The Total Femme

This January, when I was first diagnosed with LADA (latent, auto-immune, diabetes, adult-onset) and had just gotten out of the ICU, I mean hours earlier, I was sent to an endocrinologist’s office to get educated in this new hell. In the midst of slapping a continuous glucose monitor on my arm and watching me do a practice shot of insulin and generally introducing me to this new horrific chapter of my life, the endocrinologist muttered, “Of course, the weight will come back.”

            Excuse me? The who, the what?

It’s true that I’d lost weight in the illness that led up to me being admitted to the ICU, but so what if it came back? Wouldn’t that mean I was maybe starting to be healthy again? Later, this endocrinologist stopped working with people with diabetes to focus entirely on working with people around weight loss, so I guess her comment made sense. At least, to her and her line of work.

            To me, it was another blow in a series of blows hard enough to blow this femme way the fuck off course and about drown her in seas where there be many, many monsters. Why did we have to dredge up old struggles around weight and all that entails when I had just been diagnosed with a horrible, life-changing disease? Did that endo really fucking need to go there right then? And yet she did, and people do – make these off-the-cuff remarks that end up burrowing under your skin and nestling right up against your poor, struggling heart.

            Yours may not be a conflicted past relationship with food and body, but don’t we all have wounds from the past that rear up to confront us when we’re just going about our lives, minding our own business? Always such a shock, always so sad and difficult to be catapulted back to something so painful and fucked up. Depending on the depth of the wound, it takes a while to claw yourself back up out of that hole, that deep, haunted place.

            Speaking of haunting, that phrase haunts me, “The weight will come back.” It’s not because I’m worried about gaining a few pounds, it’s more the doctor’s pronouncement on me – me, who she was meeting for the first time smack dab in the middle of extreme crisis. Crisis for me. For her, just another day at the office. But because of the power imbalance, her words – her prophecy – hit me hard. She’s not seeing me, she’s not curious about my unique strengths and weaknesses, what I might accomplish as myself, she’s just seeing a conglomeration of patients past and pronouncing judgement.

            It’s an invisibility, a lack of attention, a brush off. As a queer femme, I already know way too much about those.

            Another time and post for how diabetes is a new kind of closet (it is, and I want to write about it eventually – I fucking hate a damn closet!), now let’s think about the weight of other peoples’ casual assumptions and judgements of us. Haven’t we had to field so many of those, my charmers, my darlings, my delights, my sparkling sprites? They echo, they come up in the middle of the night with our other cackling demons, they sap the strength right out of our spines.

            FUCK THEM!!!

Today, beloveds, turn and give them the finger, give them the boot, give them the ol’ heave ho. You are allowed to have weaknesses, you are allowed to make mistakes, you are allowed to fail and fumble and be frail and foolish. You are also allowed to go about healing in your own particular ways. When those judgements or assumptions surprise and side-swipe you, have compassion for yourself and let them carry themselves on through with the volition of their own shittyness. They can go to hell! Try not to capture them, let them pop like bubbles. Easier said than done, I know, especially in the middle of a hard night.

You’re not alone. You’re not broken. We’re here together, pushing back together, shouting, “Fuck you!” together.

Our own effulgent queer femme power shining through.

Every Monday I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.

At the Total Femme, my intention has been to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Lately, I’ve just been concentrating on Mondays. And sometimes weeks go by… I’m here, though. I’m here. Do you have a post you’d like to share? That would be fucking awesome! Contact me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com