a lesser human being because of the diseases I suffer from does no good and does not help me control any of them. I have to accept the fact that sometimes, I will have a messy house. But in a few days, I will feel better and I will clean it. I have to accept that sometimes, I will have a week or two where I can’t force myself to execise or cook a healthy meal and I will gain back a few of the pounds I’ve worked to lose. But in a few days, I will feel better and I will start over and I will lose it again. I have to accept that some days I just cannot deal with the customers at work, and I will have a low sales day. But that’s okay because in a few days I will feel better, and I will rock it and be the top agent on the team and get a huge commission check. It’s a cycle, and it’s normal with depression. And if I am going to continue living without depression medication, I have to learn to accept the cycle. Beating myself up about it will only make things worse.

And let’s talk about the fact that I live every day with three chronic illnesses. Let’s talk about the fact that I should be celebrating every single day that I get out of bed and go to work. Let’s talk about the fact that I never skip work unless I am legitimately “real people” sick. Let’s talk about all that. Let’s celebrate that fact. Let’s talk about how I’ve (finally) been living on my own for a year and a half now and let’s talk about how I’ve lost 30 lbs and let’s talk about how I’m (re) gaining control of my diabetes. Let’s count the victories and stop blaming ourselves for the losses. (Am I becoming skitzo now? I should stop calling myself “we”).

When I “start over,” whether it be in cleaning, work, diabetes, weight loss, or whatever, I will no longer tell myself, “I am going to always do this thing every day for the rest of my life.” I will tell myself, “I am going to try to do these things as many times as I can this week and if it doesn’t happen every day that is ok because at least it happens some days.” Because then, I don’t disappoint myself and start a self-hatred depression cycle all over again. Then I start to congratulate myself for my victories and then I start a cycle of self-love which will only lead to more success.

Because the more I think about it the more I realize my biggest opponent, my biggest obstacle, my biggest fear, and my biggest nemesis are all the same thing: myself.

Time to re-write the character of “myself” and turn her into a superhero instead.

Another Post on What It’s Like (unedited)

Part of the reason I’ve been gone so long has been because I’ve been focusing a lot of my energy on losing weight and getting fit, and I’ve been blogging about that over on tumblr. But I kind of accidentally wrote a rare long tumblr post today that fits better over here, with diabetes. So I’m copypasta-ing it over here so that more people who actually find it relevant will see and read and hopefully gain something from it. 

 

I REALLY hope my new Endocrinologist can help me tomorrow!

This is a really long post, and it’s about an issue most of you fitness gurus don’t even have to deal with, but it’s relatable to other problems you may have if you suffer from depression, asthma, anxiety, or any other chronic illness that makes you feel awful a good part of the time. 

(An endocrinologist specializes in hormone related illnesses, which include diabetes, which I have, type 1). 

Let me tell you guys a little bit about how I feel when my blood sugar is out of whack. 

Lately I have been running way too high, higher than normal. A normal blood glucose range is 80-120, or 80-140 if you have type 1 diabetes. 

My particular blood sugars have been running about 160-400. 

This makes you feel all kinds of different ways, but the majority of the ways are exausted, lathargic, irritated, sore, pissed, angry, sleepy, heavy, headachey, bleh, hit by a truck, can I please just go to sleep now, get the fuck out of my way i need some water, why do I have to pee so much, why won’t this goddamn headache go away, why do my legs hurt I haven’t worked out in days, where is the saltiest snack I can find, where is the sweetest snack I can find, why am I so fucking thirsty, why did I just go through two liters of diet coke and a gallon of water, where the fuck is the milk? Oh yeah I don’t eat dairy, so I’ll go out and buy some milk ways. 

And yes. Sorry mom, grandma, dad, aunt, whoever is reading this, but when your blood sugar is 300 when you wake up at 6:30 am, after having an excellent reading of 84 when you went to sleep, then it makes you curse. It makes you say the F word and not give to f words about who hears you or what they think of you. 

I am not exactly sure how it got to this point. I’m sure it was a combination of going off my insulin pump, of constantly running out of and not being able to afford insulin and the stress that comes with that, followed by an ER visit which  no, I did not tell my parents or facebook or even my friends about because I didn’t want anyone to worry about me. 

Diabetes is similar to obesity in that everyone everywhere, your family, your doctors, medical science in general, tells you that it is YOUR FAULT YOU GOT THIS WAY. HOW COULD YOU HAVE DONE THIS TO YOURSELF. YOU ARE NOW GOING TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK, LOSE A LEG, GO BLIND, AND LOSE A KIDNEY SIMULTANEOUSLY. And you feel shame and grief and if you are a perfectionist like I am, you give up. 

Yep, in a lot of ways my diabetes struggles have been similar to my weight struggles. Up and down. Good and bad. Get the A1C (a test that shows an average of your blood sugars over the last 3 months) under 8 and then it pops back up to 9 before you know it. Throw in the added bonus that because of changing insurance I haven’t seen an endo in over a year, and voila! My A1C is nearly 10 (it should be under 8, for those non-diabetic knowing people who might have taken the time to read this long and ranty post. Thanks, btw). 

So if not feeling like doing ANYTHING (including get out of bed to find my meter and insulin and actually treat myself) and feeling like this is all my own fault and not knowing what else to do to fix it is any indicator of my level of anxiety going into this appointment with a new doctor tomorrow, well, take that level and multiply it by at least 5. 

It’s kind of strange though, to be anxious for an actual reason. It’s not an empty feeling of anxiety for no reason like it is when I suffer from attacks. It’s just a general feeling of, I really want to get this over with and I better either feel confident in myself and my doctor when I come out, or be prepared to find another doctor because God knows I am not tolerating anyone who makes me feel worse about my self care or myself. I’ve been working really hard to eat right and exercise and test my blood sugar more often and I will not let those accomplishments get thrown out the window for whatever this lady has to say about me. (I have no indication that this will even occur, but it is what I am terrified of: a long lecture about how I’m destroying my body and if I could just do better everything will be alright. Save it. I am fully aware). 

I guess in the end I know that around 10:30 tomorrow morning I will either have some sort of plan of action to go from here. Because in spite of what may happen in the long term, I know I can’t go on living like this in the present. I need to feel good and be myself for my job. I can legitimately blame some of my struggles there on how I feel, especially early in the morning. I need to feel good in order to continue to work out and meet my goals of running a 5k in less than a month and riding 150 miles on a bike in less than six months. And I need to feel better just to feel better about myself. I know I can do this. I also know I need support. I need to not let my attitudes about the american health care system, or doctors in general, or the way diabetics are treated get in the way of having an open mind and of ultimately helping myself. 

Because I Can Do This. And I know I can, and giving up is not an option. 

Not now, not ever. 

 

Today is a new day.

Today is a new day. The first day of a new month. The first day of a new start.

Every day is a new day. Every day is a gift. Especially when you have diabetes.

My birthday is next week. I will be celebrating another year of being alive. Another year of living. Another year of living with diabetes.

 

It’s never easy. It’s never fun. Most of this year I spent wanting to give up. Wanting to give in. Wanting to let go.

 

I won’t do it anymore.

I can’t do it anymore.

I am the only one in control of my life. This is me. This is me saying:

 

I can do this.

No one else can, but I can.