Other days, I wake up at 4:30 in the morning and can't get that argument out of my head. I give up trying to go back to sleep and crawl out of bed feeling wiped out and cranky. I look in the mirror and see an ugly, old woman on her last legs. I shuffle into the kitchen to make coffee and can't even decide if I want it. "Is this how depression feels?" I ask myself and then wonder -- seriously -- if this is the first toddling steps toward suicide.
Panicked, I push the thought away. Some days are good and some are bad, I remind myself. That's the way life is.
I haven't felt great this week. I don't feel ill. I just don't feel good. And some of my blood glucose readings have been uncharacteristically high for what seems like no reason. I've learned over the years since I was first diagnosed with diabetes that this particular combination usually means I've picked up a low grade bug of some kind. Not bad enough to develop any other symptoms, but bad enough to jack my glucose levels above where they usually are.
So I keep following my usual regimen to manage my condition, rest more, pop some extra vitamin C in my mouth, increase my insulin to address the BG (thank you, medical technology), send myself some positive mental messages, and wait to feel better, which I eventually do. Life is not a bowl of cherries, but it's better than the only alternative if I keep doing the next right thing.
I don't know where we get the idea that life is supposed to be peachy all the time and everybody but us is having a birthday party today. It may be because, as children, we get so tired of being pushed around we tell ourselves that when we grow up, we're going to live on ice cream and stay up all night watching cartoons. Then, when we reach adolescence, movies convince us that true love can be found in two hours or less and winning the lottery is just a matter of buying a ticket.
When adulthood rolls around, we discover that some days are great and others aren't and we think we got shortchanged. Or that we're doing it wrong and can't do any better. And then we get diagnosed with diabetes and that's the clincher. We just don't see the point of trying. So we eat a bunch of stuff that will make us feel worse and wind up in the hospital claiming we don't know how it happened while our families stand around the bed at their wit's end.
There is another way. In fact, I've written a whole book of "other ways." It's titled Your Life Isn't Over ~ It Might Have Just Begun! And it's full of tips and hints to give us a better perspective on our lives. How did I come up with them? By living through eight years with diabetes.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to tell you that I'm constantly grinning. But managing my diabetes helps me feel better physically and emotionally. It's given me a body that can do fun things and a fairly healthy sense of self-control. It allows me to accomplish what needs to be accomplished on a day-to-day basis. And so far, it has continued to give me a new day every 24 hours to see one more sunrise, one more unexpected smile, one more woodpecker trying to get its dinner out of a tree trunk, and one more opportunity to grow spiritually and be a little useful. It could be worse.
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