Happy Reunion
It’s been mentioned a couple times, how I almost killed myself while ignoring my diabetes in 2003. Diabetes had plagued me at that point for 12 years, and for the better part of 12 years, I had not taken care of it. When I turned 21, that was permission to drown it, drown it in alcohol. I spent a year drinking away my diabetes, I wasn’t checking my blood, I wasn’t taking shots or wearing my pump. It landed me in the hospital with the doctors telling my mom “Mrs. Steele, we don’t know if we’re going to be able to bring her out of this, we don’t know what she’s done.”
No one really knew what I had done, I didn’t tell anyone that I wasn’t taking care of myself to any kind of extent, one look could tell you that I was neglecting myself but no one really knew to what extent. Until I was saved from death and on morphine. Then the whole story came out.
After several days in ICU I went home and immediately I started getting the 3rd degree about trying to kill myself. The word “suicide” was used on several occasions. My mom kept telling me that I needed to go back to counseling, I kept refusing because the counselor kept using the word “suicide”. No one could quite understand that I didn’t want to die, I just didn’t want to live with diabetes, so I had ignored it (and I thought I had done a good job up until it tried to kill me). To them, not wanting to take care of my diabetes translated into me wanted to dying.
One day grandma comes over, and we’re sitting at the island and she’s asking me what happened, what I was thinking, why I did what I did, etc. She tells me, “Courtney, if you’re not going to go back to the counselor, you need to start journaling.” She told me that the only option I had was to do one or the other, counselor or journaling, I couldn’t not do either.
Enter Charlene and “The Diarists’ Workshop“. A friend had given me a sheet of journaling workshops when I explained to her what I had to do. I signed up for one at a local bookstore, Bound To Be Read. Charlene Geiss was the instructor.
One class would put me on a trek of dealing with anything and everything that I had ever pushed down and not wanted to deal with. I would fight against all the feelings I was having during these sessions and try to push it all back down. I walked into each session armed with an attitude and stubbornness that was a force to be reckoned with.
I grew into a family of 10ish ladies, I was the youngest of them all and the next youngest of them could’ve been my mother. I think that I can confidently say that they would agree with me when I say I fought with everything that was ever said.
But they saw me grow, they helped me grow. The punk kid that would walk in with my hair in a ponytail, under a ball cap (so they couldn’t see my eyes) with a hoodie on (and the hood on my head half the time as well as my ball cap) let go of that shell after a couple years. It was a physical change as well as a mental/emotional/spiritual change. I started feeling better about myself, taking care of myself, dressing like I cared, my attitude changed, my demeanor changed.
About 2 years ago that group scattered into the wind. Since the split, I haven’t journaled at all, the closest thing I’ve come to journaling is blogging, but blogging doesn’t offer all that journaling does. I can’t put down my full feelings on my blog because people read it and get their feelings hurt or they get pissed off or something gets blown out of proportion. That doesn’t happen with journaling, because nobody but me reads it and I don’t have to share it. With blogging, sharing is implied, and that’s what I like about it, but it’s not always the right place to write everything that’s going on and everything that I’m struggling with.
Since the group split, I’ve seen Charlene exactly twice. Once last year after I graduated and tonight.
A few months ago I emailed Charlene, and I told her, I need to come back to class, I need to be journaling, I’ll even go to Santa Fe to do so if it means that I get to journal under your lead. She sent me a class schedule for this spring and on April 3rd, I’ll return to journaling class.
Today I got to see her though, because she had an open house for where we’ll be meeting. There’s a special place in my heart for her and everytime I see her or talk to her it puts a smile on my face. Here is a woman that was able to take me as a demon child, deal with my stubborness, the anger that I’d throw at her, the opposition that I’d put out there with every move she made, the unsurmountable amounts of energy that I possess, and help me take all my life experiences up to that time, all my hurts and wounds, and through writing, completely change me.
Ok, she didn’t change me, but by being the instructor/facilitator/mentor and working with me as I was, she helped me deal with issues I can’t even begin to verbalize here on my blog, and that changed me.
Charlene, helped make me the writer that I am today. If I hadn’t met her for journaling group, there’s no telling what my blogs would be like in this day and age or if I’d even have a blog.
Everytime we talk, she asks me if I’m journaling, and everytime, I tell her, the closest I get to journaling anymore is blogging.
I’ll continue to blog, but let me tell you, I’m happy to be returning to journaling.
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