A Productive Rant

I don't want to be what this disease says I should be.


I have long struggled with selfishness, determination, self-preservation, driving passion. These things come with being a type A personality. Come hell or high water, I will do what I set my mind to doing.

Example: When my family would arrive home from the grocery store, I often got the job of carrying in the groceries from the car, up the steps, the walkway, and into the house. Being me, I refused to make multiple trips. So I would shove bag after bag up my arms (who cared that they were turning purple and my veins were practically bursting out of my skin?) and lug all the bags in at once. There would be jugs of milk, eggs, produce, meat, cans, boxes.

Now, there is something to be said for a DIY attitude. It has paid of in many ways when it comes to my diabetes.

Diabetes says, in real life, that I should be aged, overweight, tired. I should be carrying around ten bottles of prescriptions that supposedly help my blood sugars, heart, limbs, eyes, lungs, etc. I should be sneaking cans of soda when my husband's back is turned. I should haphazardly take my insulin. Underneath, I should be angry and confused.

But the truth is, I've come to accept that diabetes is what it is, and I'd better get in the game or face the dire consequences.

BUT, and this is a big one, sometimes when one tries to do it all, eggs get dropped and produced gets bruised.

I am not meant to do it all.

I try time and time and time again. But it's a round peg and square hole type of deal.

I am determined to live well with this disease. I am forever trying to figure out how to do that. And though my personality serves me well in some ways, it's detrimental to me in others.

So right now, I'm having a mid-mid-life crisis (whatever that means...) and trying to figure out how to make my personality work for me and when to use that determination to give up some self-preservation and control.

It's not easy.

We all need so much grace.