When I was 14 years old I was angsty and surly and taciturn. Or, to put it another way, I was a teenager.<\/p>\n
I hated my teen dramatics. I was alienating friends and family by being generally unpleasant to be around. For a week I wondered why I was acting like such an idiot. Then, one evening before nodding off, I had a genuine ah ha! moment. My sour attitude had to be a result of my diabetes, which had been a bit out of control for months. That must be it. What else, after all, could it be? Could it have been that I was just a jerk? No way, not if there was a solid medical reason for my jerkdom.<\/p>\n
The next day at school, with this self-diagnosed medical epiphany firmly in hand, I saw my friend John Kelly in homeroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn,\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m sorry I\u2019ve been acting like an ass but, I have figured out why. My diabetes is out of control! High blood sugar is causing me to be this way. Isn\u2019t that great?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, give me a break,\u201d he said. \u201cYou blame everything on your diabetes. Everything about you is your diabetes. Don\u2019t hand me that crap.\u201d<\/p>\n
And he walked away.<\/p>\n
He was correct. I did blame everything on my diabetes. Or, if I wasn\u2019t \u201cblaming\u201d everything on it, I was defining myself by my diabetes and showing only that person to the world. I\u2019d been diabetic for two years at that point. For those two years I had been portraying the sum total of my personality to others, the entirety of my life to the world, as a diabetic. John Kelly helped me see that I had also started regarding myself as little more than a walking talking condition first, and as a person second. That, I decided then, was boring and limiting.<\/p>\n
I decided that, to change how the world saw me, I had to think of myself as something more than a medical case. I was not a \u201cdiabetic.\u201d I was a person who had diabetes. There\u2019s a big difference.<\/p>\n
\u00a0By thinking of myself primarily as a diabetic I got sympathy and help and care and it was great. People would ask me is there anything I can do for you? How are you feeling? Are you all right? <\/em><\/p>\n But it was also cheap. Highlighting your weakness to the world, or what the world sees as a weakness, is a cheap way to get sympathy from anyone.<\/p>\n The way to change the world is to be a person first, and a diabetic second. Don\u2019t just tell people that diabetes is nothing to be afraid of. Don\u2019t say it\u2019s not limiting. Don\u2019t get on a soapbox about how it\u2019s not a disability. Instead, show them.<\/p>\n Be the change you want to see, and the world changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":53098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1501],"tags":[1294],"yoast_head":"\n