All I know is being Diabetic. I live and breathe Type 1 Diabetes. I understand that some choose to live a “normal” life and have their diabetes as just something they do on the side; but for me it isn’t quite so. My reality: at least 80% of my self identity is immersed in diabetes. I choose to live this way, because i feel lost when faced with any other impossible path. My sense of direction for my life or rather; the moment of my life where I should have been making plans for my future -was stolen from me with a Type 1 Diabetes diagnosis at 18 while in a third world country. I was sent home with vials and syringe and no glucose meter, to fend for myself. I was left to my own devices to teach myself about my disease with no type1 friends nor any guiding support from parents or doctors.

I abandoned all frivolous ideas of pursuing career, passions or ambitions. After struggling in sickness and denial for two years, I finally got sick and tired of being sick and tired. I found my online support tribe. I made diabetes survival my passion. I have made spreading type1 diabetes awareness to the general public my life’s focus because I experienced being undiagnosed with gradual symptoms for two and a half years thru high school, thru theater production, amongst teachers, and hundreds of family and friends. Not a single person recognized my symptoms.

Not a single person urged my family and I to visit a doctor. My family culture grew up with and believes in having genes of steel who don’t frequent doctors unless you look or behave like death warmed over and there seems to be no obvious home remedy. I slept thru all the moments of my life which should have been joyful, meaningful memories and instead I constantly relive the trauma of having suffered for three years from leg cramps, low energy, declining vision, bladder leaks and endless thirst. It is a wonder I made it thru those years; surely it was by a miracle of God, and the stubborn endurance and stamina ingrained into me by the stars at my birth. At a -30mcs stroop, I have a trauma induced need to be able to hyper focus on the details that matter because to me every little detail may just be the one thing I end up needing that sparks an idea that saves an inconvenience or saves a life.

I struggle with anxiety of feeling like people are out to get me or spying on me or following me. With every sentence out of my mouth I feel misunderstood. I tend to stay silent and enjoy the silence unless asked or an important contribution must be made to right a course. My approach is always one of good intent. My learned ideas of how to be kind are flawed and sometimes poorly executed. I do not know what normal is. All I know is how to be a compassionate diabetic. I am an understanding person and I congratulate and support those who can find a normal outside of diabetes life. I feel though that diabetes must have been placed in my life for a purpose greater than myself.

The lessons and suffering I have gone thru must be used for the good, thru spreading awareness of Type 1 Diabetes, through sharing my truth and experiences, listening to their stories and connecting in their experiences, by honoring their truths, thru education and guidance of others placed in my path -when for that reason. That’s the only direction that feels right for me. I have no other selfish ambitions and I am not implying that others having any ambitions is a selfish thing. I seem to find myself misunderstood and a walking contradiction, to popular opinion that every person with diabetes should be living a stealth normal life and that none should be able to tell that one is diabetic.

While I may wonder why that is, I‘m reluctant to believe that I should be made to care so much about other’s opinions of me -except when those opinions are being imposed upon my identity with pressure to change my reality, with the accusation that my living identity and reality of primary focus on my diabetes life is ‘singling out and alienating them’ and therefore I should try to be more ‘normal’ and to focus on living a ‘normal life’, and basically project my existence as a nondiabetic to others to not inconvenience others.

I have never imposed my diabetes onto them nor made them go out of their way for me!