I used to tell people, “I am diabetic” or “I am a diabetic” and I never liked saying that because it wasn’t something that people reacted positively to, or it wasn’t something that everybody understood.
Previously, I wrote about my first taste of empowerment, when I (finally) learned in middle school to give myself injections. Undoubtedly, this turning point also brought about a change in attitude. Until then, I used to constantly be frustrated or angry about having diabetes, about not being able to do X/Y/Z, about being micromanaged by my parents. After I learned to administer injections to myself and especially after I started using the insulin pump, I began to feel more control over and ownership of my condition. I no longer had to rely on my mother or the school nurse, and I could take insulin whenever, for whatever I wanted to eat (within reason) or glucose reading I needed to correct.
One day, I had an epiphany: that what I had been telling people all these years was wrong. I wasn’t, in fact, a diabetic. I was a student, a friend, a sister, a daughter—I was just like everyone else, and I just so happened to have diabetes. (For the sake of argument—because we all know I like that—even if I wasn’t just like everyone else, I wasn’t going to let diabetes be my distinction.) Saying I was (a) diabetic was like defining myself with the condition, or worse, letting my condition define me.
Therefore, I began to say, “I have diabetes.” This change in language now matched my change in attitude about my condition—my feelings of control over and ownership of it, my feeling of empowerment. Although diabetes was and always will be an unavoidable part of my life, I no longer felt daunted or burdened by it; I no longer felt owned by it. I have diabetes. It doesn’t have me.
And with that, I started to do things that I previously believed I couldn’t do and therefore wouldn’t even try. So began my running journey which continues today. It was catalyzed by a big change in attitude, a big change in how I talked about something that is significant but does not own or control my life. I own it, and I control it. I have type 1 diabetes.
Days of My Life 