“What if” is such a quicksand question. Once you start asking yourself about all the scenarios that could have taken place, instead of the one that did, you enter into a rabbit hole of imagined wonders.
As a juvenile diabetic, my mind often wanders to “what if I was a non-diabetic, normal teenager?”. This question has plagued my mind since my initial diagnosis, and honestly there are days where I wish I never found out about it. It is probably one of those survival mechanisms that I ended up holding onto, amongst which also lies victim mode, and overthinking.
I sat down to write today because just yesterday I had someone remind me of how “strong” I am for all that I have to put up with being a diabetic. This wonder that people show when I tell them my daily struggles, even if they have just become a routine for me, opens a floodgate (every time). More than that, I went through my old reports, and something in me shifted. My heart clenched for the little girl I was back in 2016.
As a teen I had to restructure my entire lifestyle, and it meant leading a life that was so different than that of my peers. I envy them, even today, for the things that they can (and could) experience. I envy them for having normal people problems like “my coffee order was wrong”, or “I ended up staying at my friend’s place unplanned”. I would have a coronary if I have to stay away even for a weekend without my medical supplies.
Truthfully, this whole idea of strength sometimes seems so phantom to me. It might be because in my head I think of all the people who have it worse than me ( a trait of trauma, I know), or maybe because it is easier to pretend it doesn’t hurt. Cause honestly, it does. It hurts a lot. Sometimes I break down crying at the smallest of triggers because the pain, the suffering, and all the missing out come back in flashes. Sometimes it goes beyond that. It goes back to all the “why me’s” or “what crime am I redeeming myself for”, or the worst one, “maybe I deserve it”. It just never really stops, not easily. It’s not something you can just heal yourself from, not without help.
Strength is in many ways subjective, and yes, there are days when I know I am strong. But sometimes, it hurts to be the strong one all the time. If I could just put this part of my life aside for a while and exist without it, even for one day, I would probably not know a day more peaceful than that. It’s been seven years, and my eighth dia-anniversary comes close, I wonder if I will really be able to enjoy a day without diabetes. Probably not as much as I think I would. It is such an ingrained and innate part of me that I frequently struggle to separate it from who I am. Even though it’s probably always going to hurt, and there are always going to be things I will miss out on, I honestly don’t know what I would have been like if not for my diabetes. Maybe, being strong is who I am.
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