7 Months and Then Some.

Last month I meant to write this post, but due to the recent writer's block, I put it off to the wayside a little.


There's a spot on highway 96 near Reynolds that draws my eye every time. It doesn't seem like much, but this is the exact place that, nearly 8 months ago, I was in a terrible car accident and totaled my truck. Driving by still sends waves of confusion and a deep cold sense of actuality straight to my heart, like ice. I don't know what to think, there are so many mixed emotions that come from it.

At first, I never wanted to drive  by this place again. There are other routes to Columbus, Georgia, but my GPS seems to like to take me to this place a lot. I sucked up the courage back in December, though, promising I wouldn't think about it too much, wouldn't look for it...

But morbidly, of course, my eyes scanned the guardrail, and I knew immediately when I had found the place with the dent in the guardrail and the large concrete pole next to it that I saw looming at me as my vehicle flipped. I blinked for a second and heard screeching and smelled the burning, rubbery, oily smell of wreckage. The glass fragmenting. My eyes remember the blood stain on the bodice of my old Cinderella dress that won't come off. Tiny things as they are, they are all reminders. Terrible, powerful little things.

That will always be one of the most traumatizing experiences of my life. It, like being diagnosed with Diabetes, though, made me even more grateful for the life that God has given me. My accident was a terrible thing, but I somehow made it through the difficulty and survived past it. It made life harder, but I learned to adapt to the difficulty.

Many times in life I have caught myself wondering at God, saying, he hasn't given me more than I can handle, but he will push the limits... pretty damn far. And he does. I don't know why. To test us? To make us better people? To help us to earn strengths that will make us stronger people? Great blogging material for writers like me? I don't know.

Pain colours this world - pain lies behind the eyes of every individual who has felt it. Pain drives poetry and writing, painting and music. And joy does, too. Those two wonderful, terrible dichotomies of each other need the other to put the other into perspective. The greater the pain, the deeper the capacity for joy, I believe. The greater the challenges, the stronger you will be if you struggle past them and fight with all that you have. The greater the fire that will burn within you.

I am grateful to be alive and grateful to have been given the means and faculties to move past this traumatic event in my life. It is also a solemn reminder though, to take care and to remember how fragile life is. To laugh at the silly things and cherish the moments we have together. To remember that despite the terrible things, we have to learn to also confront them and find inner peace with the bad things that have happened to us. To breathe and let our heart strings, tight and painful, fall loose just a little bit so that our chest doesn't feel like it's about to snap... to keep pushing forward, to let our experiences shape us but not control us. To use them to empower ourselves and let them allow us to create the person we want to be. We all make choices when we decide how we want the moments of our lives to effect us. And we all make different choices - it's one of the ways in which we humans are all so different.

As I drive past the guardrail for maybe the last time - living in Atlanta will have me take a different route to Columbus - I think of all these things, I close my eyes for a brief moment, and simultaneously let go of and embrace my past for all that it is. I am alive, I am here, and my future lies before me - ready to be shaped in whatever way I see fit.

A Shift in Perspective

I rant a lot about Diabetes on here. I talk a lot about myself - fair, ok, it's my blog - but I want to share with you all something different today, that's had a big impact on my life in the last year.

I started interning at Nursing Homes with different Physical Therapists last year, and it really started to pull at my heart and change my perspective on things.

You look at all the troubles you have... and then you look at them. These tired, these weary, the sick or sad or alone. The happy ones, the bitter ones, the talkative ones. There are people from all walks of life. Rich, poor, Medicaid, Private Pay, wheelchair-bound, walker-aided. Some people are very self sufficient. Others can't even reach for the remote beside their bed. Who are you to complain?

These people built the businesses around you, the city lights, they elected famous presidents, senators, passed bills, taught your parents how to read and write in school... and yet, so many of them are here, and are forgotten. And it's a shame because it is beautiful, and they are beautiful, if you can look with the right kind of eye. Remember what beauty really means. They are too old for facades and worn out phrases and fake smiles. They tell it to you like it is, they smile with their whole heart or not at all. They show real pain or frustration or anger, or real joy that you took the time to stop and listen to their stories. Sometimes I leave the nursing home happy. Sometimes I leave wanting to cry.

An elderly man struggling to walk, aided by the parallel bars... his wife comes to visit and stands at the end, smiles and says,
"Walk to me, honey. Like you did down the aisle on our wedding day. Walk down here and kiss me like you did then."

A fluffy, white haired woman in her bed, who looks at me and says - "Young lady, no matter what you go on to do... be good to people. Always be good to people, especially us elderly - you never know when one of us will be spending our last day on Earth. Be good to people, even when they aren't good to you - because one day, all of us will answer to God."

I think of these memories and moments and my heart outpours with love for them. Most of us will grow to be old someday, and think, how would you want to be treated? Nursing homes are not always pleasant places. They aren't happy, sometimes they smell, sometimes you have to try hard not to turn away. I feel that these are things you have to look past. These people truly matter, they really do. My first day of interning at a nursing home, I asked one of the Physical Therapists if it really made a difference. I'd come from an outpatient facility where the patients often got  better and were younger, healed more easily. Many of the elderly patients couldn't even stand.

Does it matter? Truly?
He look at me and says,
Yes. Even if I can help this man do something as simple as push his wheelchair around, I have made a difference. His quality of life has gotten better, even if only by a little bit - and it's made him a little more comfortable and happy. Making someone's life better, no matter there age, is a meaningful thing to me. 

And he was right - and I have come to realize that too. If therapists can help these people to sit up, walk again, push their walker, use the rest room, brush their hair, eat by themselves - well, then that's a difference, whether they live two more weeks or two more years. If you listen to their stories, make them a card, come visit, volunteer, push their wheelchair, pay attention, get them a drink - that's meaningful, too. Your time is meaningful, and meaningful to others. It's helping others, and just because someone is old doesn't make them any less worthy of help, if anything it has made them more worthy of your help and time.
Maybe it's not the most glamorous of places, but I have found something in these homes that I have rarely found elsewhere, and that's a kind of true human love and compassion for complete strangers that I never thought I'd find. I love the stories, the raw emotion, the funny and inappropriate residents, the sweet little old ladies, the cranky cynical ones, the ones with the wise eyes, the ones that say nothing at all. People deserve love, no matter who they are or how they treat you. Love is not always contingent on someone, but it's something you give freely and openly, expecting nothing in return, no recognition, and it shapes and changes your heart in the best of ways when you do that.

When I am with these people, my own troubles fade away. I am not a diabetic with my troubles, the ones that weigh me down and make me feel older than I should. I am a young woman lucky to be alive and walking and blessed with the capability to give my time and efforts to others in need. I am lucky. I am blessed. I can spread happiness to other people, even if it's only just a smile. Emily Dickinson says it best, and it's exactly why I want to be a physical therapist and help others someday:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again,

I shall not live in vain.

Nothing Exciting - Simply Pondering The Duration of My Diabetic Life Up to This Point.

These days, there is a sadness in my heart.

I feel it more some times than I do others -

Driving the backroads of south Georgia, the late afternoon sun filtering down through the clouds to the fields...

sleepy old cemeteries, tombstones blanketed with moss and bearing years long since past.

Georgia isn't perfect.

But nonetheless, I am in love. 

I so value these last few years - this time I've had, the moments, the memories, the laughs, the trials and many sorrows, the joys. My journey to Georgia has taken me so many incredible places, taught me so many knew things, taught me so much about who I am. I have truly grown into my own here, and with it I have further found my purpose, my confidence, my strength, my drive, my passion, my character. 

I revel in it - and it's all about to end, soon. Maybe I'll still be in Georgia, maybe I'll be in Florida - nonetheless, the life I have created for myself, the people I have come to know at Wesleyan, the familiar things I have grown to love like getting coffee downtown, visiting the cemetery and sneaking into the cathedrals - will be only memories soon enough. My life is moving forward, and I'm sad, because I love it so dearly and I'm not ready for it all to end. My life is about to start a new chapter, and it is unknown and frightening and exhilarating and startlingly real all at the same time. 

 But here is a victory that cheers me up - throughout the last three years, Diabetes has never dulled a moment of the bright and beautiful memories I have gathered. Never stopped me from enjoying my life here. Despite the fact that, like so many other things, Diabetes has been interwoven into the tapestry of my life, becoming as close to me as my own heartbeat. 

What were some of your greatest accomplishments? Was a question I was asked at one of my interviews for Graduate school.

1. Starting my business.

2. Learning to push forward and succeed in spite of everything else going on in life. 

3. Not letting Diabetes limit me. 

3 is a lie. Sometimes, Diabetes limits me. Sometimes because I let it. Other times it's the one that does the limiting. Yes, I can eat carbs, no, I try not to. I hate working out, getting low, and ending up eating everything plus the kitchen sink, negating my workout. Or having to take 30 minutes off work to recover from a low. It's not without its frustrations. My meter, my insulin, my 15 grams of carbs are crutches than I must carry with me through life. Type 1 Diabetes is a title that will brand me so long as I carry it. 

But I look at where I was, and I look at where I am now - and I am here! Here I stand, at the foot of my dreams - here I stand, ready to finish - and begin - the product that all of my effort, sweat, stress, tears and hard work have gone towards. I want to be a Physical Therapist, I want to push myself to new limits, I want to be successful, and Diabetes won't stop me from doing any of that.

It's a good realization to have...

And it's best to cheer myself up as much as possible before Graduate School starts, where I'll be chin-deep in studying with no hope of a life until graduating in three years... :P

Playing Make-Believe.

I used to play all sorts of games when I was little. Artist, teacher, archaeologist, detective, journalist - I could go through 3 different careers in the span of a single day.
I played Doctor, too. I used to grab a mechanical pencil, push down the eraser and pull on the lead until it nearly fell out. I'd put it up to my skin then, and push the eraser down, pretending that it was a needle as I watched the lead disappear into what looked to be skin.

Pretending was a lot more fun than the real thing. I'm no Doctor, but then, I play Doctor to myself every day. 
I guess after two years it's sunk in that this will be my life for the long haul. Am I a Diabetes whiz by now? Do I have perfect BG readings all the time? No way. But after this time I do think that I am beginning to get my confidence back - my confidence in myself, that I had lost for so long since my diagnosis. There came to be a constant worry, hanging like a shadow over me. The worry waited, unnoticed at times, until I fell headfirst into the right situation. Suddenly, the questions, the second guessing, would be there again. Hitting me headfirst like a train...

Now that I have Diabetes, will I ever be able to reach my goals?
Can I even be a physical therapist having Diabetes?
Will school and Diabetes be too much to handle?
Can I come to terms with the fact that I am imperfect when it comes to treating myself?

The worry isn't gone. But I feel like I can better confront the questions now.
Having Diabetes makes things more difficult, but I don't have to let it stop me from achieving any of my goals.
Will I get discouraged? Yes.
Have my bad days? Yes.
Wonder for the millionth time why the odds of having this disease fell upon me, when statistically they shouldn't have? All the time.
I've tried for so long to be perfect when it comes to my treatment, but I can't be. I am imperfect, I am flawed, my body is messed up. But everything comes one step at a time. Wake up, test, eat, test. Repeat. Every test, every shot, every Blood Glucose log carries me forward. 

So what if I want to get a Doctorate with Diabetes? It won't stop me.
So what if my job will require being on my feet a lot? I'll adjust my insulin if I get low. 
If I want to hike a mountain? I'll bring snacks. 
Diabetes won't stand still for me, so I won't stand still for Diabetes. 

I'll keep doing what I know how to do - keep on moving forward, setting goals, and achieving them. 

Looking back now, I realize something monumental - Diabetes, for me, was the defining line in my life between childhood and adulthood. Was I mature before my diagnosis? Certainly. (Ok, well, maybe my mom doesn't think so - ha-ha.) But Diabetes gave me something else.... changed my personality, tweaked me in some small but monumental way. 
When I got Diabetes, I think I truly became an adult. I learned things about myself that some people will never get the chance to learn. I learned that I would do what it takes to survive. I learned that I would let nothing get in the way of my goals, that nothing would stop me. That if I keep my chin up and keep pushing through, that I'll surprise even myself with what I can achieve. 

And something else.....
That life isn't perfect. That happiness isn't about perfection, or how few things are going wrong. Happiness is about the little moments; 
The sun in your hair, stolen moments with the one you love, a phone call to home. A walk on a crisp fall day, the smile of a stranger, the laughter of a friend.
Cracks, glimpses, fragments of life between life; this is what happiness is about. Learning to find the joy despite the craziness, the intensity, the anxiousness. Learning to find peace despite the turmoil. 
And to treasure all of it.

Sometimes, I still feel like the little girl playing Doctor. 
Sometimes, I wish it was all make-believe. That I would wake up one morning laughing, saying, "it was all just a dream."
But it's not make-believe any more. And I've made the choice to learn, and to grow, from this experience instead. 
I can never forget my life before; unlike some Diabetics, who have suffered with this disease since toddlers, I remember with a crisp, painful clarity all that my life was and used to be. There is and always will be an ache in my soul for that life.
But though I may look back sometimes, the past will not hold me back.

I will always keep moving forward.

The Same Old New Year

New Year's Day... now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. - Mark Twain 

Mark Twain says it all. It's a new year - a time of renewal, of change. We write new years resolutions, full of hope, planning to carry them out for the rest of this brand new, perfect year. But of course, this never really ends up being the case. Fast forward a month in advance, and most of us have forgotten what it was that we even wrote on our New Years' lists. Life goes on, as before, and a new year ticks by.

This sounds pessimistic. But that's not the point. Basically, it's that I don't want to go through another new year with a list in hand, trying to force myself to change and bend to the will of words on a piece of paper. Change is gradual, not forced. We don't become new people overnight, but a little bit at a time. When I was little I used to religiously write my resolutions, each year promising myself I'd get it right, that this would be the year, that I wouldn't act up, that everything would be perfect. Come to find two days in that this wasn't my year, afterall. So in the short term - no, I didn't really will myself to change. But looking back, over all of these new years... well, I see how much I've grown, I've changed, and how many New Years resolutions I've accomplished not over the course of a single year, but rather over the course of my entire life, over each and every year. The lessons, the growing, the changing never stops. Each day, each new year is a journey.

So, I go into this New Year knowing that, firstly, this year won't be perfect. I expect failure, disappointment, and upset. Same as always. I also know that this year will be full of changes. Nothing will be the same as it used to be. Things always change - I'm ready for it. But while I'll try in some areas and fail in others, I know that, in many places, I will be met with success. When I stand at the edge of 2012, awaiting the ball drop (assuming the world hasn't ended yet, of course), I know I will be a different person than I was last year. I'll embrace it. The thing about growing up is learning that things aren't perfect, and that life isn't a fairytale. You don't always get happy endings, but it's life's little happy moments in between that makes it worth living.

Almost-Grown Up

Life goes by in a breeze. I blink, I'm in the third year of College. Exhale, already halfway through the first semester of Wesleyan. Time to pick classes again. A day goes by and I am now 18, finally an adult. I turn around, High School years lay behind me, so distant the memories seem as if they belong to a past life, surely not my own. I'm not old - I'm very young. But all of the things that were once so familiar have changed, and the differences make me feel as if I've been alive a hundred years. People have changed, left my life, gone off in their own direction. Home is no longer the place where I lay my head down at night, but instead now a place where I can only visit precious few times each year. I don't know where I'm going to Grad School, I don't know where I want to live where I grow up, paper towels are a luxury I haven't had since leaving home, and I miss my mom taking me out to go shopping.

I am an "almost-grown up".

I love it; I like feeling responsible, getting errands done, seeing things get accomplished. I like it when people don't treat me like a child, but instead like someone who matters. (Despite the baby face - sigh.) I'm at a time in my life where one part of the day I can act grown-up, and yet act like a complete child on certain occasions...sometimes merely hours later. There's college for you.

But then... sometimes... I don't like it so much. I feel a little homesick for my old life. Sometimes I miss Orlando - while so many times I hated that busy, hectic place, I realize that all my life I had grown used to it. Now the absence seems as strange and apparent as absolute silence. Which is, literally, just what the transition has been like - stepping from a room full of people into a completely quite one. The busy-ness, the rhythm, the life that my hometown possessed - makes so many places seem like ghost towns in comparison. I'm not used to seeing tiny Southern towns, driving down 20-mile highways through the middle of nowhere, not a strip mall in sight. The only place I had ever really experienced something like that before was Live Oak, a little town north of Gainesville where my grandparents live. Orlando was my city, my home, and there is no other place on Earth quite like it. It was familiar, and I miss familiar. I miss being around family and the people I know, going to all the familiar stores and restaurants, being privy to all of the exciting perks and things that only the inhabitants of one of the busiest cities in Florida got to enjoy.

And my, since moving I have aged. It's not necessarily a readily apparent thing - but I notice little changes, differences in the way I act, the way I think. There are things that make me shake my head now - like going to the store and seeing moms and their teen daughters shopping for clothes, and those girls just being so rude to their moms. I know I was like that at some point - I went through that phase - but really? What ever possessed me to do that? It just makes me want to tell them to shape up and stop taking their moms for granted. I was a terribly rude teenager, but I realize how silly that was now. My mom always made sure I had nice clothes, I had good food, that I was taken care of. Heck, she even endured teaching me algebra - a task that no mortal should take lightly. I realize how lucky I was, how patient and caring my mom was all those years, and I just wish I would have acted more grateful to her for everything she'd done for me... not be the moody, smart-butt teenager that I see in almost every store I walk in now.

The bottom line is, being an almost-grown up is hard. It's exhausting. It's worrisome. Trying to make my business work, getting all of my own shows and bookings, fighting for every customer, that's hard. Paying for all of my own things, budgeting carefully, takes self control - and many times I make sacrifices and go without a lot of things, like expensive low-carb ice cream and nice makeup and eating out. Making new friends, finding new places, that's foreign and discouraging at times - I feel as if I'm still trying to find in Macon, in Georgia, a place that feels like Orlando - but I know I'll never find it. And, you know, just by writing that I realize all this time that that's exactly what I have been trying to do - I've been taking pieces of my old life and holding them up against the new, trying to compare the two, trying to find similarities between two entirely different things. I try so hard, but I have to come to terms with the fact that those similarities I search so hard for will never be found. Everything I have ever known has changed, and that means I have to make changes, too. I can't keep searching for remnants of my old life in my new one. That doesn't mean I have to let go of Florida, becoming a complete hermit to my friends and family back home. That's always going to be a part of me that I will embrace with open arms every chance I get. But it does mean I have to also embrace new things, accept that my life from now on will involve more responsibility, and learn from all of the new lessons that life is bound to toss at me.

I know that from this blog I might come off as seeming discontent - this is not the case. I realize that these feelings are normal, that in time I will come to adjust. It's just... learning to be an adult is hard! I love college and finally being close to Joshua and meeting new people and (albeit slowly) becoming more educated. I love knowing that in a few short years, my hard work will pay off, and I will be able to put my college degree to good use. Until then, I guess you could say I have a homework assignment that has nothing to do with college classes -

That is, finding my "new normal".

Grown Up? Hmm... No... Still A Princess.

It is officially Fall, and I am in love with this weather. Fall is my very favorite time of the year. The cool air, clear blue skies, and quiet restfulness of the season lend me a sense of peace and inner joy that spreads into all the areas of my life. 

Tomorrow is the first of October, and it is less than two weeks until it is my birthday. I don't know what I am doing for my birthday. This will be my first away from home, and it saddens me to think that I cannot spend it with my old good friends. And with a party like last year and the year before, any future birthday of mine has a great deal to live up to. Worries run through my head: What if it's completely miserable? What if no one wants to or has time to celebrate with me? What if everyone forgets? I really hope that I can find something to do, whether it is a small get-together with old and new friends, dinner with friends and family, those that I love, or perhaps the upcoming Perry Fair. I don't need a big party, but I do wish for something enjoyable and memorable to make my 18th Birthday a special day. 

It's hard to believe that I am going to be 18. Mostly because I remember looking back, while approaching my 15th Birthday, and thinking that the day was so distant and far away. What would past Lacy think if she had known the time would go so fast? It's been three years since then, and three years is an impossibly long stretch of life. I find myself caught up between two viewpoints of life; part of me still feels like a young girl, just role-playing the part of a College student and near grown-up. I'm still learning the ropes of living on my own, of answering telephones and working minimum-wage jobs while working my own business and having to deal with people myself instead of passing the task onto my mother. I'm still adjusting to the shock of having to buy my own snacks, trying to figure out why laundry detergent is so damn expensive, and figuring out an easy way to lug my laundry down to the basement. 

And yet, at the same time, I catch occasional glimpses in myself of what I saw in older people when I was truly just a young girl; mature, confident, grown-ups who had all the answers and seemed so capable of all the tasks at hand. Part of me has certainly grown up, I can't deny that. But what would my younger self see in me now? Would she see a young woman, nearly grown? Or just a little girl, still trying to find out how to grow up in this far away place away from home?

I chalk my qualms all down to the realization that this is just "one of those points in life." 18 is a time to grow and explore, to experience a larger part of the world which will, in turn, help me to become more of who I am to be. I don't know all the answers; and, unlike the last 3-4 years of my life, I am old enough to realize that. I still have a lot of things to experience, like voting and signing waivers as an adult and clubbing and losing vast quantities of money on the lottery (just kidding, mom.) I still have a long way to go until I will really feel like an adult - or maybe I will always be one of those oddballs, the ones that stay children forever and never grow up.

In the space under occupation I do still put princess, after all. 

Disney three years ago!