It’s my first time writing any posts like this online but I feel hopeless and desperate. I am 18 years old and I have depression and diabetes since the age of 10. I barely finished school and dropped out of college. I live with my mom and my boyfriend. I don’t have a job rn. I have no control over my diabetes at all and I honestly don’t know what stops me from just doing it, wish I knew. I’ve been to hospitals countless times and recently my legs started to hurt. People always say stuff like “oh you just have to be softer on yourself and get professional help”.
Honestly it’s so easy to say that but it doesn’t help. I never felt seen or understood even by doctors and I guess just feel alone.
I’m scared of living like this and I am just tired. Lost hope of it ever getting better.
But yeah if anyone else feels like this too I would be happy to just talk to somebody. Sorry if my English is not good.
Hi @radioheadenjoyer Kate, welcome to Breakthrough T1D. Every one of us goes through this part of the journey. Getting diagnosed about 8 years ago was a trauma and with any significant trauma, there is post traumatic stress. When I was about 8 years in I too felt disgusted, discouraged, lost and alone. I couldn’t stand other people assuring me it was going to be ok because it wasn’t going to be okay. I too gave up hope it was ever going get better but for me that was also part of letting go and forgiving myself for getting sick. The truth is diabetes is not going to go away or get better, ever. However, how you feel about it can change very much.
Telling people to get help and go to therapy is easy. I agree 100%. You know what’s not easy, the courage to go to therapy and give it all you got. That part, where I swore to be honest and give it everything took me over 20 years to start, and it took every bit of 10 more years of work in therapy to start to feel better. When I was desperate , when I couldn’t take how I was feeling anymore , then I went.
Talking about it is such a huge step. I am really glad you decided to do it. It takes more courage than you think to actually write about it online, or anywhere for that matter. I already am sure you have more guts than I ever did and even though you probably don’t feel it, it is a step in the process of feeling better.
I hope you stay. I hope you ask questions and start conversations here and at other online diabetes self help sites. Just know the people here have all been on the road you are on now, and many of us found a way.
Thank you for taking your time to respond. It scares me to be brave and to change but I do want to change and be a “normal” person. When I feel hopeless I try to think about all the things I still want to do and there is a lot.
I do know that it will never go away and I feel like diabetes took away so much from me. But I hope that there is a way for me to befriend it and someday maybe accept it. Even if it feels impossible now…
It also scares me that there is no “taking a break” from diabetes. But I think maybe turning it into motivation instead of fear will get me going.
Reassurance from even one person means everything to me right now. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring me but I don’t wanna lose hope.
@radioheadenjoyerWelcome Kate to the Breakthrough T1D Community Forum! I have experienced some of the feelings you express and have been in kinda the same situation thinking visiting the doctor didn’t help at all - so I stopped making appointments - that meant I never knew my blood sugar level because it would be a few more decades before digital BGM were invented. Please don’t be as foolish as me.
What helped me recover after dropping out of college because I kept falling asleep while trying to study, was the realization that I now had to work to pay my living expense - set a goal and pushed myself. One “thing diabetes” that I did do right was take a shot of insulin, a new miracle insulin became available in 1954 that required only one shot per day, and that kept my head above water and me out of hospitals. Now, this may sound trite, but what saved me was encouragement from others who kicked my butt and got me tp pish myself - even back to night school for my honors degree with my two kids cheering.
A thing that helped me is the concept of “One day at a time”. if I though about “The rest of my life” I would be paralyzed by fear and helpless, If I though about “Just for today” it became easier. At the beginning, Just for 1 hour" was all I could handle, then it became a half day then a whole day.
No there is no break, no parole, no vacation, nada. But if you think about it, there is no break from breathing either, you do it to stay alive and it is part of your routine in fact you were probably not even aware of your breathing until I mentioned it. Diabetes can become background noise, it can become routine. I promise you it can.
@Dennis 's story reminded me I dropped out of school too. bad times. I drove a delivery truck in Manhattan (NYC-USA) for a year. “It is never too late to re-invent yourself. it’s never too late to make even the smallest positive change” I’m older than you @radioheadenjoyer so the next chapter in my story was finding the things I liked, and wanted to do and then on to achieving them.
Hi Kate! I hear you. Diabetes sucks. I remember nights when I was in high school laying in bed and trying to prop my feet up in the air against the wall to numb them to stop the feelings. Didn’t work. My wife is a math professor, her college algebra class this fall was brutal for the students so it is not just you. Her specialty is math education, how to to teach educators how to teach math with language supports for people who haven’t spoken English their whole life. Between school these days and the pandemic people just aren’t coming to college ready to switch from high school “I have to be here” to college “I want to learn”. I was lucky to figure that out at community college where classes were cheap and plentiful. T1D took longer, I didn’t get a handle on that till CGMs came out.
What is fun or interesting or do you need to talk about? Doesn’t have to be diabetes.
