Here are some links to more information about studies on the amount of homework assigned (generally to high school students, but also above and below that level). Let me know what you think.
Stanford research shows pitfalls of homework
Kids have three times too much homework, study finds; what’s the cost?
Students Spend More Time on Homework but Teachers Say It’s Worth It
Being the adventurous and culturally-aware person I pretend to be, I opted to take a course on Italian and Italian-American masculinities this semester. Along with way more unnecessary work than I could have ever imagined, I have also been presented with a question: Why do men have to be “made”? Let me explain.
In looking at the vast majority of cultures (though there are, of course, some exceptions of relative note) a male human has a test he must pass to be considered a man. Generally speaking, that test is not a pleasant one, but the rewards of becoming a man sure seem worth it. If one is not a man, not only does he suffer humiliation and at times end up ostracized by his people, but he may also lose out on such privileges as taking a wife or holding a certain roles in the community. (Though I will take the time to throw out the fact that I have no idea who can really say who is a man (or a woman) anyway. Don’t lie; you don’t know either.)
Like I said though, these tests don’t allow for just anybody with the right parts to become a man. In his book Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity, David D. Gilmore details tests of manhood that range from deep-sea fishing in shark-infested waters to accepting whippings, beatings and other brutal acts unflinchingly. Should the fail, they may be considered weak or effeminate (Ironically, it seems to me that women are also trying to avoid being effeminate in some ways, seeking instead to be independent like their male counterparts are traditionally expected to be. Nobody is shooting for feminine anymore unless that is what their prospective mate wants).
But…why?
Well, in reality, societies like these (and ours, though in more subtle ways) want our men to have all of Gilmore’s three P’s in their command. Those three, protecting, providing and procreating, are considered to be a man’s duties. If he cannot successfully do all of these things, well, then he is no man at all.
A man should form a family by wooing a woman, letting her have his multitudes of children and then proceeding to protect and provide for that family until his dying breath (preferably one that involves explosions and war and blood and other man stuff).
Only not at all.
The real kicker to all of this is that in the vast majority of societies, a female needs only one thing to become a woman: fertility.
That’s right, ladies. If you can menstruate, you are, in fact, a woman. Congratulations.
Now, I don’t want to discount the efforts of being fertile and bearing children, but are they really so great that in comparison a male should be thrown into a shark tank to become a man? Maybe. Who am I to decide?
Regardless, the moral of this story is that people are weird. We set weird standards (that are generally very arbitrary) for what we believe a man should be, and when he doesn’t get there we humiliate and punish him. Some people would say, “Oh no! We live in *insert your developed, civilized nation’s name here*! We are so advanced beyond that that one shouldn’t even entertain the notion. You sound silly, Amanda. This only happens in undeveloped societies.”
Well, you’re wrong.
It still happens today. It just has a slightly different face. Picture if you will the high school virgin. Somehow, he can be a six foot tall wall of muscle (though in this scenario he generally isn’t), but if he has not known woman in a biblical sense, he is forever shamed by all his friends who were smart enough to lie and say they have (We were there, guys. Most of us weren’t sleeping with anybody. We know most of you got your diplomas before you got a woman in bed.). Break this scenario down and you’ve essentially got men being mocked because they have yet to conquer a woman. Sounds brutish, right?
Well, it is. And even though most people would chalk it up to adolescents being the absolute worst things ever to exist, they had to get that idea somewhere. They may not be banging on their chests and declaring they are man and hear them roar, but they are being expected to pass a test, reach a goal and prove themselves worthy.
On a more serious tone, think gang initiations. What more is a group of men doing when telling another, younger, newer man that he must prove himself through violent crime? Is that not just another test of manhood?
With the urge to be a traditionally feminine female on the decline, women are starting to do it, too. The “I’m-empowered-and-can-have-just-as-much-sex-as-a-man-when-I-want” women are passing similar tests to that high school virgin from before. Where are it was generally accepted that a girl eventually would become a woman, she now must pass a test that is in some ways very similar to what boys have had to do for centuries to become men. Even if she has been wearing a bra since she was 12, she may not yet be a woman until she has passed her own test. I will say from personal experience though that more seems to ride on your period than anything else, which is interesting because I definitely was NOT a woman when that day came. I was just an awkward girl with a whole new set of body problems.
Regardless, this test of one’s manhood sounds archaic because it is. Why men still insist on declaring they lost their virginity when they were 14 (which, by the way, nobody cares about when you lost your virginity but you, so calm down) is beyond me. Honestly, I’m not looking for anybody to prove anything other than their personhood. Be a human, and not an awful one. That’s all I need. But, since I am not going to be the one to stop men or women from feeling the need to prove themselves prime adult specimen, I can only hope that we will continue to evolve and eventually base manhood and womanhood on less base and brutish goals.
Maybe, if we’re lucky, someday a man will be somebody who can take care of himself and those around him in the way that best suits him and benefits his local and global community. If we’re really lucky, women will be measured by those same parameters. We are all humans, after all, aren’t we?
Supportive.
Laurie Marino was a huge fan of her younger brother Mark Domico when he played basketball. She and her father, Tony, never missed a St. Dennis game, and they were nothing if not committed to the team.
Laurie was, in fact, so committed, that when Mark was in sixth grade she “got a little emotionally involved” in the tournament she was at. Laurie’s cheering and correcting the referee led to her eviction from the game, but also an honorary trophy from the team after they won the tournament.
“It was nice to have support,” Mark said.
—
Laurie.
She’s my mother. She puts her whole self into everything she does, and she is the best mother I could have been blessed with. My mother turns 50 years old today, and I can only imagine what she’ll be doing with her next 50 years.
—
Relatable.
Her parents said she used to hide under the kitchen table and watch the TV in the other room instead of sleeping.
“She never could sleep,” her father said. “She still doesn’t.”
I now know why she doesn’t; she never stops working, never stops doing one more thing for her family.
“Your mom shares everything,” my grandma told me.
Not only is she generous, but she is also considerate. My grandma said that when she goes shopping, she buys exactly what you want, even if you didn’t know you wanted it.
“There’s nothing bad we could say about your mother…she’d help anybody,” my grandpa said.
—
Social.
Donna Hann, Laurie’s older sister, said Laurie was always a social butterfly. She knew everybody in the group wherever they went.
When she would go to the neighborhood bar, J.D. Salooney’s, with Laurie and her then “just friend” Bill Marino, Donna said her core muscles got a workout.
In the midst of his “silly streak” as Donna called it, Bill would show off his prowess as a performer and mouth the lyrics to songs drifting out of the jukebox with Celine Dion-eque intensity while standing right behind Laurie.
If you knew Bill, she said, you knew this was highly irregular behavior, and the sight of it caused her to laugh hysterically. Laurie, picking up on the laughter would turn around to see what had happened.
“[Bill], naturally, would assume the somber expression of a judge just as she turned, and she could never catch his histrionics,” Donna wrote in a letter.
Hopefully, this memory will clear up some confusion for Laurie about times at J.D.’s which Donna said she very much liked.
“And she would go back to her conversations, he would go back to his musical silliness and I would go back to laughing every single time.”
—
Blessing.
On August 28, 1991, Bill Marino took then Laurie Domico to Buckingham Fountain.
He said it was one of their favorite places to go, along with fireworks shows at Navy Pier and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
“I remember being excited and very nervous, and I was looking forward to the future,” Bill said.
After walking around the fountain, Bill started to head back to the car, and Laurie assumed the trip was over.
She was wrong.
As they walked through the rose garden, Bill got down on one knee and made a proposal that would changes Laurie’s life.
Yes, she would marry him.
“And at that time I know she was the happiest I’d ever seen her in my entire life,” he said.
Bill said he did it because he had found somebody loyal, caring, kind and understanding in Laurie, somebody that accepted him for who he was.
“She was beautiful inside and out and she understood what loyalty was all about. That’s everything in a nutshell.”
Bill was reluctant to tell a story at first, saying he didn’t have the words. I think he said it all right here.
“I don’t always agree with her, but I know this. I know her intentions are good.”
“I think she puts all of us first.”
“She’ll be there til the end for me. I know that for a fact.”
—
Loving.
When Jillian, Laurie’s youngest daughter, was little, she would go with Laurie downtown to work in Chicago.
“We would take the train down and it was always crazy exciting for me,” Jillian said.
Though she couldn’t always convince her mother to ride on the top row of seats, she was sure she was in for an adventure.
Jillian and her mom would tell stories and play games on the train.
Once they were downtown, they would take what Jillian called a “very long walk”
(the same mile Laurie walked to work every day) from the train station to Laurie’s building and up 20 floors to her office.
Inside, they would say hello to her office co-workers and Jillian would proceed to bother her mother endlessly, wanting attention and somebody to play with. As far as Jillian was concerned, the fun did not need to end on the train.
When she was older, Jillian would sometimes get put to work, organizing files or something of that sort. When she finished, she said she was always filled with pride that she could help her mom at work.
After a few hours at work, Jillian said they would take a break for lunch. One of her favorite places to go was the Rainforest Cafe.
“We would take pictures every single time with all the loud animals,” Jillian said.
Their favorite seats were by the fish tanks, where Jillian would make it a point to name all the fish.
After lunch, Jillian and Laurie would go back to work where Laurie, sensing Jillian was about done for the day, would try as hard as she could to finish up and take Jillian home.
“These are the best times because we were just simply enjoying each other’s company,” Jillian said.
—
Mom.
I have been writing this for three weeks, and I still have no idea what story to tell you about my mother.
I could talk about how she makes every accomplishment of mine seem spectacular and has made me feel important as hell since I was getting excited for straight A’s on report cards.
I could talk about her being a working mom and still never missing a volleyball game or a dance competition or a Girl Scout event and how she never let me miss anything because I couldn’t get a ride.
I could talk about how she wanted (and still wants) our house to be the literal hub of social activity in Orland Park, how she and my dad were (and still are) constantly telling me to invite people over when I’m home, to just have a party because, you know, it’s Tuesday, so why not?
I could talk about her laughing with me, crying because of me and listening to me as I work out everything from the absurd worries that cross my mind to the things I can’t quite figure out to what kind of curtains would look best in the apartment and whether or not this is a good outfit (which I literally did an hour ago because I know she is better at making that happen than me).
I could talk about each of us laying on our respective couch and watching TV until some ungodly hour of the morning because who needs sleep, anyway?
I could talk about how she invites herself down to see me at college for a weekend and how I always hate to see her go, how while she’s here we go shopping and hold puppies and do all the other things I deprive myself of because I seriously forget how to be a person without her.
I could talk about one weekend in particular that turned into a week because it started with me walking into a hospital “kinda sick” and walking out a Type 1 Diabetic and how she sat with me even when I told her not to and how she tried to do chores around my house even when I told her not to and how all the things I told her not to do were exactly what I needed from her and she knew that better than I did.
By giving you those insights, I have only scratched the surface in describing my mother. It frustrates me to no end that I simply cannot do her justice.
Know this: I love her, I am lucky to call her my mother and if she has graced your life with her presence, you should count that blessing twice.
Please, really do let me know if you have suggestions. I appreciate it!
It clung to the glass by a piece of petrified, black flesh. As Hannah Fleace shook the glass, it jiggled mercilessly, refusing to drop to her lips as the challenge required. When it finally freed itself, she almost inhaled it in surprise. Fleace had been warned not to swallow it. It was the bar’s seventh toe after all.
Last summer, Hannah Fleace was an intern at the Skagway News in Alaska. After spending three consecutive days reporting on a team from Skagway as they participated in the Yukon River Race, she and her co-workers decided to celebrate by taking the famous Sourtoe Shot.
The race ended in Dawson City, Yukon, Canada, an old gold rush town home to the internationally known shot with a very special ingredient.
“It’s a dead human toe that’s been dehydrated and preserved in salt,” Fleace said.
The idea of the shot was presented to Fleace by a local from Juno, Alaska. At the time she assumed she wasn’t going to be in Dawson at all. Plus, she said, the idea struck her as repulsive.
On their way to Dawson, Fleace’s editor mentioned they would be close to the toe shot. After that realization, she said, they worked to get themselves excited to partake in the bizarre tradition.
“We had gone to the casino earlier that night and some other bars, so it was kind of the culmination of this, like, ridiculous event that happened,” she said.
The toe placed in Fleace’s drink came from a woman who said she made the unfortunate mistake of mowing her lawn in flip flops. She decided it was a good idea to mail her amputated toe to the bar along with a note that advised against making her same error in judgment.
Fleace said people come from around the world and pay to have the toe dropped in their glass of Yukon whiskey inside the Sourdough Saloon.
The historic saloon is located in the Downtown Hotel in Dawson. The bar was regal, classy compared to the dingy bars most people frequent today, Fleace said.
The building was supported by columns and had multiple levels that were all connected to the same open atrium. The bar itself was fully stocked.
While Fleace was there, the bar was crowded, mostly with locals. Her group of eight people contributed to the feeling of a building almost at capacity.
When Fleace sat down, the man administering the official shot walked her through the rules. If you swallow the toe, you owe them twenty-five hundred dollars.
“He said, ‘You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but your lips must touch the toe,’” she said.
The man finished his instructions. He dropped the toe into her glass. Fleace took the shot, the alcohol disappearing quickly down her throat. She didn’t feel the toe. It was stuck to the glass. Finally, it was freed and dropped to her lips.
“It was cold, and kind of had the texture of a raisin,” Fleace said. “And it’s black as death with a yellowish toenail.”
Fleace set the glass down so the barman could squeeze the excess fluid out of the toe. She said she thinks it was the most disgusting thing she’s ever seen. That didn’t stop her from tossing it back like the rest of her co-workers.
The excitement Fleace and her co-workers experienced was not universal. She said her mother wasn’t exactly proud of her accomplishment and her boyfriend, Joey, decided he was not going to kiss her anymore.
“So we all did it. We all got certificates. It was a proud day,” Fleace said.
Here are some of the best explanations of our story craving I found. Hopefully they provide some more insight. Stories are my passion, so I hope you can appreciate them as well.
It Is in Our Nature to Need Stories
Your Brain on Story: Why Narratives Win Our Hearts and Minds
Let me begin by saying this story is my personal account of the things that happened to me leading up to October 9 and 10, 2015 and in the weeks and months following. It is not a rant; it is not a bad review. It may be a cathartic experience to me; it may just become a permanent reminder of what a fool I am. Regardless, here it is.
I guess it started in September 2015. Well, actually, now that I know what I know and I have been thinking about it for months, it may have started at least a year ago. At the very least, it started in September.
I was tired.
All the time.
At its worst, I couldn’t stay up for more than an hour at a time without reaching for a soda (something I wouldn’t have been reaching for otherwise) or for one of the four meals a day I was eating. My hunger and thirst were constant (which, in turn, brought on a near constant need to be within walking distance of a restroom).
Despite all this food and drink, I was losing weight. Fast.
Fifteen pounds were gone in two weeks. I told people I would see a doctor when I dropped to 113 pounds (less than I weighed in high school), but I knew I was lying.
I liked the first ten pounds, thought I was looking better, but after a while I was a bit frightened by it and all the other symptoms. I couldn’t stay asleep for more than an hour or two at a time (while also being unable to stay awake). My vision was blurring constantly, my headaches were overwhelming and I was angry all the time.
A few of my friends began worrying about me, listening to my recounting of what was happening to me. A man slept on my couch because he didn’t know what else to do for me. Another man set for hours with me, listening to me try to make sense of my body, my weakness. It wasn’t his job, but I was lonely and scared to bother people with whining, so I let him in anyway.
Then, the problem manifested in my hands.
My hands started cracking and bleeding uncontrollably. Amazingly, I was able to ignore this, much like my other symptoms, explaining it away like all my other symptoms with a “It’ll pass.”
I started saying “it’ll pass” so much that I believed it. Believe I wouldn’t be in a bathroom every hour, my hands would heal themselves, I’d be able to stay awake.
My mother was worried how mothers are, and she and my grandfather decided to come see me after seeing that photo of my hands. They arrived late Thursday night, and by Friday morning I was in the emergency room in the local hospital. As I said, I am not here to write a bad customer service review, so I am not listing the names of places and people. If you’re curious, you can figure it out.
The E.R. was very empty that morning, so I was moved into that insensitive line of questioning quickly. No I wasn’t drinking, doing drugs or having sex. Yes I was sure. Yes, I was losing weight, but no I wasn’t trying.
After that indignity had passed, I was moved with my mother into one of those white rooms that were meant for people to die inside of. Nurses came in, asked the same questions, put me on fluids and took blood.
Poorly.
Those nurses made light of my “small veins,” reasoning that that was why they had missed their mark in my arm. I was terrified to think what happened if a woman brought her baby in for a blood test. I assumed they must just let babies die here like everybody else.
At one point, the male nurse came back into the room and asked me if I was diabetic. I thought he was out of his damn mind. Of course I wasn’t.
More breezing in and out, and soon I learned the feeling of having blood sucked from my arteries. Again, done poorly. So poorly, in fact, that one nurse had to stick the needle into my wrist twice while the other offered me a hand. I cursed at them both. If you have never had an arterial blood draw before, it hurts. A lot. If anybody has ever complained of the nauseating feeling of having blood pulled faster from their hearts through their wrist, believe them.
Hours of wasted time passed, and the E.R. doctor presented himself again. Again, diabetes was brought up. Again, I couldn’t believe the crazy, chipper bastard bringing this news down on me. They told me I would spend the night. I wanted to tell them they could go to hell.
He told me my blood sugar was 360 (compared to a normal human’s 80-120) and that my A1C (blood sugar over a period of 3 months, garnered by the hacks with the arterial blood draws) was 14.4 (compared to a normal human’s 6).
My mother was an angel, but she was no rock. I wasn’t the only one crying, but I was the only one pointing out the inept actions of the medical professionals on call that day. She wanted me to trust them. I felt like John Mulaney when he talks about how his parents trusted any adult human more than him when he was a boy.
They moved me upstairs into a room with a woman recovering from surgery, and thus began a the day I thought I really might be killed in a hospital.
—
I shared the hospital room with a cantankerous woman recovering from surgery and her obnoxious relatives. They were the kind of people that made guest restrictions a necessity.
Then, the barrage of staff came. My blood was drawn (poorly) almost hourly. A diabetes educator came in, tossed me a meter, barely showing me how to use it, and left with barely half a useful thought about things like how to eat as a diabetic.
Women dressed as nurses, but who couldn’t be nurses purely for the things they said, came in and out, looking at me, looking at my chart and saying things that are still affecting me.
“You’re so skinny to be diabetic.”
“Gosh, I wish I weighed what you do.”
“I had to double check your chart. You’re so thin I didn’t think it was right.”
If I had been of sound and educated mind and body, I would have told them I was Type 1 Diabetic, meaning that, though it didn’t emerge until I was 20, it had nothing to do with my weight or my lifestyle. I would have said that those aren’t things you should ever say to a person, particularly not one in a hospital bed. I would have said they likely didn’t want to weigh what I did, especially since my weight stemmed from the fact that I had been dying for three weeks.
Yes, really dying. It sounds melodramatic to me even now, but in that time that I had no functional pancreas, my body was not processing sugar, and I was, in effect, starving to death.
I didn’t have any of that information or strength at the time, though, so all I could do was lay on my back like a helpless child and listen to these psychotic middle-aged woman muse about their high school figures.
A nurse came in who was easily over six feet and 300 pounds. As he drew blood from my middle finger (because of those silly small veins of mine), he said, “You know, it wasn’t a matter of if, but when for me.”
It took me a minute to realize he was talking about diabetes. This colossal man and me. His Type 2, mine Type 1. It was dumbfounding. I thought he was easily the densest man walking through the hospital until I met the next nurse.
She was young, very possibly my age, and was the first person in a while not to talk about my size or about their old, white man relatives who had my same condition. Our conversation took a turn for the crazy backwoods when, after asking me about my then-boyfriend, she said “Well, I hope you can marry your boyfriend so he can help pay for your Master’s.”
She was suddenly not a woman I wanted to have administer a “high risk hormone” like insulin to me.
A new doctor came up to see me and confirm that I was, in fact, Type 1 Diabetic and couldn’t ignore it anymore. Instead of boring you with this man’s entire speech, allow me to share with you two key phrases that made me want to claw out his eyes.
“It’s a good thing you came when you did. Diabetics tend to suffer from heart attacks, kidney failure and blindness if left untreated.”
That is not a way to talk to a person who has been diabetic for about 20 minutes.
“Who knows? If you can maintain for the next five to ten years, they may find a cure and you may be normal again.”
I had no idea that diabetes was the thing keeping me from being normal. I thought it might be my poor eyesight, the muscle tension in my shoulders that hasn’t healed since junior year of high school, my misshapen kidney, the birthmark on my liver, my pulse-pounding anxiety or six years of being major depressive. Apparently not. Apparently, all I needed in this doctor’s book to achieve normalcy was a functioning pancreas.
I could have spat in the man’s eye.
All the while, my mother sat with me. I began having to make phone calls to people about missing obligations (and that hurt more than the arterial blood draw). Friends started knowing I was in the hospital, and they came, but it was too many of them all at once and some of them that I did not want to see at all who brought their plus one’s all to stand around and look at pathetic me laying on my back in a hospital bed.
I talked and laughed with them, but really I wanted them all to suddenly need to be somewhere else.
People texted me and cared even though they shouldn’t have, and I felt like I was getting too much of all the wrong kinds of attention.
Hours later, a new moron entered the room and gave me an injection to prevent blood clotting. You know, me, a 20-year-old female weighing 113 pounds who would be in the hospital for less than 48 hours. Come on, people.
After hours of fighting, I finally convinced my mother to go sleep in my apartment. My grandfather had come in to see me and gone home. I was tired of feeling like I was wasting her time, and I was sure she was tired of hearing me curse every medical professional that came into the room.
When she left, I cried. Hard. About everything that was happening to me. About the too big needle they had left in my arm for reasons unbeknownst to me (or them). About the fact that my boyfriend was 600 miles away as he had been the whole time I was sick. About how angry and small I was.
They woke me up every few hours as I almost fell asleep to draw more blood. I never remembered hearing back about any of those tests.
—
The next morning was just as hellish as the day before had been. A new diabetes educator (think back to the fool with the pump) came in and told me most of the things the previous woman had said to me we inaccurate. Imagine getting conflicting opinions from two people working in the same hospital in less than 24 hours.
My mother came back, and I was beyond hateful. I was sick of the people I was convinced were not certified to do anything more than mop floors and were only trying to kill me. More friends came to visit, and I watched a film with my boyfriend over Skype (I didn’t realize it would be the beginning of the end as I laid in his sweatshirt). By that point, I hated everybody but him and my parents.
Finally, around 6:00 that night, I had “proved” to the doctors that I could inject insulin into my thigh (I didn’t have enough fat to do it in my arm or abdomen). They let me go home with a lot of directions and no answers. Meet a diabetes educator. Go see our endocrinologist. take insulin. Check your blood sugar. Eat like a diabetic. Give up your freedom and feeling of humanity. Accept that your life is over.
I had my work cut out for me.
Over the next few days, my mother stayed with me, looking at food, setting up appointments, trying to do her job. I could only feel badly that I was keeping her from her paying job and leaving her at home for hours at a time while I went to classes. My bruises were awful to look at, so I started to put fake tattoos on them.
After she left, I fell into a numb acceptance that I would be pricking myself to eat for the rest of my life. I did it, and managed to quickly lower my numbers, but not before I met the root of all sexism.
The endocrinologist was a fat man, likely in his fifties, likely on his way to Type 2 Diabetes. He walked in, took one look at me and likely decided that he knew how to handle this one.
I asked him questions about lowering my numbers and general things, and the responses I got from him were beyond obnoxious.
“Well, your kids won’t likely have diabetes just because you do. They might, but it’s unlikely.”
What the hell? I said nothing about children. I want no children. I didn’t know where that information came from. I tried asking what could cause diabetes.
He rattled off a list of hereditary, genetic, deformed and viral causes. Yes, viral. But he didn’t expand on that last one which left me reeling because he had just essentially implied I could have gotten diabetes from touching a door knob. I knew that wasn’t the case, but regardless.
I don’t remember what spurred this part of the conversation, but it was when I had figured out his M.O.
“You can still live a happy, productive and reproductive life.”
He had taken one look at me and decided I was a young woman, therefore my main concerns were my appearance and my fertility.
Well, thank you, Doctor, for your permission. As to the first one, no, my life will never be happy because you are now a part of it. The second one was never not true. I did not miss a class or an assignment the entire time I was ill. And the third, there he was, trying to give me kids again.
“You know, 1999’s Miss America was a Type 1 Diabetic.”
Oh, thank God! My dreams of winning the tiara had been crushed by this illness. You really know how to make a girl feel better, Doctor. Well, maybe that would make a girl feel better. Not me.
I left his office with a book for parents of children with diabetes. That was the resource he had available for me.
—
Since then, I have realized a lot of things. No matter how I look now, I am convinced I am fat because those woman drilled how skinny I was into my head. No matter what I think now, I feel I did my boyfriend a terrible disservice relying on people who were close for something that I would have rather had him doing. I hate my broken body now more than ever.
I feel like I have to tell people I am Type 1 specifically because somehow being Type 2 would be my fault. People tell me how and how much I should eat without even knowing the disease.
The endocrinologist still sends the wrong prescriptions in my name (and duplicates of them when I’m extra lucky) even though I found an endo in my hometown that I believe walks around with her head outside her ass who is supposed to prescribe me what I need.
I know diabetes will be expensive for the rest of my life. I know that ophthalmologists are waiting patiently for my eyes to begin leaking blood in the back, which eventually, they say, will happen.
Stupid things make me want to cry now, like an empty bottle of Coke in my kitchen with my name on it because it was the last soda I had before they tried to shame me into never eating anything but celery again. I refuse to throw it away.
I know that I will never again look down at my thighs and not see bruising and pockets of blood from needle after needle of “life saving” medicine.
I know that there is nothing I can do about any of it.
That is the story. It isn’t perfect, it isn’t incomplete, it didn’t make me realize anything worldly or profound. If I may be so bold, I only hope that you read it in full and left thinking about it.
Amanda N. Marino 