thoughts, words, deeds

the colors of my day

Prompt: A Colorful Way of Living Write anything you want about this.

My life is grey today. Not just the streak in my hair just above my right eye, but in general, which is kind of annoying because the sky was clear and the day was warm, but I was grey, and it was because I’m tired. That’s what happens when you accidentally take too much insulin before bed (correction, sigh) and wake up at three o’clock in the morning (I suddenly have an old song in my head) sweaty and heart-racing and low.

I ate a handful of jellybeans without really thinking about it (we’re talking all of the black ones in the bag because in my lack of brainfood brought on by the low, I needed those to go away so I could eat a jelly bean that actually didn’t taste like licorice. sigh) and then tested at 50 (which is low, if you don’t know) so I ate some more. The next ones are the green and orange ones, which I don’t really like, so that I can leave the yellow and pink and red and white ones for a treat. Whoa—here’s another way my life is about colors.

Then I went downstairs and munched some more and drank water so that the adrenaline would go away. Waking in a low is kind of like waking from a nightmare. All adrenaline response as your body tries to correct what’s wrong by making you scared.

Finally, I went to sleep again at three thirty. And then I had to get up at six thirty to go to work—as a volunteer receptionist. I need a real job desperately. And when I got up, I was high—like in the two hundred sixty range. So I took lots of insulin (this is called yo-yoing, and is not as fun as it sounds, when you go down and eat too much and go up and over correct and go down again . . .) waited for half an hour and then ate breakfast.

So, I’m going to work, and feeling kind of green and pale (reaction after a low is kind of like a hangover—or so I hear. I’ve not had one of my own to compare it to) so I’m feeling sick and headachy and I have to be nice and polite to people on the phone and coming into the office so I basically bury myself in a book (and finish it) and knit a bit and then my shift is done, and my ride forgets me, so I’m late getting home and lunch (midmorning, I was still at 233, but by the time I get home for lunch, I’m at a more reasonable 130) and I have to turn around right away even though I want a nap so that I can go back for a meeting in the afternoon (it’s a crafter’s meeting, sitting around knitting together—fun, but I wanted sleep)

Food is so much more trouble than it’s worth.

So, now, I’m finished for the day, my blood sugar is stable at 100, and I want to sleep because I’m still feeling grey and green and hungover and headachy, and I really want another jelly bean because I’ve been talking about them and I shouldn’t because I have more self control then that and besides, I don’t want to run into the same series of issues tomorrow, because it will make me feel like swearing (yet another colorful way to live) and I don’t do that, so it all bottles up inside me and I start ranting about blood sugar in response to a perfectly innocuous prompt that I wouldn’t do this to if I hadn’t have lived the past nineteen or so hours the way I did.