i woke up
This morning was chilly. It is a beautiful fall day. I like how the sun beats down and lights up changing leaves hanging onto branches like children on monkey bars and shades piles of yellows and oranges that crackle and laugh when you kick and jump in them. Sometimes I just love the beauty in everyday life. I woke up and I wanted to embrace all that I am and embody. Sometimes I have these serene moments of clarity were I love the beauty in everyday life that just ebbs all around me. Today I felt like embracing the fact that I am a poet and that I am a diabetic, that I am a brother, that I am a dreamer, that I am a leaper, that I am an adventurer. All these things are truely and unequivocally in me.
I sat down and checked my email just like any other, and then I started spiraling through the endless community on the internet of diabetes and things being done out there. It is so crazy it took me so many years to start a blog and try to reach out to other diabetics; to reach out to a world full of positive community supporting one another with a world full cars, airwaves, roads, trains, power plants, planes, skyscrapers, bridges, ocean liners, seas, mountains, palaces, glaciers, forests, and continents full of people – all of it is flattened and leveled by the internet, all of it just a thought and a click away. Crazy!
Then I went to my blog and read my last post. It was honest, but unfortunately it seemed hopeless and tired, empty and dreary. At least to me it did.
Today I found myself reading this blog DiabetesMine, I spent a good amount of time perusing and reading it today. (I have a link to it now in my blogroll) She is a mom, part of a different generation and lifestyle than me. She contracted diabetes in a different decade than me and only has had it for 5 years, but she has had a blog about if for 4. I grew up with the internet, she had to learn about it. (I’m making bad gross generalizations and age guessing stereotypes here. I apologize but I’m trying to make it to some type of conclusive point.) She has done so much to raise awareness and spread good good things all about diabetes. Today she had a realization through her daughter that if it wasn’t for diabetes the wonderful great life she is living, the work she is doing, the passion that she embraces wouldn’t be possible without diabetes. Crazy right!
I have spent the last 5 years of my life trying to avoid it and ignore it. Like if I tried hard enough to pretend I didn’t have it I would be normal. I worked for a while in high school and college, my numbers were average and I didn’t have to try to keep my A1c under 8, it just happened. Then all of a sudden last year it felt like I hit a wall…in the end all that attitude got me was an A1c 10.1. Yikes! Now that’s all that really matters. I’m 27. The last thing I need is to have health complications before I learn to base jump!
So today is an important day for me. I spent hours crawling all over the internet finding inspirational and amazing things people are doing with and for diabetes. Mainly I was drawn to collective organized efforts by institutions, non-profits, foundations, and all sorts of independent collaborators to make clever and funny videos and blogs, beautiful pictures and stories, impressive lives and careers, all out of and because of this disease. There aren’t too many diseases that is possible to completely embrace and not be killed by managing it your whole life. To be able to greet the disease with a smile. Of course there are hard times, ups and downs, highs and lows, but you can get through them, I can get through them, with support. I found this video on youtube that really struck me and almost brought me to tears. I did not expect this…
All of this today made me realize. I have a chance and an opportunity to share and impact my life and maybe a few others in a good way – I have an opportunity because of diabetes. I know there are so many more videos and artists out there in the depths of the internet and I want to be a part of it.
