The Total Femme

        

It’s coming up on a year that I’ve lived in the world with Type One diabetes. I still don’t know how to do it. I cobble something together ever day, but it’s really hard, time consuming, depressing, and draining. Like when I had breast cancer a few years back, I am both grateful for and hemmed in by technology. Unlike when I had breast cancer a few years back, I’m extremely unhappy with the medical support I’ve gotten and that doesn’t really seem to be going to change any time soon. It’s truly mindboggling, the difference between having a chronic condition that could kill you if you don’t watch it and having an accute condition that will kill you if the treatment doesn’t work but then, if it does, you’re more or less ok.

Today, I don’t feel more or less ok, I feel like my life is over.

Ah well, I can hear my father say, might as well get on with it. And my mother might chime in, as she did (infuriatingly at the time) when I used to get bad cramps, “I find a walk usually helps.”

Writing this post is getting on with it, and so was calling and talking with a femme friend. Also, the doggie and I had a nice tramp earlier today. Ok!

But damn. What a funk I can sink into.

You as well, my ardent, handcrafting, goddessly, bubbling and beaming queer femme sisters? Do you also know this negative and beckoning funk? My grandmother used to call it “feeling punk,” not to be confused with “being punk rock.” Perhaps for you, it’s not a chronic condition, and perhaps yes, but family troubles, money troubles, worries for days, worries and tragedies and miseries and fuckeries.

Last night I kicked my own sad femme ass and went to an online meditation held by the hard-working and generous members of the Diabetes Sangha. Nowhere locally had I been able to find a support group for late-onset type-one diabetes, but somehow, through the grace of the sweetness in the universe, I found this sangha.

I am not healed, I am not even in that much of a very good mood, but yesterday evening, in the company of others who may well have been awoken by lows in the night as I was – the shrill buzz of the alarm waking up all concerned (except the cat, the cat sleeps through it) and ending dreams and rest – I was able to let a bit of peace into my life, and I also remembered to meditate a smidge this morning. Which is why I’m writing this post instead of responding to outside noise.

Connection. Reaching out. Gazing in. Being together.

Whatever it is, there are others out there.

Today, my gorgeous, suffering, healing, cultivating, and enticing sisters who are alive, who are glistening and leaping, reach out to those who are traveling with you, whatever that looks like. 12-step, support group, it might be online, it might be down the road, it might be in a series of books or videos or podcasts. I know they’re out there, and I remind you.

You are not alone.

We are in it together.

Forfemmefuckingever.

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 is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”) And…as I go through life life life, I will post as I am able, Mabel.