Today’s suggested topic is quite interesting, okay, fine yesterday’s topic, but still interesting nonetheless.

Many of us share lots of aspects of our diabetes lives online for the world to see.  What are some of the aspects of diabetes that you choose to keep private from the internet?  Or from your family and friends?  Why is it important to keep it to yourself?  (This is not an attempt to get you out of your comfort zone.  There is no need to elaborate or tell personal stories related to these aspects.  Simply let us know what kinds of stories we will never hear you tell, and why you won’t tell them.)

Years ago when I started this blog, I spent alot of time giving thought to what I was going to publicize, what I wasn’t going to publicize and if I would open the D-world to my family and friends. At that time, I choose no, I was not going to share make things easily accessible to those who were around me. Why? To this day, I am not quite sure. It just felt right.

Honestly, I think part of it is, when I was younger, I was the only person in my high school of 800 people with the illness, over time the number would increase to there being 3 of us, that was it. It was not a conversation I wanted to have with people. Everyday, I went to the nurse, tested, had my lunch and continued on with my day. Did people know about it? Yes, but it was never anything that I talked about. It was my “disease” not theirs. Well that and I never really share what is going on in my head.

As time moved on, while I am more open about these things and people who know or who need to know are aware of my type-1 diabetes, I never truly try to make a big deal of it. It is only a small part of me. So when I started blogging, the idea of my blog was to be able to write about anything I wanted to, without my family or friends seeing the sometimes real or frustrating struggles I have had to deal with. Is this wise? Probably not, but it is what it is. To this day, when people ask about the name for my Instagram account or Twitter handle I just say, it’s what I picked at the time, no other answer.

In the world I advocate silently for things diabetes related and that is how I work. Granted this year I am doing a JDRF ride in Wisconsin, hoping for the century mark, so yes my Facebook page is filled with guilt ridden requests to hit my goal, that is really the only time that diabetes things will show up on my personal pages. In this day and age, I have a great support system in my friends both nearby and across the country, when I seriously have issues I know there are people I can talk to about these things. So I choose to not talk to other people about those things, they can only nod their heads and talk about people they know who may have diabetes. Why make them feel sorry for me? It’s not what I do.

I would much rather have my family and friends just think I am bat shit crazy and go on from there.

Old picture, still one of my favorite. Photo cred to Sara, otherwise I will hear about it.

On a side note, yes I mentioned my JDRF Ride, I know you all do your own fundraising for walks and stuff like that, so I am not asking your support. However, if you know people who like to support various d-charities or are just in the mindset of throwing money around, feel free to send them to my page. I swear, this is not directed at you readers per se. Just a stab in the dark. (FYI the JDRF Ride page is having issues, I will share the link when I can get to it.)