Struggle

Do you think of diabetes as a struggle? In my ongoing (frequently failed) attempt to spin positivity into life with diabetes, and my love of language, I keep coming up with different words to use: challenge, undertaking, effort, opportunity, experiment, endeavour, complete and utter shitness…

But I guess when push comes to shove, at the end of the day and what it all comes down to is (cliché, cliché, cliché!) there are days when it just really is a struggle. Sometimes I think that living with something that is just so damn difficult and unpredictable all the time means that we just start to accept it. We accept the struggle. The struggle becomes our norm.

I saw this little poster on a friend’s Facebook page the other day and straight away, it resonated:

I got very ‘rah rah’ about the sentiment on the poster, thinking that I should get it on a t-shirt. I do feel that living with diabetes has made me realise my strength.

But when I re-read it a couple of days later, I read the second word.

Thankful.

Am I thankful for my struggle, if my struggle is diabetes? I don’t know. I’m not sure.

Has diabetes made me a stronger person? Has diabetes made me understand my strength – just how tough and resilient I can be?

Perhaps it has. Perhaps it has made me realise that I can deal with pretty much anything that is thrown at me. If I can deal with the ‘never-ending-ness’ that is diabetes, the short term stuff – the things that are not chronic ­– seem more manageable.

So with that in mind, maybe it is not so much the diabetes that is the struggle. Maybe living with something that never ends, but never giving up; continuing to plug along and deal with it is the real struggle. And the real strength is in accepting it.