People always seem to want to be unique; yet never different than anyone else.
Have you ever noticed that? It's such an interesting contradiction of perceptions. We want to stand out in every way... but NOT really. We want to be unique enough to be remembered, but not unique enough to stand away from the herd. That's really the thin fine line between the "cool kids" and the "outcasts" in high school. People who just did a few things to be "unique," and people who went all the way out, and got pushed around and isolated by their peers. Now "technically," we look down on that kind of behavior. We say things like "Those kids were just immature. They did NOT value those other outcast kids, and nowadays we are grown, and we know different." Or so we'd like to believe we know different.
You see, in our culture, we tend to value normalcy (or typicalness) a LOT more than we value uniqueness. Even companies know this, as they advertise to all the "typical" people in their target range groups. They know we all just want to be like each other because we tend to find comfort in that. It gives us this peace of mind, of sorts. We try to tell our kids that it's okay to be unique, but we also strive really hard to make everything they have, and do, be "normal," for their sake. We get these ideas of what normal or typical ought to be... And in doing so, we warp our sense of being able to deal with change; with life... Because we treat change as though it's not normal; it's not typical.
I guess, in a sense, we want to have our cake, and eat it, too. Literally.
We want everyone, outside of the world of Diabetes, to know that we are just like them: that we can go hiking like them, that we can have babies like them, that we can be pilots like them, that we can be athletes like them... and that we can have cake, like them? Really?
Before I get too much further in this post, I want to clarify a few things:
1. I am all for pursuing our dreams, and being everything we want to be, in spite of illness.
2. I am all for making changes one step at a time to our diets and lifestyles, so that we do not end up deprived, and binging.
3. And I am all for having occasional indulgences, for the same reasons, and because we only live once...
But? Why are we teaching ourselves, and our kids, that "normal" is somehow pretending that we don't have Diabetes? Being able to eat anything and everything every other adult or kid who doesn't have a life threatening disease can eat? When we don't accept that Diabetes and careful maintenance of our diets is the NEW normal, we really set ourselves up for terrible disappointments, and some really harsh problems:
1. There's the weight gain. Even people without Diabetes can't keep from getting fat, forever, while eating that diet we so want to keep considering as "normal." Our metabolisms slow down, with age... and EVERYONE gets one illness or another as they get old.
2. There's the DAILY poor control, and swinging between highs and lows. (You are kidding yourself if you think your A1C is really showing you a good picture of your control.) It creates a self justification of "my levels are good enough, for a Diabetic," and then later, extreme confusion as to why we got a host of complications, and neuropathy, when we never had any problems before... so it somehow "must be" genetic. Can one ever really be certain about that? Do we know our entire genetic histories? Do we really want to risk and chance it?
3. It feeds into the cycle of Depression. Yes, trying to pretend we are "normal," when simply put, our new definition of normal ought to be different, makes us feel inadequate, and depressed; as lesser people who simply can't have quality of life because they can't gorge on pizza every Friday night with the family, anymore. It makes us place value on things that are valueless, i.e., the pizza... not the time spent with the family.
4. It makes us, and our children, emotionally incapable of dealing with change. It makes us feel that any time we fall outside of what society's definition of 'normal' is, that we are somehow failures. What if our disability was more visually apparent to the outside world? Would you still try to pretend that you do not have it? Or would you just try to show the world that you can lead a "normal" life, BECAUSE you do the atypical thing so that you can take care of yourself... or Would you play games with your therapy/treatment/medications/diet so that it would make you seem more "normal" so that you can still pretend nothing has ever changed in your life, and that you can eat whatever you want, and still live a life of excess? If complications and death were more immediate, would you still chance it? What if I told you that they are, it's just that with Diabetes, they may take 10-20 years to visually show up?
It seems to me that we would do so much better to strive for an understanding of a few things, and to teach ourselves and our kids a few things:
1. That quality of life is NOT what we can eat. Quality of life is being able to live one more day/month/year/decade in the company of those we LOVE and cherish. If a terrorist came in the room, and put a gun to your head, and made you pick between pizza, and your spouse... I seriously doubt you'd pick the pizza!
2. That change is normal. That those who do NOT change are the abnormal freaks. We are normal when we EMBRACE who we are, and how we change... because we ALL change. When we embrace change, people will be comfortable with us... They are only as comfortable with us as we are comfortable with ourselves.
3. That illness is normal. We live in a polluted, bad world, and EVERYONE gets sick, and everyone dies. If you hadn't gotten Diabetes, you might have gotten Cancer, or COPD, or CVD, or MS, or something else... And you still MIGHT get any one of those things.
4. That we are all normal, in that we are NOT like everyone else, anyway... Look around you. No one is 100% like you!!! Even twins have different personalities, and sometimes different markings in their bodies.
5. That normalcy is a RELATIVE thing... and we can all make it be what we want it to be: "Eeeeew, you have to inject insulin, you are not normal!" -- "Of course I'm normal... I'm just normal, for a Diabetic. Do you know many Type 1 Diabetics who do not inject insulin? :)"
At the end of the day... Life is what it is: Life is change... and change is NORMAL... So Diabetes is also... NORMAL. When we embrace change, we LIVE. So today... why not teach ourselves to embrace change, and be different? Isn't life more entertaining that way, anyway?
Btw, I like that “I am better than normal, I am ab-normal” pic - Is that on a tee shirt?