Chronic illness is a draining, and overarching parasite. Once it enters your life, it feels as if bits of your soul, and more specifically, your identity are sucked out. And in this vacuum created in the absence of pieces of you, your chronic illness rushes to fill in the space.
I recently had a conversation with a friend who was concerned about my negative thought process, and I tried to explain the trauma related to being a diabetic. As I look back upon that conversation, I was reminded of the fact that, nobody can understand your pain until they go through it themselves. And trust me, I would never wish anyone of my close ones any pain, but sometimes, I wish they understood the extent of it.
Pain and suffering in chronic illness is given, in fact, it is a part of our daily life. For me, it shows up through cannula changes, or sugar level fluctuations, or body ache. As a diabetic, there are things about my life that are so minute, but make a difference in the long run that are often not spoken about, or just neglected. For instance, the slow healing of my body. I am usually a little afraid of infections or wounds of any kind. They usually mean that my body will go through he healing process for a longer time, and will be more pain inducing than my everyday life is. Another thing is the onset of autoimmune diseases like hypothyroidism, or rheumatic arthritis.
I often do not talk about these things because, one, people assume I want attention, and two, I am tired of being misunderstood. When I say misunderstood, I mean all the people who ask me to look at the positive side of things. And according to these people, my positives should be: being born in a well-to-do family, and not having it “as bad as some other people”. Whenever I hear this I am just laughing in my head and mentally placing boundaries against such people.
It is not that I do not wish to be happy, you genuinely have no idea how much I yearn for it. But at the end of the day, my brain is still hardwired to be in survival mode, and if I am being very honest, I doubt it will ever change. There are some realisations that have hit me recently, and changed the way I look at my future. No matter which scenario I pick to be the best one, the worst case one will be there to remind me that it’s not going to end the way you want it to. In each one of them though, the inherent loneliness that comes with dealing with a chronic illness persists. At the end of the day, I cannot expect another person, no matter their relation to me, to be there time after time, flare after flare, and be by my side with utmost patience and love. That’s just unfair. As much as I wish I had that person, I don’t, and I probably won’t. But apparently, I must look at the positives, like being alive (I’m just kidding).
There is no harm in being positive, there really isn’t. But I am exhausted of thinking that things are going to be alright, and they don’t. I cannot keep breaking myself over and over again just for the sake of your comfort. So my humble request to you here is, don’t assume that I live in a negative spiral, when in reality I am in a survival spiral. And just because my posts mostly talk about the negative side of diabetes, it does not mean that I want attention. All I ask for is a bit more understanding for not just my life, but also for diabetes.
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