Tag Archives: shame

it’s the end of the world as we know it

Posted in angst, everyday kimli, medical anomaly by

.. and I’m really quite upset about it, thank you very much.

What started as a purely vanity-driven inquiry has turned into the actualization of my biggest fear. It sucks, for so many complicated, irrational, deep-seeded reasons. Let’s explore them!

I saw Dr. Online about some weird symptoms I’ve been having: thirst, a craving for salt, thinning hair, a second head growing out of my left knee. Nothing I found online told me exactly what kind of cancers I had, so it was time to ask an expert .. who didn’t have any answers, so she requested I have some blood work done.

The results came in the next day, and showed that I had too many blood – but nothing drastically alarming, or anything that would account for my symptoms. I was asked to follow up with Dr. Online (who was a man this time), who didn’t see anything unusual in my results .. so he requested a second blood test to see if my levels changed. He also requested a urine test, because peeing in a plastic cup is the most dignified thing you can do in a public washroom. Off I went.

I received a phone call from Dr. Online’s office the day after my tests. No big deal, they said, but you need to go to the hospital RIGHT NOW OR YOU WILL DEFINITELY DIE. Okay then. Turns out one of my bloods was so off the chart I was in immediate danger of falling over all dead. That would seriously put a crimp in my day-to-day schedule, so I packed up a bunch of phone chargers and had Ed drive me to the Emergency Room, one of my least favourite places on earth.

There was a lot of waiting. Someone came around and took more blood (which I am running low on at this point). I peed in another cup – I am not getting any better at it, so I mostly just peed all over myself – and waited some more. Wait, wait, wait. Lots of waiting. Good times.

Eventually, a flesh doctor came in and delivered the news: I have diabetes. Not pre-diabetes or diabetes of the butt or kawaii diabetes, but full-on here’s-your-moustache Wilford Brimley diabeetus.

the internet is an interesting place. i didn’t have to search hard for this image.

So. That was the emergency, then: my blood sugar was in the Danger Zone. They kept asking me if I noticed myself peeing more than usual, which is entirely unhelpful – not only am I on medication that’s SUPPOSED to make me pee all the goddamn time, I have a tiny, tiny bladder. Pee frequency (peequency) is not something that would ever cause me any alarm. The other symptoms I’ve been having are so vague – headaches, grumpiness, lack of sleep, exhaustion – that they can be explained away by anything. I have headaches because I always forget to wear my glasses in front of the computer. I’m grumpy because I’m hormonal and people are jerks. I can’t sleep because I stay up way too late every night playing games on my phone, and I’m exhausted because I’m not getting enough sleep. I’m fiiiiine.

Except I’m not fine, and now I have to go on even more medication and change my lifestyle and not eat delicious things. Also, I kind of hate myself and can’t get past the blame stage: this is all my fault because I am fat and gross and stupid.

Logically, I know better. There are other factors at risk: my age. My mother, who is the Canadian Diabetic. I’m an Aboriginal Hispanic South Asian Asian of African descent. I got them big ol’ depression, and that tiiiny little heart issue. I’m a fatty who really likes garlic bread. The only box left unchecked in the entire “you’re gonna die” list is giving birth to a big ass baby, and frankly I don’t remember what I do every single year – there could have been a big ass baby in there somewhere.

So, yeah. I was always at risk of diabetes, but it was still one of my biggest fears. I’m not so much worried about my health as I am deeply ashamed of myself and wanting to hide in the closet until everything goes away. That’ll work, right?

I’ve never been a big fan of myself, but this is .. something else. But why?

A Tragic Backstory

It’s been drilled into me since the age of 7 that the very worst thing I could ever be was fat. Then, as if to spite my mother, I was a fat child who was fat on purpose, just to make my mother look bad. You can’t love a fat child! No one would blame her if she gave me away. It didn’t matter what else I was – serial killer, bed wetter, space cowboy – as long as I was thin. But because I wasn’t thin, my other qualities didn’t matter. I haven’t been 7 for a very long time, but my mother’s words echo in the darkest corner of my mind and get louder every time I have a bad day. I’m fat, so nothing else about me amounts to a hill of beans. On my good days, I can acknowledge the positive – I can be cute, sometimes I am smart, I have a funny – but even then, underneath all of that, I am a disappointment because I am fat.

I have diabetes because I am a big fat lump who brought this on herself by sucking so hard as a person. The shame is clinging to me like plastic wrap. It’s suffocating. I can’t free myself, can’t see past the behemoth I’ve become. I’ve thrown my life away to be a statistic in US-Fucking-A Today. I deserve this.

I know better, I really do. If someone else shared this news, it would be met with sympathy and encouragement. Those don’t apply to me, though, because this is my fault.

What Comes Next?

I have a prescription to fill, and an appointment with my heart doctor tomorrow. I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and need to stock the house with food I can actually eat. I had planned to clean out the pantry this weekend anyway, so I’ll toss out the snacks and carbs while I’m in there and replace them with .. I don’t know yet. Kale, I guess. Can’t wait.

I need to figure out my head and try to shake off the shame and guilt I feel. I won’t be telling my mom the news – I’m not really in the mood for an “I told you so” lecture. Keeping things from my mother is my standard MO; she doesn’t know about the heart failure (also my fault, obviously). I’m mostly really good at hiding my demons, but this particular one is not something I’ve faced before. This post is basically step one: admitting to myself (and, uh, the internet at large) that I have diabetes. The thought of sharing that – confessing it – to the world sort of makes me want to throw up and die, so I guess I’m on the right path.

Ugh. I really fucking hate kale.

he says she says

Posted in everyday kimli by

Has anyone ever taken part in a sleep study? Will they look the other way if you have a wet dream?

If you don’t want to read about the seamy going-ons in the Delicious Juice Dot Bedroom, look away now:

Ed and I have been sleeping in separate beds for the past couple of months. It started out as a nice gesture, because we were both terribly sick at different times – one or the other of us would move to the futon or the couch and let the other thrash about the bed in peace and delirium. However, as time goes on, we’ve found ourselves getting really used to the whole “separate bed” thing: I kind of love not getting elbowed in the face, and Ed likes not hearing me snore.

For reasons that are probably incredibly stupid, I am mortified to acknowledge that I quite possibly snore. Fat old bald men snore, not delicate flowers in their busty prime. Guys with hairy shoulders and gravy stains on their undershirts snore. Middle-aged guys with beach ball bellies. Men who wear Speedos with no sense of irony. They snore. Ralph Kramden snores. Not me.

But, according to Ed, I snore. I snore loudly enough to keep him awake or wake him up, even with ear plugs in. He gets mad and huffy when my snoring wakes him up, so he wakes me up – and then I get pissed off because I was soundly asleep until he started sighing like the world’s biggest martyr. He feels like I’m snoring on purpose (however that works), and I feel like he’s maliciously waking me up because HE can’t sleep so why should I. Enter the separate bedrooms, and how we haven’t killed each other yet.

Ed is worried that my snoring goes deeper than chainsaws, though – he thinks I have sleep apnea. This is a further source of embarrassment for me, and makes me feel really terrible about myself because of the aforementioned stereotypes: clearly if I have sleep apnea, I am a gross fat old fatty fat fat who is fat. I don’t want to sleep hooked up to a machine (that’s how Skynet started), Ed doesn’t want to share a bed with me if I won’t man up and breathe properly, and everything makes me full of sad and shame and self-loathing. Basically, I’m a sleepy fucking party over here.

There’s also the small matter of my office: I want it back. I have a ridiculous new retina iMac I can’t fully enjoy because there’s man junk all over my stuff. He’s keeping me from my phone booth! It’s not fair.

I didn’t know that sleep monitoring mostly happens at home now, so I’ve made an appointment to see about getting a referral. I’m hoping whatever my deal is can be fixed without turning me into Robocop, because we don’t really have the space for us to maintain separate bedrooms. I may not miss Ed’s elbows and Salad Fingers, but I do miss cuddling. And penis. Penis is great.

Still feeling that shame, though.

this is what it looks like inside my head

guilty pleasure

Posted in everyday kimli by

I’ve been vastly preoccupied over the last three weeks, for what could be the worst reason ever: when I’m not at work or sleeping, I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2.

I have never been a huge fan of MMOs. I tried playing Everquest and World of Warcraft, but it didn’t hold my interest at all. I did, however, get into the original Guild Wars in a pretty big way: not because it was an MMO, but because I could play it by myself. I started playing GW when I was neck-deep in casting and IRC, and I spent every waking moment online talking to or at other people – so I started playing Guild Wars to get away from it all. It was touted as an MMO you could play alone, which truly appealed to me: I had no interest in playing with others since I did that all the time, and I had no interest in meeting people through the game because I already knew too many people. GW1 allowed you to “hire” NPCs to form a party, so you could complete group quests and goals without ever needing to communicate with another person. It was awesome.

In the time between GW1 and 2, I had switched from PC gaming to console and Mac computers. Seriously bored one Saturday night, I decided to see if GW2 (which launched last September) was going to be available for Mac anytime soon. To my surprise, it already was – so I handed over my credit card, made an account, and (some two hours and 18GB later) started playing. I haven’t stopped. GW2 doesn’t have the “talk to no one” aspect I loved about the first game; I run into other people all the time. I still don’t have to talk to them, but eventually I’ll need to start finding people to team up with for the group quests and I don’t wanna. Other people are scary. I can kill all those things myself. I’m enjoying it, though. I’ve only got one character, a level 72 Sylvari Elementalist – basically, I’m a plant who likes to play with fire.

 

i'm a plant, wearing plants as clothes. it's basically a vegan meat dress.

i’m a plant, wearing plants as clothes. it’s basically a vegan meat dress.

Every once in a while someone says something ominous to me about dragons, but as near as I can tell the goal of the game is Centaur Genocide. No matter what map I’m on, Centaurs are coming at me and making fun of my two legs, which in turn makes me set them on fire. Not personally having anything against Centaurs (or lizards), I feel kind of bad about killing them all. I also feel kind of bad about the amount of time I’ve played – I’ve been playing for three weeks, and I’ve sunk 108 hours into it. That being said, I’m kind of glad I had the game this weekend – it gave me something to do other than lay around pathetically and moan about my death cold. I killed things instead! A much better use of my time, even if it’s training me to be some sort of killing machine who throws fire balls at people in real life.

I’m somewhat ashamed, but not really. This can’t go on forever – I basically plan to finish the map to 100% and be done with it. I’ve got no desire to PvP or start a new character or find out why people hate Centaurs so much – I just want to clear that damn Fog of War off my screen.

Goals! I have them!

Oh, that made me sad. It’s okay though! I’m sick!