Talking about T1D

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.