High Maintenance Diva vs Martyrs

Life can be a balancing act in many ways don’t you find?  It is very likely safe to say that is true for most people whether they are living with type 1 or another “365” health challenge or in perfect health.  We each have 24 beautiful hours each day to live & hopefully reach out in a way that will make a positive difference to those around us.  You & I may share that if we are feeling especially well on a given day that we can & do accomplish an impressive amount of taking on the world, getting stuff done & reaching out to others.  On the other hand, on the days that blood sugars run rampant & we are chasing them around in circles, we just may assess the day when our head is about to hit the pillow & be tempted to beat ourselves up with the messages that we say to ourselves.  The one that I try to stay away from saying most of all to myself is anything that starts with the words “if only.”  On the occasions when my mind goes to those words I make a choice to stop & say instead, “I did my best today.”  It may sound like a small thing yet I realize that beating myself up message wise on top of having a challenging day at the end of the day provides no benefits.  I just realize that the next day is a brand new day & I need to simply be present when that day comes each & every day.  Do you find that you either talk more about the past or the future than the present?  I had found that to be true of myself as well when it came to talking in the future.  Of course it is prudent & mature to plan for the future yet all actual living occurs in the present so I had to learn to focus as well on the present moment since I did not want my whole life to pass me by & have a feeling that I was never quite right there in any given moment fully.  I still find it pretty tough to do because left to my own runaway mind, I can be a worrier.  That is a continuous work in progress.  In many ways the internet has been a feast for feeding into the worry.  We have the access to so much information from various sources.  Do you fall prey to “googling” your symptoms when a health issue crops up?  I know I sure do & I bet I am not alone by a long shot.  The thing is that to try to diagnose based on an internet search is pretty unreliable the vast amount of time I have experienced.  My latest ongoing battle with guttate psoriasis is proof positive that doing an internet search is a long shot at best at least for me in determining what is going on health wise.  When I searched out my symptoms, the flesh eating disease popped up.  Do you think that freaked me out?  The thing is that along with that came up everything from temporary non worry conditions and everything in between.  My mind instantly went to the worst diagnosis though briefly until I got a hold of myself with some common sense.  Needless to say that I made a doctor’s appointment right away.  It kind of fed into my fear of the worst though when I arrived to my doctor’s office & was immediately put into a quarantine room for 90 minutes.  Sometimes it takes a while to get to the actual diagnosis I have experienced a few times in life.  Take diabetes for example.  Since I was an adult at time of symptoms, automatically the endo in Toronto diagnosed me as a type 2 diabetic yet it only took him a week to realize that I had in fact type 1 diabetes.  My ongoing tummy difficulties have been a work in progress in trying to determine what is going on.  Everything to celiac disease to lactose intolerant to allergies, IBS, gasteoporesis and others had been speculations.   It looks like it is food allergies that have been the culprit.  Ah, an answer at last & it did not come from internet searches but rather from being determinated & acting on every reasonable possibility.   Here endeth this tangent I have fallen off on.  The point is that the famous quote of “waiting to worry” is a motto that I adopted a long while ago because I know where my mind goes to left to go off on its own.  Balance I have found is needed when it comes to where my mind goes regarding worry.  There is the need for due diligence like making a doctor’s appointment when something out of the ordinary flares up health wise & then there is the off the charts speculation on my part as to how bad the news may be.  The decision that I make is to go to the doctor’s & then try to “wait to worry.”

Two situations that a Dear Heart of mine was involved in this past week got me thinking about these thoughts today of the balance specifically between choosing to be a high maintenance Diva, getting necessary health needs met & being a martyr.  Have you noticed that there are some examples of behaviours that come to mind where people are leaning towards the high maintenance Diva behaviour category?  They are the instances where the person is demanding that they be waited on hand & foot by those around them.  There is an air of entitlement to being treated as royalty.  There may be situations that you have found yourself in whereby the other person is wearing you down with the level of his or her demands.  I have come to a point in my life where I can laugh at these situations.  This was not always the case.  A Dear Heart shared with me this past week a situation where he found himself on the receiving end of a very lengthy list of demands so excessive that the Dear Heart referred to himself as a temporary slave to this person.  The list of demands was long & specific & had quite an air of entitlement.  The red carpet was to be rolled out in other words.  Type 1 diabetes at times I have found has turned me into a slave temporarily to it.  The first year living with type 1 comes vividly to mind.  I lived like a robot & achieved very good A1C results but I felt miserable.  Every day for that first year I woke up at exactly the same time of the morning, ate the exact same thing every day for breakfast, had exercise at the same time every day, tested my blood sugars a lot even in the middle of the night & so on.  I felt like a total slave to type 1 diabetes & its freakish demands.  I could not wait to request an insulin pump so that I could feel like I could get at least some of my life back again & could discontinue feeling like a robot.  This is just my experience.  I am not implying that other people who choose or have to be on multi-injections have this experience.  Every one is a beautiful original after all.  That is how my body & my life worked that first year with type 1 that’s all I know.  Even after 5 ½ years of pumping, I still pinch myself to be able to have an insulin pump & the freedoms that it has given me.  I love my newest insulin pump, Angus.  We are after all quite “attached” to one another! Ha! Ha!

While type 1 has its way of being demanding even with the insulin pump, my personality is one of I don’t want to bother anyone.  That was pretty tough the first time that I went into a low blood sugar & did not want to bother anyone by interrupting what they were saying to me by grabbing a juice box & drawing attention to myself.  I had to treat the low but I must have apologized 20 times for interrupting what the person was talking about.  For the first couple of years I did not do a glucose test in front of others because I did not want to be a bother so I found myself excusing myself instead to do tests behind closed doors.  It was excessive, over the top politeness to a fault.  If I had high blood sugars & felt like I was dragging a boulder up Mount Everest, it did not matter, I put on a high energy face & wore myself out trying to carry on with all commitments.  The only person who truly knew how sick I was for the first couple of years living with type 1 was my husband.  Thank goodness for him because it is exhausting on top of being sick pretending to be well.  He has shown me through words & actions that I am not broken due to type 1 or my other health challenges.  I am not a slave to health challenges when I am with him because he truly lives out our wedding vows including loving one another in sickness & in health.  There are no words to say how grateful I am to the love of my life.  Okay, so let’s call a spade a spade, for the first couple of years living with type 1, I behaved my way into being a martyr.  For what though?  I answered that question with a resounding, “For nothing.”  I had treated others around me in a sense as if they were too fragile to handle reality.  I did not let them see what was really going on.  I pretended to be super well all the time.  It cost me big & it felt isolating big time.  I made a decision to have the courage to be my balanced self with others.  I realized that there was a possibility that some people were only in my life to be served & live in a world where everything was fun & great & that they would leave my life when I let myself be myself.  I know though that I can only control my own actions & thoughts & not others behaviours & thoughts so it all had to just be okay. 

The land between being a high maintenance diva & a martyr I found was being myself within a group of Battle Buddies & Dear Hearts that are trusted & genuine.  Within this group I am free to be myself & to say that I am having a great day on the great days & to admit that I am having a stinker of a day on the stinker days.  Our relationships don’t crumble one way or the other & that is a beautiful thing.  Honesty I think has made these friendships & relationships stronger & built on solid foundations.  To share with you, this past week, 2 of my Dear Hearts went to an Anime convention.  They described the experience especially the elaborate costumes that people had made & were wearing.  My dear hearts said that every person that they met was extremely polite & accepting.  They said that there was no back biting or gossip or making fun of one another in that venue.  That impressed me big time.  I loved that big time that a group of over 2000 people could get together & be polite, accepting & kind towards one another totally.  And I thought, yes, that is the balance between being a high maintenance diva & a martyr when it comes to dealing with type 1.  If we can get ourselves surrounded with polite, accepting, kind people we are rich beyond limits.  And just be ourselves…well that is a priceless gift.

My heart’s hope for you is that you find yourself exactly in the balance of being surrounded by a group of accepting, polite, kind people that you can be yourself totally with!

Smiles,

Saundie :)

Wherever you go this week may you find that type 1 or any other "365" does not ever turn into affecting you in either a diva or martyr way.  Just be beautiful you, struggle & all.  The world needs more genuine, fully life embracing people I believe.  Have a beautiful week & enjoy some nature.  Next Monday's sharing is "Inside Out Mystery."      :D