Hi Marty-
I’m so glad you found this site so you could start sharing how you are feeling emotionally. Welcome to this world that you never wanted to be a part of! While this site is amazing and the support incredible, I think all of us would rather not need it.
So, as I am reading your post, I start to cry because I remember just how you feel. It’s been about a year since I was diagnosed T1, and the way I felt at 3 months, was like I wanted to stand still. People would tell me they had it a year or more and that seemed like an eternity to me! I wanted to stay still, because then I would be closer to my old self. If I kept moving forward, I would get further away from my old pre-diagnosis self that I was desperately holding on to.
Being diagnosed is TRAUMATIC. It’s a huge loss (of your former life), one that you must grieve. Cry every day if you need. Be angry. Feel what you are feeling. Feelings are NEVER wrong. They are your feelings. (it’s what we do with them that can be wrong sometimes) You have just lost the most important “self” of your entire life: YOU! For me, its almost like I had to grieve the loss of myself, and accept that I will be reborn in this D life.
I remember people telling me to “take one day at a time”. I remember thinking, “One day? Are you serious?” A day felt like an eternity since my days were now carefully calculated and broken down into 2 hr segments and like you wrote, a daily reminder of 4 injections, not to mention the 8-10 bg sticks. There is no break, there is no vacation. Not if you want to be healthy that is. I remember the first time I DIDN’T think about it for 2 hours. Wow…that felt good. I decided to take it moment by moment, instead of day by day. I realized that a whole day is way too long and what starts off “good” (D management wise) may have so many bumps in it, you can’t call it “good” later. So: moment by moment.
I also remember I stopped being so private about everything. I was born with a blood disorder and had always been so private about that until people needed to know. But this is different. It involves food. You are on life-suppot 4 times a day. There is no hiding it. People around you need to know. So I started telling everyone, even random people. Which helped because then I started meeting people: real live people with Type 1. One was a Whole Foods worker who was helping me find these “low carb” snack bars and I told him why they had to be THAT type. If I decided to be my “old” super private self, he wouldn’t have known and shared his experience as a newly diagnosed T1. At that point I was about 5 months in. I remember so clearly him telling me “it took me a year for me to stop being so angry about it”. Wow. A year? Something about that gave me permission to spend more time…feeling so sad. I think I was rushing myself to hurry up and get to a place of positivity and happiness. But hearing that? I felt like I could go through the motions…GRIEVE. I felt I would get to where I needed to be WHEN it was right. And you know what? One year later, its ever so slightly better. Actually sometimes I go many, many hours without thinking about it. At 3 months in though? It felt all consuming, like I would never be otherwise occupied in my mind. But I finally allowed myself to grieve.
And I did. And we all do. And we continue to. And it sucks. And you will never be the same. And where you are right now, its not always possible to just make a “choice” to be happy. Clearly, you WANT to be happy. Feelings of depression like this are not from a woe is me place or because you want to feel bad. I know you want to feel good again. You will feel better. But it will never be the same. How could it? Will you be happy? I sure hope so. But keep reaching out to everyone, tell your family and girlfriend, know that you will make it through this.
Don’t waste time thinking about how it could be “worse”. Things could ALWAYS be worse. That doesn’t help depression. This is not a contest or a competition. You have to grieve what you have LOST and then learn to accept what you now have to deal with.
Also, the whole “diagnosed in childhood or adulthood: which is worse?” thing is hard too. I felt at first like I had my life snatched out from me after having enjoyed it D free for so long (34 years) that it was a cruel, cruel thing. And thinking kids diagnosed had it “better” somehow because that’s all they know. But I realized that this is because those who have had it since childhood are not just used to it, they have had a long time to go through all kinds of stages and changes that the newbies are just entering. It really is like being reborn. So many of us adult T1 newbies become like babies and angst filled teenagers, as we pass through the stages, whereas the “elders” of the community can say things very different from how we feel, because we haven’t had enough EXPERIENCE like them to have their wisdom. Right now, I am at a place where I am SO thankful I had such a “good run” D-free in my life. I’m glad I knew life another way.
I don’t believe that people “get over” trauma. I believe they get “through it”. Slight distinction, but important. You will get through this. And you don’t have to be positive about it along the way. Just please hold on to the thought that one day, it will get better. I thought the clouds would never go away. I thought the sun would never shine again, or longer than 2 hours at a time? Guess what? Sometimes the sun shines the whole day now! But you won’t be able to see it or feel it until you are ready. Just keep those sunglasses close. You’ll need them again.