She's Lost Control Again

Tonight I sat. Of course, I mean that I applied my ass to a surface and rested my weight upon it, but specifically, I mean that I meditated. With a group, this time. Many sanghas (Buddhist communities who sit together) include one-on-ones with your group leader about what's happening in your practice. My one-on-one tonight seemed like it was heading one way, and went in a completely different direction in the hours after the sit that I inevitably reflected upon it.

I wrote about two single-spaced pages on that for myself as soon as I got home, but of course the whole thing is still in the hopper. And a theme that recurs for me now is control.

Diabetics are obsessed with control. So are the people who provide us health care, live with us, and so even are those who have just met us and are talking about diabetes with us for the first time. I don't usually start these conversations in coffee shops or at cocktail parties (though sometimes one can't help it) but when I meet a new health care provider, s/he almost always asks, upon learning that I have diabetes, "Are you under control?" or "Is it under control?" Usually I get the latter, suggesting that diabetes, or at least MY diabetes, somehow has a life on its own. Not a life OF its own, as in running wild without my efforts having any influence on it, but as if it's a discrete entity whose existence can be without me. So in other words, it's separate from me, but I can allegedly control it. My diabetes is my wayward child, one who skipped her Ritalin and is now chewing on the furniture.

Meditation, contrary to popular belief, is not about emptying your mind or ignoring your body. Quite the opposite-- it's designed to have you be particularly aware of what is in your mind and body, and to understand that you often aren't aware of it despite believing that you are. You're in the past, in the future, inside a physical sensation you're experiencing at that moment, believing that the ideas that pass through your mind are real and true in an absolute sense, when they're actually synapses firing in a way programmed by your physical reality, your upbringing, your surroundings, your previous experiences, and countless other factors. Meditation isn't about controlling what happens, it's about knowing what happens, and noticing what happens.

Do you know why you lose your car keys? I do it often, despite attempts to be aware-- I throw them down on the first available surface or into a pocket as soon as I'm in the door, because I have to pee the cats are trying to escape I'm so hungry I need dinner now but I don't know what I want I need to empty the litter box and see if they have water and I have an hour before the next place I have to be and the neighbors are being loud. After that sentence, do you remember what I was talking about? I do because I'm making a point, but a reader (if I ever have any) might have to peruse the previous sentences to figure out what happened. After I've jammed my keys down in any old place because forty other things are happening in my head, I try to peruse my memory of what just happened, but to me what just happened are all those thoughts, not me placing the keys somewhere. And if you're about to tell me to have a place where the keys always go, I will tell you to shove it. I have a hook. I use it about 50% of the time. If I'm present and noticing, the keys go on the hook. It's not about the hook, it's about my head space when it's time to use the hook.

So, control. Control and diabetes. I get so pissed off when I'm asked if it's "under control"-- what does that mean to you? Does it mean the same thing as it does to me? It's stayed pretty steady for years now, and it's not bad, but I want to get tighter, maybe lose about 1% of the A1c where I hang out now. But when I try "control" I just fuck myself over, get angry at myself, at my providers, at the world, at the fate that gave me this shitty broken body -- which is actually a young, attractive, highly functional body from another perspective, but in the pity party that inevitably results from my struggle with control, I don't have that perspective, I have this image of a never-existing perfection up to which I do not stack. And not just because of diabetes-- let's not forget the bum knee, funky posture that resulted from the bum knee, shockingly bad eyesight, missing cup size or two from my bra, giant feet, repeatedly sprained ankle also connected to the knee trouble, extra two or three pants sizes I've gained in the last two years, and on and on. Maybe I should make a dart board with all my complaints as individual pie sections, and start nailing the shit out of that thing with darts. That might make me feel better, or I might get depressed at my shitty aim with darts.

So how's this for a resolution: stop trying to control ANYTHING. Just start observing everything. This will be added to my just-resolved first resolution, Stop apologizing for everything. I am not sorry, and I am not under control-- my own or anyone else's. I'm just here, and I do not apologize for that.