Sunday, December 9, 2018

I'll Be Back....

Ok, ok, well maybe I am back. I don't know. TBD I guess, TBD.

All I know is that, I recently thought about this blog, which I haven't really thought about in a while. Which I haven't written in in a year and a half. And I re-read it, and I felt like I remembered a bit about who I used to be, not that long ago and still am mostly, a bit. 

I started this blog sort of in 2014, when I got diagnosed. I leaned into it in 2015, when I was trapped in a lonely and failing relationship. There were a lot of things I didn't want to talk about, and while diabetes was one of them, it was the thing I didn't want to talk about the least, if that makes sense. So I jumped in, in order to make sense out of something. In 2016, I was a girl who busted out of a relationship and into adulthood and vulnerability, in life and the internet. I was a real weird little astronaut buzzing around, fearless in all kinds of ways, right and wrong. I could have been more careful with some people, including myself. But that attitude was good for blogging aka spilling your private secrets in public.Well not your real private secrets, only the helpful ones that you need to process. It was good for exploring, good for me.

But 2017, that's when this blog began to drop off and me too. There's all this talk about caterpillars before butterflies, etc. But what people don't talk about is the chrysalis phase you know? Like, maybe it was all fun and groovy, dancing around, being a caterpillar. Sure you're not that conventionally good looking. But you've got a lot of legs, maybe some fuzzy fuzz all over you, you're weird colors, and honestly all you need to do all day is eat and eat. It's not a bad life. You may have some awareness that things won't be the same forever and one day you'll be something else but you're not too worried about that probably. You're doing fine. Until one day, you inexplicably make your way out on a twig, hang upside down (WTF?? THIS IS AN URGE YOU'VE NEVER HAD BEFORE??), build yourself a cramped little coffin out of your own body materials, AND BEGIN TO LIQUEFY. Yes. Liquefy inside your tiny coffin. You will stay here for days (a large portion of a butterfly life). As you melt, uncomfortably, squeeze, morph, whatever. You slowly, painfully, lengthily, prepare for the next phase of your life. I guess you could say that's what 2017 was for me. It was a year of loooonggg drawn out breakups, fractiousness at work, boredom, frustration, confusion, adult acne, you name it it was there. There were positives. Friendships, travel, students. Of course. But overall, it was a tough tough year. And my reflection capacities suffered as a result. Hence the slow, stuttering stop to this blog.

It's funny how very little of what causes me to write here, seems to actually have to do with diabetes. But searching for connection, trust and vulnerability, these are all things that are very linked to diabetes for me, just as much as my insulin brands and insurance woes.

So that brings us here to (barely anymore) 2018. This year I feel like a butterfly...who got launched out of a catapult....but who has maybe (possibly? probably?) landed in a field of nectar/flowers. Maybe I should say a butterfly who climbed into a catapult on purpose, knowing full well what she was doing, and aimed in the direction of a likely field of flowers and happened to actually land there, through some planning and preparation of her own but also through some luck and also her own tenacity upon landing. You know, just to keep it accurate. And pithy. 2018 was a great and adventurous year. The butterfly cemented friendships, swung on swings, took a lot of what she learned about failure and used it to take more risks, traveled to new cities and took a road trip (a few), moved states, made friends, lost friends, started going to butterfly therapy, cuddled a lot of dogs and posted a lot of Instagram stories.

And then I wound up back here. Looking for the best parts of what this blog used to bring me. Feeling pride at what used to be happening here, at what my words on the screen used to look like. It interested me, what has changed (some) and what hasn't (a lot). So, I think that it's safe to say that I'll be back here, to this space. Maybe writing some more, maybe doing more to reach out, maybe just reading it to remind myself that I have these feelings and needs, no matter how much I do or do not focus on them. As I'm pinging around this universe, this is one of my home planets.