feminist blogs

So, I went in for my annual yesterday - and it was abortion day! (ummm, not for me. But it's the one day a week they perform abortions at the one I go to)

But there were no protesters to harass. Alas.

Mostly I just wanted to go in so I could say, "See! I had diabetes! Why the hell didn't you notice that wild weight loss + non-stop monster yeast infections = diabetes, dammit!!!??"

Turns out that with the pap now, they automatically screen for HPV (they didn't do this before???) unless you opt out. Why the hell would I opt out? This is like not testing your blood sugar cause you Don't Want to Know.

She asked me how I liked the IUD - she doesn't see many women come in who have them, and was wondering why that was, and it's like, well, have you heard the stories about women in red states who try and get them? Their doctors harass them about being married and/or having children. Unless you're married and have a kid, they don't give them to you. And that's cause STDs + IUD = VERY BAD. And, as we all know, husbands never cheat on wives and wives never cheat on husbands. Never, EVER. And there's no such thing as Open Relationships.

The other reason is the small uterus reason: I haven't had a kid, and the damned thing is still a tight fit, and because of the diabetes, I heal slowly, so it looks like it's caused another minor infection; I'm now on a double dose of antibiotics, again (I did this last August, for the same reason). As a precaution, I was screened (for the THIRD time in a year) for chlamydia and gonorrhea (these are the ones that if you get when you have an IUD, you're in Trouble).

Oh boy, what fun!

Why is it more women don't have an IUD???

Seriously, though, I still love this stupid little thing, and I recommend it to women who've got major depression problems when they use the pill; you just need to practice safe sex (which we should all be doing anyway). And go in for your annual every year (which is why it's called an annual, people).

And, yea, there's that three months of blood and pain, but I have a feeling that if you're not dying from diabetes and/or you've had a kid, that blood-and-pain adjustment period is probably a hell of a lot easier.

We did so many lunges and squats tonight that when I stepped up onto the bus for the ride home, my legs nearly gave out on me.

It was a tough class tonight, and it shouldn't have been. I was in Indy for three days last week, and had to deal with a storm of personal emotional issues when I got back. I've very, very bad at talking about my feelings, at dealing with the intense emotions of others, at expressing my own emotions, and hours and hours and days and days of that take me out.

I've been on edge all day. This morning I realized I had nothing left in my tank, and I started getting edgy and anxious, and my sugar was all over the board; stress will do that. By noon, I had a sugar headache, and I was desperately fighting off the urge to crawl into the bathroom at work and cry. My sugar was too high at lunch, and then dipped too low right before class, and clocking that low on the bus on the way to MA class, I nearly lost it again, and I went through the same bullshit bullshit crap: Why don't I have a fucking pancreas? What the fuck did I do wrong?

I ate a protein bar and stepped off the bus and let all the pain and anger and sadness wash over me, and then I put it into a little ball in my hand and squeezed it and thought, "It's going to be OK. It's going to be OK. It's all going to be OK."

And I could straighten out my walk, and I pushed away thoughts of needles and pain and anonymous nurses from when I was in the hospital, and I went to MA class, and I hit things and burned through the rest of the anxiety. But my stamina was for crap, and I had trouble concentrating, and it felt hard again; I felt so behind, so weak.

There is this thing that I usually do in these posts that I call power priming, but apparently, power priming isn't saying, "Things are crap, but I will be OK because I'm strong," it's saying, "Here is a time in my life when I was powerful."

For some reason, there are people who believe that I believe all this bullshit, that I live in this happy fantasy world where everything *is* OK and "fine" all the time.

Of course I don't. Don't be fucking retarded. I'm well-a-fucking-ware that I'm not always fine, that the world isn't always fine, and that sometimes, life is fucking hard.

But I get up every day. When I say, "I'm fine" that's as much me convincing myself of that as it is convincing somebody else. Most of the time, "I'm fine" means, "Change the damned subject. It was all I could do to get up this morning."

You know, some nights I want my goddamn beer and my goddamn cheese fries. Some days I want to be able to do a fucking work out without worrying halfway through that maybe I'm literally about to pass out. Some days I wish I didn't get hit with a fucking shovel. Some days I wish I wasn't pear-shaped. Some days I wish I was built like a dancer, with the gift of coordination. Some days I wish I was rich! And didn't need glasses!

And some days, I like to be fine. I like everything to be OK.

Those are the worst days. Those are the days I have to ball everything up, crush all the crap into something harder and better and prettier, like getting diamonds from coal. You just do it. Because the alternative is to sit in your room and hide and go and live with your parents the rest of your life because you're too scared of living to actually do it.

And I spent a good long time desperately afraid of living. You get tired of being scared all the time. It doesn't mean you're not scared, of course. It just means you do what you want to do anyway. Because the alternative is not to do it anymore, is to just go to sleep like I was doing the night I nearly died, and not wake up again.

That gets old.

And if this is me telling myself I'm stronger than I am and that I'll get through and blah blah blah and that somehow makes me a bad, delusional person, well, fuck that. The alternative is to turn this into some kind of emo LJ that talks about how I cried into my cornflakes this morning because no one loves me.

Now I'm going to go to bed, because it's too late for beer and the only writing I've got any brain left for tonight is this slap-dash blog post.

It sure is a good thing I'm fine.

Had one of my favorite classes last night - you switch off between kicking/punching combos and free weights work. I also like the combos/jump roping intervels as well, but I do so love my free weights... though mostly, I think, so I can compare what I lift to what everybody else lifts.

I'm trying to spend more time working on technique during the drills, because as lovely as it is to hit things really hard, I've gotta improve my form, or... I'm just hitting things really hard. And I'm going to hurt myself.

On the one hand, it's nice to not be *totally* new at this stuff, on the other hand, I realize how sloppy all my kicks and punches have gotten. The more I do it, the more my body remembers, the more I improve. Like anything else, it takes time. As someone who has very little patience, it can be a long slog, but you know, how long and hard would I laugh at somebody who'd never written a story who said, "I'm just going to sit down tonight and write a novel." After all, they've been writing other sorts of things all their lives! Why shouldn't writing a novel be just as easy!? It's just writing! Anybody can write!

Anybody can kick a bag!

Yea.

I was on the bus on the way to the MA school and was digging out a couple of jellybeans to up my sugar before class, and I opened up the pocket of my bag that's got the plastic bag of jellybeans in it, and there was a capped syringe in there, cause that's the pocket I put them in to designate which are used and need to be disposed of at home, and I had this sudden gut-churning revulsion.

Syringes mean sickness. I'm sick.

It still hits me sometimes. I mean, on the one hand, it gets so routine to take your shot at 5:30 am that you do it automatically even on weekends. It's just life. The idea of sitting down to eat without checking sugar feels weird. At the same time, there's this strange dissonance.

The other night, I walked into my room and there on my desk was a capped syringe that I'd forgotten to pop into the coffee can on my desk. And I just stared at it like, "What's *that* doing here?"

There's this strange thing in my life that's not supposed to be here, and at the same time, something I've worked very hard to integrate pretty smoothly into my life, and that I'm dealing with. But... sometimes... it's just so strange.

I suppose it's strange to think of myself as dependent on something I have to shoot up like some kind of junkie. Sickness is not terribly sexy. As somebody who, despite all the ridiculous angst about eating and weight, had always been really strong and healthy. I've never broken a bone. I've never had a cavity. All my numbers for everything else have come out good.

And now... this.... thing. This daily avoidance of death.

Some days, it's just... weird.