Over this past month I have had four instances where people (diabetic and non-diabetic) have made comments to the tune of: "It's not that hard.", "I'd make a good diabetic, I already eat like one should.", "It's easy for me.". Although these comments weren't meant to be hurtful or degrading, or even aimed specifically at me, I took them as if they were.
For the first time in nearly a year I find myself wanting to crawl under the covers and cry myself to sleep and never come out.
Is it really easy for other diabetics? Am I just a terrible failure?
Of course I know it's not easy for most diabetics. It never has been for me, and I have spoken with countless other diabetics who struggle just as much as I do.
For me personally, I struggle because diabetes requires certain qualities that I just wasn't born with, nor have I ever been able to cultivate them within myself. Self-discipline, will power, a militaristic mentality.
I was born as what you might call a free spirit, a rebel... everything a diabetic shouldn't be.
Diabetes comes with a lot of "rules", and demands routine, ritual, sacrifice, restraint. All of these things go against my core. You give me rules, you demand things of me, and my first and most powerful instinct is to resist, to fight. You tell me no, you tell me I must stay away from something, I just become more determined to have it. You give me things I must do, and a schedule to do them on...I will die of monotony, it will drive me insane and make me feel trapped like a wild animal.
My thinking is that those diabetics that say it isn't that difficult, that they find it pretty easy to stay "controlled", they are the people born and raised with the qualities needed to succeed at diabetes care.
And those of us who struggle everyday, we are the ones born lacking those qualities.
I have spent everyday fighting. Fighting the system, fighting diabetes, and most of all, fighting myself.
I am the most self-destructive person I know.
I have tried, am still trying, to change my core, to alter my own psychology. I have tried to build self-discipline, will power. I have tried to live to the rules and schedule a diabetic should follow.
It is exhausting to live against your nature. It wears you down, it makes you feel alien.
I just feel....wrong.
I must do it, though. If I don't I will die. I'm already half-dead.
Honestly, I have spent a lot of time thinking about death. I have considered my options:
1. Change who I am and live healthy and to old age.
2. Continue being myself and die slowly, one piece at a time, and in a ton of pain.
3. End my existence...
It's not difficult to follow the "rules" of diabetes. What's difficult is the constant battle against yourself. Fighting the temptation, fighting the urges, the constant self restraint, self sacrifice, the constant feelings of failure...
I'm tired. I'm exhausted. I want to be me!
It's times like this that I realize how very much I hate myself. Why can't I do things right? Why was I born so unequipped for this disease? Why must I always choose to do what's worst for me?
Why can't I take my bullheadedness and rebellious nature and use them to be a good diabetic? Why must I always have the urge to hurt myself instead of help myself?
It's like having a weapon and either choosing to fight the enemy or kill yourself.
"Oh, oh, oh! I choose 'kill yourself!'" How dumb is that?
I'm already committing suicide. I've been doing it since my diagnosis. A very, very slow suicide.
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