These holidays have been hard on me. They’re always hard on me though, I feel. A few weeks ago, I took the CGMS out and didn’t put it back on until last night. I couldn’t stand the beeping anymore or the fact that it wasn’t accurate the way I needed it to be. I got tired; burnt out. You know how it goes.
However, last night was different. Last night I talked about the burn out. I’ve talked about it here before but not as in depth as I talked about it last night. I guess I never felt the need to because it always felt like a complaint. I don’t like complaining as much as I like doing something to fix it. But last night, it all came out. I talked about it to a point that it almost made me cry.
I talked about the ups and downs, the roller coasters, the fact that sometimes you do everything right even though the number comes out wrong and it’s a consistent game you play with your body. It’s almost like you try to second guess what your body is doing and yet, you can’t get ahead of the game– and it’s exhausting. And you want to give up. But you don’t have the choice to give up.
I don’t have the choice to give up.
Instead you do enough to get by, until you can put your pilas in (batteries in Spanish) and get yourself revved up and ready to take on the world again, making diabetes something you’re not tired of but learning to live with… all over again.
“It must be hard,” said the voice in the dark room. “That’s why people don’t even bother to check.”
Regardless of who I try and make understand, it happens rarely. But the more I talk about it, the more I feel like someone will know what I go through. The things that I never talk about because I need to be positive and healthy and normal and good to myself. The upkeep, the management, the constant day-to-day of living with this issue and pretending that you are the pancreas that has malfunctioned on you– it’s another job.
Managing my diabetes makes my actual job look like a piece of cake.
Sometimes you have to let it out. Sometimes you have to let it out to people who don’t have diabetes because talking to those who manage well and have A1cs as low as normal people can get intimidating. Sometimes those folks are just as intimidating as the A1c test itself; as the endo who tells you you can do better. Sometimes, you need someone that doesn’t understand so that you can really tell them how it is. And you almost cry.
Because sometimes, that’s the only way to cope.
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