Self care or doing what I don't want to do

This was an interesting week for me. Interesting from a mental/emotional standpoint, that is, not in terms of anything that happened. Most of the week was pretty routine, other than the twins being off school on Monday for Indigenous Peoples Day (and our yearly trip to CU for the ABCD study yesterday). It got colder and I turned on the heat, which, obligingly, came on. We haven't had our furnace checked out in years and years, so I feel very lucky that it keeps on working. I do put in a new filter every year, of course. This year, when I put the new filter in, I noticed that the instructions on the box showed that it should be put in facing north (and Rocket Boy had drawn an arrow pointing north on the furnace), but last year's filter had been put in (by me) facing south. That means that the furnace had to work harder last year. I'm very curious to see if we use less gas this year.

The coldest night was Friday, which was also the night that CU played Stanford. They were up 0-29 at halftime and ended up losing, after midnight, in double overtime, 46-43. What a terrible game that must have been. I turned off my phone and put it on the charger around 11:45 pm, because I didn't want to stay up late watching them lose, but after I turned off my light I kept listening for fireworks/firecrackers (which would have meant CU won). There was nothing. 

I don't really care about football, but it's easy to get sucked into the madness when you live in a football town. I was sad all day yesterday, thinking about the players and how miserable they must be feeling.

***

The interesting part of the week (interesting to me, that is -- probably no one else is going to find this interesting) began on Tuesday, when I saw the dietician my doctor recommended. Her office is on east Arapahoe, in a cluster of buildings I'd never noticed before, just off Foothills Expressway. I had to sit in the waiting area for a few minutes and I spent that time observing the general feeling of the place. It was very white, but with lots of plants and pictures and cozy furniture to sit on. There were multiple signs asking people not to eat in the waiting area: "If you need to eat, please go outside." I think the dieticians in the practice deal mainly with people with eating disorders, and I noticed that one of the offices was for a psychotherapist rather than a dietician.

After a while I heard a door open in the back and a few moments later, a young woman came into the waiting area -- she was my dietician. She welcomed me and we went back to her office.

I had filled out a very long, complicated form online before the appointment, trying to be as honest as possible about what I eat, my weight and dieting history, family medical and psychological history, etc., etc. Nevertheless, I had that sinking feeling that I was about to be not believed. I always feel that way when I have to talk to someone about my weight and eating habits. I think people must look at me and think, look at that fat lady. She must spend all her time stuffing her face. I start conversations in my head: "My serious weight gain began in 1990, when I started taking an antidepressant called Nardil... I've lost weight several times since then, including almost 50 pounds after I had my twins, but it always comes back on, plus more." But nobody wants to hear that.

The conversation didn't go like that, though. In fact, I don't think weight was ever mentioned. I told her I was there to work on blood sugar control -- I'd mentioned in the online form that my doc also hoped I would lose weight, but I didn't bring it up in the appointment and neither did she. On the website it said her approach is "non-diet and HAES aligned," and HAES (I googled it) means "health at every size." So, OK. 

We decided to focus on lunch, which is the meal I have the most trouble with. I probably should be eating a different type of breakfast, too, but lunch is really problematic. It's not actually a meal to me, but rather a series of snacks that begin around 12:30 (after I finish drinking my morning pot of tea) and continue, off and on, all afternoon. The snacks are things like a piece of bread and butter, or a muffin, or some Wheat Thins, maybe a piece of fruit, or a little bowl of M&Ms. Just enough food to keep my ever-present mild nausea (probably from the Metformin) at bay. If I'm going to do an errand, I'll have some cheese with my Wheat Thins, so that my blood sugar doesn't get too low while I'm out and about. 

The dietician gave me a sheet with a list of low glycemic snacks that I could choose to have instead of a muffin (hummus with cucumber slices, tuna with crackers, cottage cheese with melon, etc.). I agreed that I would try some of them. But I confessed to her that I have trouble following any sort of "rules" about what I eat. She said, "That's very common with people who have a long dieting history. Just try to think of it as self care."

Hmm. Self care.

I thought about that, crossly, for the next couple of days. 

Mainly, I couldn't understand why I would possibly want to do anything called "self care." I mean, what even is that? Self care to me is self-indulgent, it's spending money we don't have on clothes and procedures that aren't going to make me look good anyway, eating kale and quinoa so that my health will be enhanced in various unnecessary ways. Self care, my ass. If eating low glycemic snacks is self care, I'm not going to do it.

Then I thought about my sister. My little sister is very good at self care. She gets pedicures and the occasional facial, buys nice clothes, exercises regularly, and eats well. But she's a nurse. She works very hard. And she takes good care of herself so that she is able to take good care of other people. Not performing self care would be, for her, selfish, because it would mean that she couldn't help others.

OK, so what about me? I don't have a job. I think of myself as mostly useless, kind of a parasite. A rich-ish white person who mostly just reads a lot and takes up space (a lot of space). 

That's not totally true, of course. I am raising two teenagers, mostly single-handedly. I keep our household functioning. I try to keep our rental house functioning. So I do have a purpose, I just don't think my purpose is important enough to justify a lot of "self care." I go back and forth about this a lot, actually, especially since I received that Type 2 diabetes diagnosis. I felt guilty about that -- felt that I brought it on myself by not doing the right kind of "self care" -- and then felt angry that I would then have to start doing all this additional "self care" that I didn't want to do, like exercising more, and eating kale and quinoa. 

When I was pregnant, I received a great deal of attention from medical professionals and I liked it. I felt important and as though I were worthy of all that attention because I was bringing two new people into the world. When diagnosed with gestational diabetes, I buckled down and tried to follow all the new rules: testing my blood sugar and only eating eggs for breakfast. It was all for a good cause: trying to have healthy babies. Also, very important, it was temporary! Soon after the babies arrived, my blood sugar went back down.

With the Type 2 diabetes diagnosis, I also receive a great deal of medical attention, and I don't like it one bit. "You need to do X because you have diabetes," "You need to take X drug because you have diabetes," "You need to see X doctor because you have diabetes." I try to play along, but mostly the whole thing makes me angry. Also, it seems dumb. Who cares if my blood sugar is high? Well, if it leads to blindness or having a foot amputated, something like that, my family would be in trouble. It would be much harder for me to do the grocery shopping/cleaning/cooking/laundry/etc. if I were blind or missing limbs. Or if my kidneys conked out and I had to spend all my time on dialysis.

I wonder how I would feel if I were diagnosed with cancer. Would I be so cavalier about everything or would I buckle down and try to take care of myself?

It's as though I truly believe that I don't matter. I don't want to do "self care" because I don't think I deserve it. Or, if I'm going to do any "self care," it will be things like reading and eating candy, which are not actually considered "self care," they are "indulgences," at least the candy is. Maybe I distrust anything called "self care" if it's not something I want to do.

OK, but wait. Am I using the term "self care" correctly? I looked it up online. It turns out that, in fact, I already do, voluntarily, a lot of things that might be called "self care." It's not just facials and pedicures and eating things I don't want to eat. I tried making a quick list, with some suggestions from the internet.

1. I don't smoke.
2. I don't drink.
3. I don't use cannabis in any form, or any illegal drug.
4. I avoid coffee, soda, and artificial sweeteners (because they're all IBS triggers).
5. I eat very little meat.
6. I almost never eat fast food. 
7. I cook 3-5 times a week, usually with fresh whole foods, including veggies. (I don't really WANT to do this, but I want the kids to eat well, so I guess this is voluntary. Sort of.)
   
8. I try to get enough sleep. I fail on this a lot, but I keep trying.
9. I have braces! At age 63!
10. I clean the kitchen every night and the house every week.
    
11. I pay off my credit card every month.
12. I write this blog every week.
    

And I'm sure there are other things that should be on this list. So, in fact, I do self care already, lots of it. I don't do everything my doctor wants me to do, I don't do everything diabetics are supposed to do, but I'll bet lots of diabetics don't do all these things.

OK, moving on...

A few days later, Friday to be exact, I was thinking about doing some work related to our rental house. As I've mentioned before, I needed to call a plumber to arrange to have some pretty major work done on the house (which we now have enough money to do), but I couldn't find the estimate the plumber had given us in February. Partly I couldn't find it because I hadn't looked very hard for it. I kept telling myself I was too stressed out to look for it. On Friday I decided I'd had enough of that and I was just going to FIND the stupid estimate.

But I can't, I'm too stressed, I told myself.

And then I had a brainstorm. I'm not stressed, I said to myself. I just don't want to do it. I'm pretending to be stressed because that gives me an excuse to not do it.

Oh, boy, did that thought ever resonate. I mean, maybe it's not exactly an epiphany, because I already knew I didn't want to do it. I hate everything to do with the rental house. I hate dealing with the tenants (perfectly nice people, except that they're our tenants). I hate dealing with any and all workers -- plumbers, handymen, fence people, gardeners -- all of them. 

But I'm always telling myself that I feel stressed out, anxious, about the house. I freeze up, can't do anything because of my anxiety. Come on, I said to myself on Friday, this is not what anxiety feels like. This is pure "I don't wanna." 

I absorbed that idea and then got to work looking for the estimate. I turned the house upside down looking for it. I looked in every room that has papers (i.e., every room except the bathroom and the twins' room). Didn't find it. I decided the fairies were hiding it. Finally, Saturday morning, I found a version of it -- not exactly what I was looking for, but enough to go on. And then today I remembered where the rest of the paperwork was -- in an email from our old property manager. I found the email, and it had the name of the plumber and his cell phone. So I know what my next steps are.

OK, so what does this have to do with self care?

I'm not sure it has anything to do with it, but in the moment it seemed as though it did. Let's see. If I'm so convinced that I'm worthless, undeserving of any "self care," then how is it that I let myself avoid doing stuff related to the rental house? If I were really such a pathetic little worm, if I really disliked myself so much, wouldn't I ignore my feelings?

I thought, I need to take more ownership of my thoughts and feelings. If I don't want to eat certain foods or do other things for my health, it's not because I think I'm a worthless parasite, unworthy of being cared for. It's because I don't want to eat/do those things. And when someone says to me, "Think of this as self care," well, I have to think about it.

I don't think I have a hard life. I don't have to work, my kids are growing up, Rocket Boy makes enough money for me to pay all our bills. But I still feel overwhelmed by what I do have to do, and it's hard to add all this extra, unwanted "self care" into my life. So I need to think about it more. In the case of these proposed dietary changes, I'm hoping they will allow me to stay off horrible medications like Rybelsus. Which would be a plus for me, a big plus. Is it enough of a plus to convince me to change my eating habits? I don't know yet, but it's worthy of consideration.

I think the key for me is to stay away from thoughts about being worthless, as well as this whole idea of things making me so stressed and panicked that I can't function. I can function. The question is, do I want to?

So anyway, not that interesting to anyone who may read this, but for me it has been an interesting week.