The Summer I Realized I'm 32 and Still Not Sure What's Going on With My Life

Lately, I've been feeling like I'm having a bit of whiplash about my life. 

It's all been quite confusing. I began this year thinking that things were going to be a lot different than they are now. A lot of things had settled into place for me. I did well my first semester of law school. I received an offer at a firm I'm really excited about for next Summer. My aspirations of being a future healthcare law attorney have all seemed to align. Law school, in truth, has been a dream: it seems like all the right doors have opened, I feel a sense of belonging I'm not sure I've ever felt before, and I feel surrounded by limitless opportunity. This time last year, I was definitely feeling a lot of questioning. I would lay in bed wondering, "Am I really doing this?" "Is this really right for me?" It was such a risk to choose to give up my career and go back to school. But I'm grateful every day for it, and it's felt like life since then has reinforced this belief that I made the right choice.

And yet, in February, maybe March, life started to feel a little bit like a scab I was tempted to pick at. I've felt this disconnect between the life I'm living and the life I'm headed towards. Without saying more, I guess I'm writing because I've felt frustratedly disconnected from my writing lately, and wanted to push myself to write a little to try to reclaim that. I struggle to write when I'm not truly honest and candid. I have always tried to be candid, and yet, for maybe the first time in my life, I'm struggling lately with the desire to curl up into myself and be more private about my life. I'm going through some really heavy things, and I'm not really ready to be as open and honest as I usually am right now. This has created an odd conundrum for me as I'm struggling to find outlets to process how I am feeling and what is happening in my mind. I guess I'm writing to try to push back against that a little, to "get myself back out there," so to speak. 

As I am waging this internal war with myself, in truth, I'm also struggling a lot currently with a great deal of self-doubt and disappointment. At the end of last year, I don't think you could have shaken my confidence about the state of my life and my future path. Now? I'm feeling a bit silly that I dared to think I knew more than I actually do. I have started to believe that I don't know as much as I thought I did at all. And it feels like a lot of things I didn't realize I pushed down years ago have bubbled back up to the surface. I feel disappointed with myself. Is my life just a series of patterns I continue to follow? Am I actually learning anything? 

What does all that mean? It's hard to say while being vague, but I do plan to take time to reconnect with myself and the core of who I am. In all actuality, I'm not sure who I am has actually changed that much--I think I am actually really confident with my values and who I am. I think I've just woken up and realized that what I want is now different, and realized I want to reconnect my life with those values. I've stopped doing so many things I loved over the last few years--swing dancing, painting, writing, hiking, teaching myself music, taking myself out on solo outings. I'm not sure why I ever stopped all that, but this year, I want to get myself back out there and remember how much I love those things.

I've also felt a lot of frustration with myself. This isn't new. I've often wondered if there's something wrong with me. I look at my friends and peers and they seem so grounded, so sure of the path they're on. I, on the other hand, can't seem to pick one career and stick with it. Or pick one life path and stick with it, for that matter. I've found a great deal of contentment, and still, I feel so unsettled. I wonder if this is all just a trap: Is being unsettled something we all feel, and some people are just better at dealing with that? Am I really supposed to be learning something from all of this, or am I making a mistake in entertaining my nagging sense of unsettledness? This uncertainty has shaken my confidence a little. 

What's more, I feel I've gone through so many deconstructions and reconstructions of my life at this point, that I have to wonder if it ever ceases. It's hard to ever feel truly settled in my life when I've willingly sought out so many life changes for a relatively young age. When I was a teenager, all I ever though I wanted was stability. This was something I felt I lacked in my teenage years, and I wanted more than anything to build a life that eschewed the very opposite of that. Yet, I seem to have pursued the very opposite, through some form of irony, and to the point where I wonder if I ever really wanted stability at all. After all, didn't I choose to go to law school because I was bored? Because I felt like there was something more for me out there? Because I once again found myself wondering, "is this all?" It can all be very exciting, but I think as I near my mid-30's I've had to start to reconcile with the fact that I don't think my life is going to be what I imagined it would be when I was younger at all. And I have to learn to be okay with that. I'm at the age now where constantly changing your mind and seeking change and redefining yourself starts to near a point where this has very real ramifications on the trajectory of my life, and I am running out of what formerly felt like limitless time in my 20's to choose these many iterations of myself without thinking too hard about how it would impact my future. After all, if I didn't like a change, I had plenty of time to do something else.  Mentally, I still feel like I'm wandering around in my 20's, except now I'm not. Which means that eventually, sooner rather than later, I will have to reconcile with my path and where these choices have led me. (This is a really complicated way of saying I'm realizing I'm probably not going to have a "traditional" life in the sense I thought I was going to). I think I'm going to have something very different. I think I'm going to have to start reimagining what I thought the rest of my life would look like. I think I'm going to have to start reevaluating what my dreams for the future are.

And I'm going to go through many more changes before it's all said and done. Life is going to look completely different for me by the time I'm done with law school. I started law school with a very specific plan and idea for how I would go about things. Through this process, I've gained so much. The cost has also been really immense. I didn't think law school was going to change what I wanted so much, but it did. I didn't think it was going to shake what I thought was an infallible sense of certainty about my life. It has. I don't regret any of it, not for a second. It's just taken me a little by surprise, to watch these changes unfold. 

Right now, I'm living in a weird liminal space and I'm struggling to let go and let life lead me to wherever it's going next right now. I feel like a current is tugging at me, and I just have to let it carry me into whatever this next phase is. 

Aaaaaanways. If you've stuck through all this rambling, congrats. I've probably confused you immensely. But, all that to say, if you do happen to feel like me in that you don't have it all figured out right now, just know you have some company. Part of me is always a bit excited to see where uncertainty will lead me, and I do think periods of life like these are immensely important and ones we should slow down and listen to. I'm looking forward to a slow summer of doing just that. Taking it all in and seeing where I end up. In the end, I know it'll all be okay.

I’ve Never Really Gotten Used To It

15 years is a long time to live with Type 1 diabetes. Early in my diagnosis, people would ask me if I was “used” to having diabetes yet. The question was a general nicety that people didn’t really think into, but the question never really sat right with me.

How could I ever be “used” to something that took a part of who I am? The rage, the sadness, the loneliness—that is what I felt left with once I woke up and found out that I had type 1 diabetes. I felt like my diagnosis stole my life. It had taken from me something that was rightfully mine. After I came home from the hospital, I would lie awake and cry into my pillow, night after night, for a long time. I missed how life used to be, painfully. I missed going through a drive-thru and ordering a meal and eating it without thinking. I missed not having to have a snack on me at all times just in case my blood sugar went dangerously low. I missed the simple things, like swimming in a lake or hiking and not wondering or worrying about what my blood sugar was doing. I missed not fearing if I would go low mid-activity and have to either act like I wasn’t or stop what I was doing to let my body readjust. 

I didn’t get to be carefree anymore—not like that. To think that I would never be that girl I used to be again was so very difficult for me. As I learned the new intricacies of keeping myself alive—and there were many—I was also mourning a loss that has always been deeply painful and hard to describe. It always felt like at 17 my world stopped and I went through a death of self, my life veering off in a direction that was never meant for me. 

Now that I’m 15 years in, I’ve embraced the journey, and even come to appreciate the path that diabetes has shown me. My life as I knew it at 17 ceased to exist. I changed out of necessity and became someone new. I went through hardships with affording my illness that left me with fears and painful memories I’ll reconcile with my entire life. But, I also found my purpose in discovering how deeply passionate I am about health equity. It’s painful and it’s bittersweet to think about what finding that passion cost. The fact that I I couldn’t be who I am today without the hardest and most painful experiences in my life feels silly and senseless sometimes. If given the choice, I’d probably still take the simpler version of my life. The one where diabetes never happened to me. I never asked for all this. But I do embrace it nevertheless and have gratitude. 

Still though, in the quiet moments, I think of that question still and laugh. Are you used to it?

I can’t ever be used to it. Always wondering what my blood sugar is in the back of my mind. Watching my sugar when I eat, I drink, I exercise. Recovering from a particularly bad low. Worrying about my eyes and my feet and my kidneys and what this disease could do to my body. Living in a body that never gets well. Feeling like my body—my safe place, the only place I’ve ever known—is a stranger to me. Betrayed me, even. Sometimes it feels like my body is really just my illness’s body and I get to inhabit whatever little space it makes for me in it. I have carved my own place in that space, but more times than not, it still feels that way. 

I always like to put a positive spin on things, and there is immense beauty in my life and I have so much gratitude that I can even live the life I do with an illness that used to be a death sentence before insulin. 

But I also don’t feel obligated to always put a positive spin on it. Chronic illness is complicated, painful, and it makes you hate your body sometimes. Relying on medication to keep you alive because your body can’t do it on its own is uniquely humbling and leaves you always with a small worry in the back of your mind of “what if” I ever can’t access that? It strips away at least a small sense of your self and feeling of autonomy no matter how empowering thriving in spite of your illness can feel sometimes. Part of you is always waiting for the other shoe to drop, wondering what else this illness will someday take from you. 

It means living with a constantly evolving array of feelings, living in this strange body of mine. So, 15 years in, and I’m still not used to it. I don’t think I’ll ever truly be. 

What is Living with Type 1 Diabetes Like?

It actually feels good to start getting back into creative writing. I've neglected my blog for a while, admittedly because writing and painting took a back seat as I've lost my creative spark/artsy side somewhat these past few years, and also because I've been in the process of converting my blog into a book for some time. 

I'm going to try to work on not neglecting my creative side a little more. My blog is definitely integral to that. It's a myriad of various musings and writings--a lot of them like a time capsule, reflecting parts of my life that aren't mine anymore, and even political views that don't reflect me anymore. I like to leave everything though. It's a story of my very own that reflects my growth and change for nearly 15 years, something I wouldn't change. 

Regardless of it being a myriad of things, I originally started my blog as a way to cope and process being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. I kept it diligently throughout college, and classmates and friends would tell me they found it enlightening to learn about what life with Type 1 Diabetes is like. 

Deciding to start my blog back up last week was somewhat fortuitous I suppose, because now that I'm back in college, I feel like I have a good reason to write since I've gotten questions about Diabetes. So, I'm throwing together some thoughts/day-to-day experiences about what Diabetes is like in case folks want to read. 

I find it somewhat ironic to write about this now, because Type 1 Diabetes was honestly something that wasn't very visible on me back when I was in undergrad and even grad school. I didn't have access to good health insurance, or even any, much of the time. That meant I gave multiple daily injections and needle sticks to check my blood sugar because it's what I could afford. I didn't have an insulin pump, I didn't have a continual glucose monitor, and I didn't have cool additional tools like inhalable insulin to fine-tune my blood sugar. My struggles with access shaped a lot of my writing back then. Access issues are actually why I found my way back to law school. My blog, in a way, made my Diabetes more visible, which helped me feel like I was a normal human again--after feeling foreign in my own body for so long after my diagnosis. Now though, the ironic fact is because I can afford proper care, Diabetes is more visible on me than it has ever been, which comes with its own set of new experiences.

In going back to school, I stressed and wondered how to approach professors about the occasional beeps and sounds I make in class, I actually can afford a doctor to get needed accommodations, and yes, I make noises occasionally that make classmates glance at me curiously. I guess what I'm trying to say by that is this experience is actually all as new to me as it is to my classmates. I've never had to stress about what TIME to give my insulin so I don't make a loud beep in class, or worry about when I do, or jump to cover my pump if it happens unexpectedly, or wonder if folks are going to stare at me if I take inhalable insulin mid class so that my blood sugar comes down because it's been a particularly rough day. I'm navigating this all too, which has been a unique experience for me I'm still processing. 

Anyways, here is a little rundown of what Type 1 Diabetes is.

I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at 17. I have no family history, and it was very sudden and unexpected. Type 1 Diabetes is an autoimmune disease that attacks something called Beta Cells in my pancreas. You don't do anything to cause Type 1--it's something that just happens. A mix of environmental and genetic factors can cause it, but you don't have to have a family member with it to get diabetes. 

Back to Beta Cells. Beta Cells make insulin -- which your body uses to break down food molecules, and most importantly carbohydrates, when you eat. Without insulin, your body cannot bring down the blood glucose (Diabetics use the slang term "Sugar") that naturally gets put out into your bloodstream by your liver, and it cannot bring down blood glucose from food that you eat. This means that I'd die in approximately 3 days without insulin, but potentially sooner. I can't go more than 3 hours without insulin without rather significant and unpleasant effects, including spiking blood sugar and oftentimes terrible nausea, sometimes vomiting, and extreme thirst and fatigue. 

Low blood sugar, or "Lows" are the opposite- you get them from being an insulin user. Too much insulin, too much activity, heat, or any other number of activities can cause a dangerous low. These must be treated immediately or you will die. This means I always have a snack on me (fruit gummies are my choice) and I remain vigilant to treat lows quickly if they happen.

So how do you manage Type 1 Diabetes? You take insulin. There's many ways you can take insulin. If you choose to do so "manually," without a pump, that means that you'll generally give one injection of "long acting" insulin that brings the blood glucose down that your liver naturally produces (to keep you in a normal range regardless of food you eat), and then you have to add up the carbohydrates in every meal you eat and administer short acting insulin that works faster than long acting insulin to keep your blood glucose from spiking from the food you eat. We call measurements of insulin "units." Measuring units is what makes diabetes so incredibly hard-- there's no magic universal formula for how many to give. It's different for everyone, and can vary based on your body makeup, your weight, stress, the time of month, and numerous other factors. 

Not every meal comes with an easy carb count either. Oftentimes I have to just guess the carbs. I'm pretty good at it. If I'm off on my math, I'll have to adjust in post. If I give too much insulin, my blood sugar can drop to dangerous lows that require immediate treatment. If I don't do this right and my blood sugar is consistently high, this will lead to kidney damage, nerve damage, dangerous ulcerations, slow healing, foot pain/nerve pain (Neuropathy), potential stomach digestion issues (gastroparesis), retinopathy (issues with your eyes), amongst other things. And of course, you have to know what your blood sugar is before you give insulin. If you're already low if you give insulin for food, that can make you lower. If you're already high, you might want to adjust what you're eating, and you'll certainly have to give yourself more insulin to "correct" the high blood sugar in addition to giving insulin for the food. It's like a scale, and every day, for every second, you can't ever get off that scale. 

If it sounds tiring, it really is. Diabetics have so much autonomy over their care, which also makes us uniquely blameworthy in the eyes of healthcare providers sometimes. If my blood sugar numbers--my A1C aren't good--that's my fault. My endo doesn't make me feel bad for that (and mine is in a normal range), but it creates very unique psychological impacts that I'll have to unpack in a separate post. 

You can also use an insulin pump. Everything I've said above is functionally the same, but instead of giving two types of insulin, you use one, just short acting, and you don't give multiple daily injections. You instead insert a "cannula," essentially a needle under the skin, connected to a device you fill with insulin that can have tubing or be tubeless. Mine is tubeless and called a "pod" (Omnipod), and I change it every three days. My endo helps me with the insulin settings, which I adjust as needed. I receive a dose of short acting insulin every hour, and my pump has an internal calculator where I'll add up the carbs in my food and it'll dose out the appropriate amount of insulin for me based on my blood glucose and how much insulin is already in my system. It can even sometimes catch a low blood sugar before it happens and turn off my insulin to try to prevent it, and can start dosing out insulin for me if my blood glucose is high. 

It works in tandem with my continuous glucose monitor (CGM) which uses another needle under my skin to give me 24/7 blood sugar readings (I change this every ten days), as opposed to having to prick my finger and only get readings a few times a day. Being able to know what my blood sugar is doing at all times and have an insulin pump that helps me manage my blood glucose has been such a lifechanger and one I think all Type 1's should have access to. My pump does unfortunately beep when I self-administer insulin, several times before I have to change it every 3 days, when it loses contact with my CGM, or when my blood glucose drops below a certain level. I can't turn this off. 

Pumps aren't perfect. I've accidentally sweat it off or bumped it on something to dislodge it, and it's not just something I stick on and don't worry about my Diabetes anymore--I still have to be in full control, it just helps me as a tool. Pump technology continues to improve though so I am hoping for a fully automated version someday! 

My skin is also lowkey allergic to my insulin pump from several years of exposure to the adhesive, so it is often itchy and leaves rashes on my skin that make me feel self conscious sometimes. It's a pain in the ass in the summer to swim with it and a lot of times it falls off or I have to tape the hell out of it to try to keep it on. It isn't easy, but a pump certainly does make my life better.

On top of that, if my sugar is still being stubbornly high, I can use inhalable insulin to bring my sugar down faster. I also take an injection at mealtimes that helps my stomach not empty so quickly, called Symlin, which is a synthetic version of a hormone called Amylin. Type 1 Diabetics often struggle with excessive hunger because Amylin is another hormone made by our beta cells, which don't work, and Amylin helps food stay in your stomach the appropriate amount of time and makes you feel full. 

So... that's Diabetes in a very quick nutshell! It's a lot, and the visibility of my devices is something I fought against for a while. Even when I could finally get a pump, I put it off, not wanting to give people something to stare at. Reconciling with the concept of Diabetes being a "disability" is also a post best saved for another time. But, most importantly, all of my devices and medications help achieve the very singular goal of trying to make Type 1 as small of a part of life as possible. Diabetes won't ever play a "small" role in my life, not truly. But I'm very grateful to have all the tools that I do. It certainly makes life better.

If you're curious, I hope this helps shed some light on life with Type 1 Diabetes, and if you've made it this far into my writing, thanks for following along.

I'm a Law Student Now!

Somehow, I blinked and it's been three years since I've last written on my blog. The old adage "time flies" becomes more and more true as you age. I still feel like I'm in my 20's, and yet it also feels like my 20's passed incredibly quickly. 

I can't believe how much has changed in three years. Back then, I was still trying to figure so many things out. I never could have guessed I'd be in law school as I write this now. 

I want to make a point to blog more this year because I really treasure the writings I have from my (old) college days. I'll come across writings of little things I'd forgotten about and I enjoy being able to reminisce about them. Also, I figured I should write an update because the last time I wrote, law school wasn't even a thought in my head, so as you can imagine, things are very different for me now.

That's actually not entirely true, about having not thought about law school back then. A few years ago, I was feeling really tired of my job. Work was stressful, and it felt like it was never ending. Sure, I'd achieved some success. I made a good living. I couldn't really complain--and yet, I just felt like I wasn't doing what I was meant to be doing. 

That feeling that I wasn't living up to my true potential was really the true source of my stress. That feeling of frustration I had--feeling "stuck" in a career that was difficult to move out of, feeling like I'd wasted my youth on a career I wasn't finding satisfying, feeling despondent that I could never change it--I could go on. I literally risked my life to become a PT, rationing insulin, and for what? For the experience to change me so deeply that I didn't even want to do what I'd studied so hard to do? I couldn't understand why I couldn't just be satisfied. It really tormented me. But what would I even do if I left physical therapy? I'd thought of med school, but I just didn't want to put myself through that much school, and I wasn't sure I'd find much more satisfaction working in the same healthcare system I found broken. Maybe I'd continue on in medical sales--I was good at it, but I didn't love it, not really. I was in yoga one day and got to thinking about law, or mediation. I felt a sense of peace and excitement thinking about this idea, one that I hadn't felt in a long time. I went home and downloaded some LSAT study apps, tried studying for a bit, and then promptly forgot about them, telling myself there was no way I could take the LSAT, that I was just wishfully dreaming. 

Then, a few years later, I posted on Facebook asking if any Type 1 Diabetics wanted to meet up and be friends. I have a wonderful community of online "Diabuddies", but felt lonely sometimes without knowing anyone in person who struggled with the same day to day difficulties that I did. A girl named Evan responded and messaged me right away. I completely ignored everyone else that responded and made plans to meet Evan. That first evening, I was telling Evan a bit about my dissatisfaction in my career and how I knew I wanted to make a shift, maybe something politics related, but I just wasn't sure what yet. Evan started telling me about her dad's work and how she had planned to be a lawyer at one point. As she was describing her dad's work and the LSAT, suddenly, I felt things shift into place for me. I went home and literally purchased an LSAT study book that night. 

I suppose the rest is history. I actually did manage to study for the LSAT, and I did really well. My brain hadn't rotted after years out of school. I got into the Georgia law schools I'd applied to. Something just felt right about GSU--I couldn't stop picturing the next few years of my life there. Ultimately, that's where I chose, and ever since I began, I've felt so sure that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. Law school is hard--maybe harder than I thought it would be. I suppose I thought it might be "easy" with a doctorate under my belt already, and true, I'm used to the grind and the level of work required of me to succeed. It is unrelenting, just like PT school, so I feel better off for having expected that. I am even busier than I was in PT school. I definitely feel like I'm having to study more. But I'm loving every second. Contract law, civil procedure, torts, property, legislation and regulation--I love it all. The topics are fascinating. I love reading cases, and I even enjoy the in-class discussions and, yes, even the cold calls can be fun. For so long, I felt as though I would never feel like I found the place I belonged in life. I was living a good life, but it still didn't feel like the life I wanted to be living. I think now I'm the closest to feeling like this is the life I'm supposed to be living. I'm really grateful for that. I love the way lawyers are taught to think, and I love the conversations I have with fellow classmates on this journey with me. The "quirks" about me that I always felt like put me out of place in my old career feel like assets in law school. Speaking up--being bold--questioning everything--even thinking too much about politics. Discussing why and how things in the healthcare world were happening and ruminating on how we should change things. All of it seems to have a place in law school. 

In short, I'm really grateful life has brought me here to this moment. I feel so much peace and true happiness, and whatever the future holds, it feels really bright. I don't know exactly what I'm doing in law yet. I know I like health law, and that's about it. But something tells me I'll figure that out in time, too. Right now, I'm just enjoying the journey, one day at a time.