Sixlandia

I recognized her from the back: a logically impossible feat because, as Kerri observed moments later, there are no butt shots posted over at Six Until Me.

Maybe it was the hair. Maybe it was the “oh crap, I’m looking for someone I’ve never met in Grand Central Station at rush hour” posture. Somehow I just knew: here she was, the gifted writer and sensitive, hysterically funny soul whose blog has enriched my life for what must surely be hundreds of posts by now.

I hurried over and said her name. She turned. “Violet?” My name isn’t really Violet, as K knows, but who I could really be other than Violet, to her? (For me it was a moment of secret wish fulfillment, as my nom de keyboard is what I would have named myself, had the choice been mine.)

Being of a quiet disposition, I had wondered if this meeting would feel awkward. No such thing. We hugged and babbled and laughed as we forged our way through the crowd to an exit. Wandered down Lexington, found a diner. I was on Day Five of my attempt at vegetarianism, so I ordered a portobello mushroom and cheese sandwich. For the balance of the evening, I glanced enviously at the bits of turkey on K’s chef salad. (I made it, for the record, to Day Seven, then capitulated to carnivorous longings. Last night I actually dreamed of steak. Medium rare.)

We talked and talked, nonstop. I described the Winter, Spring, and Summer of My Discontent and their numerous reverberations. We discussed the challenges of moving to a new place. We pondered the exhilarating weirdness of New York. We talked about blogging, what it means to each of us.

And of course we talked about diabetes. K had received bad news. I admired her attitude: frank, honest, unsettled but absolutely unwilling to be defeated.

The legendarily cool and compassionate Chris joined us for the last half hour. He’s real, girlfriends! My gosh. It’s not often in my current life situation that I’m around people whose love for one another simply shows in all their words and gestures. K and Chris are two such people. Meeting them both was a gift, a warm and heartening interlude during a time that’s been, often, less than reassuring about the questions that plague me around true love (is it even possible, does it last, how will I ever find it for myself, etc etc, ad nauseam).

Isolation is one of the hardest aspects of this disease for me. Here’s to its eradication.