diabetes is winning

anyone out there? anyone at all?

health-wise, i am not doing well. saving up money to go back to the doctor. hopefully before the pills run out. will need a renewal on my scripts soon.

i still don't test my blood glucose. don't have a meter. don't know how. can't afford the class yet. still waiting on April 2012 for insurance. i work hard, almost 40 hours a week. not quite full-time.

i do my best. my best is not good enough. each morning i wake up very low blood sugar-wise. i tremble. i eat something quickly ~ applesauce, banana, both. but i have been leaving for work shaky. hungry. low on energy. they don't know. i never let them see how low i am. work hours are performance based. so i perform.

when lunch comes, i am at the end of my rope with regards to energy. i inhale the food at times. other times i eat slow and fight to keep it down.

i am down because of this. emotionally down as well as physically down. my Carl would be afraid for me. i have lost 11 pounds in the last 6 weeks and that's without trying. i just don't eat enough and i work a lot.

when i come back here, i work on a quilt that is taking me far too long, and yet, i cannot work too many hours on it every day. i am wiped out and shaking from exhaustion.

and God help me, i sometimes don't work on it at all. i take care of my dogs. i eat something. i go to bed at 8:30.....like tonight.

i am failing. i am falling. there is no one to catch me but me, but my arms are far too tired.

Bunny is physically very run down, but she has to keep going. she cannot quit because there is no one to catch her. no doctor who will help her without an unGodly amount of money. i have no idea where my body stands with regards to this condition i have. all i can do is keep doing what i am reading, eating what i can afford that fits both conditions, and try to keep going on this journey and get to wherever it is i am going to end up.

i wish with all my heart that he were still here. i need someone to talk to. i need someone to help me prepare food. i need someone to check on me. i need my Dragon back. i can't do this alone. i can't afford a doctor. Dragon would find a way. somehow, i have not been able to.

2 years, 5 months tomorrow. seems like forever. seems like nothing.

only in my mind....

i read somewhere that only in our minds are we truly free. that is where i have always gone to find release from the life i was having to deal with. it is where i go now when i am faced with awful things that i can do nothing about.

it is worthy of note that i never had to close my eyes and fantasize about being free when i was with him.

two weeks ago my tooth split vertically up into the gum. the dentist said it was one he had worked on less than 6 months ago. he is charging me $1745 for a crown. that's what he said. we're doing a crown. the quick and ugly turns out that he forgot to tell me i required oral surgery. i found out about the surgery when he started stitching my gum. it is going to take 3 months of eating only jello, pasta, soups, oatmeal, and a few other very soft foods cut into small bites eaten on the other side of my mouth before i will be healed enough to be given a crown. he promised i would have it the week before Camp Widow. so i can eat, he said.

it's been hard. i've been very hungry even after i eat because i cannot eat a complete meal. my jaw gets tired.

i make quilts out of clothes of people who have died. a woman put a link to the Facebook photo album of my work to try and help me. her brief words were gracious. unfortunately i have been deluged with messages from women who think i am "feeding off the dead." that i am "profiting from people who are deeply grieving." that i should "teach how to do this at Camp Widow so people don't have to trust you." that i should "make them like that rag quilt place does - just some squares so you don't have to charge as much as you do."

somewhere along this wretched path people have gotten the idea i am from Nigeria or currently living in Nigeria. i can assure you that i live in the United States.

the messages that i have gotten have ranged from coercive to my teaching so i do not "bilk the bereaved" to hateful and saying i will surely go to Hell. i have done what my infuriated children and my husband's friend have said i should do. delete them all.

and i have. but the feeling of being whittled away lasts. like that awful thing said and one hopes no one heard, but then the echo comes around and you've heard it again. how many people have chatted each other up and condemned me for trying to make a living? yes, i charge for the quilts. the most largest and most expensive one i did was 9 feet by 10.5 feet. it had several - several - embroidered sentences and two hoodies for the little girl to be able to wear. i charged over $700 but under $800. i had only two and a half months to do it in. she had a special deadline. i worked upwards of 16 hours a day and met the deadline. i made $2.40 an hour.

i am crushed. there is nothing i can do. i have to keep my head up and try and remember that the people who have their quilts did not feel over-charged. i believe they really like their quilts. i think they do. no one has asked for their money back.

so i guess that leaves me with living inside my mind when i feel this hurt which is most of the time right now. i know it will pass. it will all go away and i will be forgotten which is not as pleasing as it sounds since i need word of mouth to let people know i am here and can make the quilts. tangible solace. or so i thought. it never occurred to me i could be viewed as a vulture.

maybe i should change my brochures. add a tag line.

RenaissanceArtist

Quilts and other Textile Art

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

it is the middle of the afternoon. i have had lunch. i had a grilled cheese cut into very small pieces. i am hungry again. or still. i can't tell anymore. i posted a response to the letters on my Facebook page. some people have put up some nice comments. i made sure i thanked them.

i am going to get an iced tea and maybe try to eat some goldfish crackers. if you leave them on your tongue they get soft. then i am going back to work on a quilt.

so i guess things are fine here for me, a profiteer of death living in Nigeria.

while i sew i think i'll disappear into my mind. it's the only place where everything works out. it is the only place where i am wild and free.

be the turkey

i am a turkey, the one from the slang dictionary. my mother had relentlessy told me i would never amount to anything and despite my best attempts at life, i have become exactly what she always thought of me as. i am a turkey.

it haunts me more now that my Dragon has died. he is not here to stroke my feathers and tell me how pretty i am.

my mother always thought i was too bookish and artistic. she despised that about me and while i withstood heaps of lectures on how to be the woman she wanted me to be, i quoted Shakespeare in my head. "to thine own self be true."

and i have been. but persevering through her predictions of my future failures doesn't make me less a turkey. it just makes me a turkey with convictions who failed anyway.

because of my ex, i learned how to endure without love or much hope. but my convictions kept me from making stupid mistakes. i learned how to take it on the chin. is that a metaphor? only the turkey knows. but i did arrive at the breaking point. i couldn't take it anymore and i left him. he took everything.

in flies my Dragon. and because of him the turkey glowed with the inner light she always had.

okay, wait a minute. first, way back when, i was in a boat on the water in a fog. i was listening to the wrong bell and rowing away from safety. then just recently i was the "insignificant little boat." and now i'm a turkey? damn straight. i can lay claim to anything that fits who i am. today, i am the turkey so i will be the turkey. tomorrow, who knows. there are a lot of metaphors out there and, well, it's my mind. it's all in my mind.

and that's where the trouble always starts. just when everything is going along, someone starts to think.

and wish.

and become wistful for things they weren't meant to have.

i always wanted a little house to live in for 60 years. the ex moved us around within one little town as he tried to improve "his" property ownership. nothing during that marriage was mine. my Dragon and i supported my two children during college when the ex did not and we rented a house by the ocean. a perfectly old and shabby little house where i would have lived for 60 years. and now i am trying to accept this tiny apartment as my home.

"forever? but what about the lighthouse? what about our dream? what about even a small place by the ocean? are we just giving up on that?" that's the voice in my head.

not all dreams come true.

i always wanted friends and family. i gave up, unnoticed i woefully add, on the widow's group. i have my wonderful daughter and son. i am blessed. my brother refuses to speak to me. friends are hard to come by. why? maybe because i am a turkey and they see in me what my mother did so long ago. "you're kidding us, right?" (my mind always speaks in third person to include all my various personalities.) "our life sucks! it blows! we need people to talk to us, to come get us and take us to the mall or to a movie! sure the kids love us and that's wonderful but there has to be someone else out there. c'mon! dial it up! get mad!" what good would it do. "crap. we are such a turkey. but yeah, right now, there is nothing we can do. but if they can't see how cool we are then....." hush.

i always wanted to take little trips, to see places. i got to "see" them through my Dragon when he talked about all the countries he'd been in. i bought a map of the world and brought it to him once. i had a sharpie and asked him to tell me what countries he hadn't been in. if i remember correctly there were about eleven.

i always wanted to deny my turkey heritage. "now that's just sad. so what if we're a turkey? turkeys are smart and cool. hey, Ben Franklin wanted the turkey for the national bird. that should tell you something right there." Ben Franklin was also a womanizer and wrote an absurd little book called 'Fart Proudly.' "oh. well, so the man had a sense of humor and a zest for life. so does our Dragon, but without the cheating part. you know how much he loves turkey." stop it.

i'm losing my mind. "i'm right here." really losing my marbles. "they're in that little bag over there on the bookshelf we bought for $3 at Goodwill." see?

i've been putting in 12 - 15 hour days working on what i now call "quiltimus maximus." but i am on the last little bit of sewing on that 8'+ x 9'+ monstrosity. i have called and the woman is coming for it on Monday. "after she leaves we're getting drunk, even if it's morning."

and then it's full swing on Suddenwidow's quilts. but right now, i'm tired and the turkey in me is wistful for what can never be. i'll never have a little home. i'll never again live by the ocean. i'll most likely be pretty much alone. if i find a friend who likes turkeys, it will be a miracle. i am wistful to travel like i read about people getting to do. i wish there were friends and neighbors who called to check on me off and on during the week like i know other people have happen for them.

"we're mad. admit it. well, we're upset anyway. that widow from the group stopped by last night and we thought she was coming to see us but she just needed to use our restroom before she kept driving home. i mean, how rude is that? out with the other widows and we weren't invited. she passes our apartment and needs to pee? really? why didn't we say something crude?" because the first thing out of her mouth was that she was having a bad day missing her husband. "well, we were having a bad day, too. we miss our Dragon so much that we spontaneously burst into tears and scream into our pillow. why isn't our grief as important to them as theirs is to us? and we didn't get to go out and hang with everyone. and her saying we hadn't been invited because it would have been inconvenient to come get us? seriously? but our toilet is close enough to pee in?" water under the bridge. "obviously not because we're talking to ourselves again. turkey."

well, if you are the turkey, might as well be the turkey.

i miss my Dragon more than i have the words or ability to express. i'll never stop loving him or mourning him.

"bye for now. we got our feelings hurt last night. sort of an 'unnailed, uncoffined, unknown' view of our future. so it's crying time again for turkeys."