Thursday, June 28, 2012

Public Displays of Injection

I was on the bus, drawing up my pre-breakfast insulin. I considered my body, wondering where to inject, when from two rows behind me I heard "Isn't he cute?!" I held on to the syringe, wondered if she could be talking about me, thought, "Nah...", and turned around anyways. There were two women staring at me. I turned back around, pocketed the syringe, and stared forward for the rest of the ride. The other woman agreed that I was cute, they were silent for a few moments, and then moved on to other topics.

I'm not shy about injecting in public. Even when I meet new people, if I want to do a shot I draw it up and then I say "lemme do my insulin", inject, and am back in the conversation in under 15 seconds. But I have a hard time injecting when I notice strangers are looking at me, from too far away to talk to. Sometimes I don't care what they think - let them think this is heroin or whatever. They're not the cops. But sometimes... it's hard to witness reactions to what I do, to what I am, when people are too far away for me to really influence their reactions. I dunno. Also, I get flustered when people say I'm cute.

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