feelings.... nothing more than feelings....

So I posted yesterday about recently going off of my insulin regimen as an experiment, per se.

One of the things that I thought was really interesting was my feelings while I was doing it. Even though I’ve technically been a diabetic since 2005, I didn’t really take control of it until about a year ago. That was when they wanted to put me in the hospital for severe DKA and instead just put me on insulin. Since then I’ve paid attention to my meds, paid attention to what I eat… all of which means that I’ve complained about testing and shots and carbs and math too.

And yet, something felt wrong. It wasn’t that there was actually something wrong. At first I thought I was just stressed because of my new schedule which included school. But that wasn’t it. I finally figured out that I was missing my regular diabetes schedule.

You may ask (and I was), how can you possibly miss poking yourself 4-5 times a day with a needle and having to count every bite of food that you eat?? And believe me, it wasn’t the poking myself that I missed, it was the routine!

Its strange how quickly we can become accustomed to doing something, even something unpleasant, and integrating it into our daily lives. It was still somewhat of a relief when I gave up my experiment and started taking the shots again. Not only did my schedule fall back into place, but I felt like I had control again, so that was refreshing.

Although, I am more than a little OCD, so it really comes as no surprise that I was glad to be in control :)

thinking...

At one point in my life, not too long ago, I was a very cranky person (cranky being a major understatement), and I was making everyone around me extremely unhappy to... be around me!

I don't know what was causing me to be cranky. It could easily have been the stress of my marriage falling apart. It could have been the absolutely horrible job that I had at the time. I have even heard that very high blood sugar levels can make a person very cranky.. and that was during the time when I was ignoring the fact that I had diabetes and just doing whatever I wanted... so my blood sugars were off the charts. At any rate, there were any number of reasons that I could have been cranky.

What I do know is that once I realized just how cranky I was being, I got really mad about it! I never used to be such an uptight pain in the butt. I used to be MOSTLY easy going, with some minor OCD moments. But here I was with people who were cringing every time I opened my mouth because I obviously was going to scream about something. This continued even after I had stopped being so scary cranky. I really didn't like the person that I realized I had become. It took a lot of soul searching for me to calm down and figure out what things were upsetting me and how to fix them. It took a long time for people to realize that I could react to things like a normal human being.

At any rate, because of all the soul searching I did, I realized that I lied to myself all th4e time. In my head, it was ok to go crazy nuts about dishes in the sink or shoes on the floor. It was ok for me to nag about the same things every single day to the point that people stopped listening to me, which just made me madder. IT was ok for me to childishly push or aim a kick at someone. I could justify all these things. The interesting thing is that I really feel separated from that person now. I can remember what it felt like in my head when these things were going on, and the feeling is almost like I was in a daze. This hazy feeling that that reality was ok.

I have no idea where this post is going... I was just thinking about how cranky I used to be, and how I'm much calmer now, and how crazy I used to get. Don't get me wrong, I still have my cranky moments. But when I get cranky about something, I recognize it pretty quick and calm down pretty quick. And things don't bother me anywhere near as much as they used to. Even the crazy OCD type things that I used to do are not as prominent. And really, thinking about my life then, I can understand those tendencies, and the NEED to control something, since I couldn't control anything else.

Interesting.