Tomorrow will mark 8 years with Type 1 Diabetes.
Trying to wrap my head around this is as impossible as trying to believe that I had Diabetes when I was first told of my diagnosis. How I'd wished they were wrong when I first heard those words... my mind had flashed back to 7th grade. English class. I had a teacher who was Type 1. I used to hear her talk about how she had to prick her finger and feel terrified at the thought just listening. She'd given us a book to read about a girl at summer camp with Type 1, and she'd gotten made fun of at camp for asking for an apple on her tray to replace her cookie. Diabetes was a vastness of knowledge that I did not understand at the time, and there was no way that I could know that just 5 years later, I would face it myself and have to come to my own understanding.
What a mental and physical battle this disease has been. It has given me deeper understanding in life, and the ability to extend compassion to others who feel isolated or angry, depressed or confused, about their diagnoses and individual illnesses. I have spent 8 years trying to come to peace with it, as well as learn to thrive despite the setbacks it has lent me. In 8 years, I believe I've done an admirable job. I have faced navigating a world of having no insurance, relying on faith, goodwill, and my own contrivance to survive, while not becoming bitter or closed off to the world and a life I've struggled before with thinking has been unfair to me.
Diabetes has also hardened me. I've often thought of what exactly I mean by this... which can be a hard thing to explain to the outside. I think of myself as softer before my diagnosis. I'm quite a bit sad even still for that girl who didn't value every day... I wish I could go back. I wish I could go back. If somehow, I could get just one day from back then and relive it - I would treasure it in a way that words can't express. Just to savour one more day without finger sticks or needles, hypoglycemia or the fatigue after having repeated lows... not keeping a mini pharmacy in my purse. I had no way of knowing what this level of difficulty entails. I would choose to save anyone from that. I think of myself as having taken my healthy years for granted. I mourn for her. And then there's the line of my diagnosis that I crossed. I had to learn to grow harder. I missed the normalcy of my life, but I could only miss it as we all too often do: in retrospect. To overcome my fear of needles, to do what needs to be done. To sacrifice income, to sacrifice comfort, to sacrifice security, not even necessarily by choice - simply because of a defect in my genes. All to get on the same level playing field as many of you. To accept this as something I cannot change. I experienced a deeper understanding of what suffering meant. I experienced what it feels like to have my health, my future, and my independence come into question. I experience daily what it is like to fight harder than others without this illness around me in order to have the same opportunities. I learned to say no so that I could take time to care for myself. I learned to understand that who I was before my diagnosis and who I am now are different people. I've learned to take myself when I feel broken and beat down and glue those pieces back together.
I've often wanted to ask God the question of why he chose me to live with a chronic illness. Chronic illness is a world of looking for positives. Adapting to pain. Lonely periods of questioning and feelings of isolation. Of wanting to draw deep into yourself. How does one move past that?
This blog has been my answer to that. Talking about my illness has gotten me outside of myself, and helped me to take my anger and my frustration, as well as my sadness and confusion, and turn it into a platform to share with others. Something that makes me excited to talk about, and that gives me direction and inspiration to share with others.
Does that make up for the pitfalls? No... if I had one singular desire that could be met, it would be to live a life without type 1 diabetes. But for a girl that is terrified of pain and needles, who fought her way through grad school with no doctor or insurance... I've come a long way for simply wishing for what cannot be. I've learned to thrive without that comfort and security, while maintaining a sense of hope on the backburner still. The girl I was has been reshaped, slowly, through finger sticks and thousands upon thousands of injections and vein sticks. The girl I am realizes life is not a guarantee. I cherish each day. I cherish my eyesight, the feeling of warmth and soft socks on my toes, my functioning kidneys, my healthy blood pressure. I cherish my fridge full of insulin, and a job that lets me have that. I cherish the people that have helped me and the hands that have held me along the way. No, I am not that girl I used to be anymore.
8 years, and I am stronger. I've learned so many powerful lessons, and I'm certain that so many more await me. 8 years, but a moment can bring me back to that hospital room, a nurse on each side, an injection in each arm. 2 am in the ER, coming back into consciousness, into a world I no longer knew.
Can I live past that? I do every day. I will continue to, every day. One insulin injection at a time. Diabetes, I wish I could change you. But you are mine, as much a part of me as the rest of me. A part of me I cannot change. But a part of me I can never stop hoping to, which is as essential to my journey as living with you.
Thank you for following me on my journey these past few years. I hope that all of you continue to.
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