Friends, I am…spent today. I received a call from my insurance company a few weeks ago – a reminder about seeing my primary care physician. It turns out that since I missed going in 2019, and then the entirety of COVID, I have to register as new patient. I have been seeing this physician since 2006. Protocols, baby! The insurance company attempted a 3-way call to “help” me schedule my appointment. This was a disaster because the insurance company can only facilitate scheduling annual physicals NOT new patient appointments.

Insurance man: Ma'am, perhaps you've been seeing a different physician for the past 3 years?

Me: No - life happened in 2019 and then COVID life. I haven't been anywhere.

Insurance man: Are you sure?

Primary Care office: She has to schedule a new patient appointment and I cannot do that through a third unauthorized party.

Insurance man: Well, I need to schedule an annual physical for her.

Primary Care office: Look sir, I spoke to you the other day with another one of your clients, and the rules are still the same today....

Me Interrupting: Hi there. I am not going to participate in or listen to this argument. I am hanging up now and will phone the office to make my own appointment. You do not need to follow up, Insurance man. Goodbye. Have a lovely day.

Sweet beegeezus y’all. I made my “new patient” appointment, which turns out to have been today. It was great to see my Doctor – she is awesome, empathetic, encouraging and has guided me through some yucky stuff (cancer, domestic violence, MotherHerisme’s ongoing illnesses, etc). I feel lucky to know her and to have her as my doctor. We dutifully completed the “new patient” appointment, and caught up a bit on our families. I have seen her over the past three years, but only as the accompanying person for MotherHerisme (also her patient).

Then comes what always comes, since I was about 25-years-old and my body hard core quit me. It is always the same messages, no matter the change in physicians. Here’s my take on the whole shebang: I do not drink (maybe once a year, although I’d like to drink more, alcohol hates my body and my body hates it – mutual deep disturbing hatred I will never understand and do grieve over), I do not smoke (although I WISH I could – my body revolts vomitously), I do not take drugs, I very rarely eat out (even pre-COVID) and when I do it is typically brothy veg soup or dressing free salad, I am highly conscious, controlled and particular about food/chemicals etc., I have celiacs so my carb consumption is low, I am vegetarian so my veg consumption is high… and yet… the Doctor has advice on how to better control my bloods numbers etc.

Y’all, I am spent on this. I have been plowing away doing this for a loooonnnnnngggg time and added things here, minused things there, and all of this’s and none of the that’s.

Gut says: control your stress lady and find something ANYTHING that brings you enough joy to control your stress

I wonder what it will be. Perhaps I should’ve had that nervous breakdown, shaved my head, donned false eyelashes and done the things. I forgot to be FOMO motivated or LYBL or whatever. At this point, it seems that my body is on the tip of revolting entirely, and I need it to last at the very least another 15 years for SonHerisme to get into his adult times with some of his own footing.

Anyway, I have got to change something. The tweaks aren’t doing it. Upon brief reflection, I believe they never have. Back to the NewPath thoughts, I suppose. But, dang it, I’ve tried that as well. MOTHER OF ROOTS, I need a gentle Joy Doula (?). I mean other than what I know, which is to bundle up, head outside, stare at stars, and nature things up.

"Unknowingly, we plow the dust of stars, blown about us by the wind, and drink the universe in a glass of rain" 

"As a symbolic option in the contemporary world, quests recover something essential to human life, sometimes in encounters with animals (lions, grizzly, leopard), often in encounters between cultures, almost always in encounters with nature. However ravaging or equivocal, quests somehow pluck the nerve of existence; they dispel the amnesia and anesthesia, the complacent nihilism, of our cosseted lives. And they do so nowhere more vividly than in contemporary American and British letters. More probably, they simply yield an indefectible perception of an individual alone, edging cultures, hedging histories, acting riskily on a vision of himself, or herself, and the world, a perception that, from our best selves, speaks to all."

Ihab Hassan

What quest are you on? Is it really that individualistic anymore? That seems outdated to me. Or perhaps too gargantuan. Is there a baby steps version of a quest? I suppose not because then it wouldn’t be a quest at all. The quest is grand but the path is a mixture of baby steps and giant gravity-defying leaps, perhaps? Sweatergot y’all, I just do not know anything. And now Socrates is banging about again in my brain… tea me out, please and thank you. Happy week-ending

Love, Ms. Herisme xoxo

ps writing feels better

pps SisterHerisme has been in and out of the hospital for the past two years with similar blood results which have yet to be regulated properly so… m u s t d o t h e s o m e t h i n g s