Responsibility

Welcome, back Ashlee!  After her first blog last week, she is now joining us for her weekly Wednesday blogs.  To introduce herself to you all, she tells us:
Ashlee has had Type 1 for 23 years. She is 29 and a Westerner at heart though she lives on New York City. She’s a single Capricorn who likes bears, lasagna, and long walks on the beach.

So, here I am reporting on day 1 of post-summer vacation life. I wanted my little respite from the city to be a mini, diabetic boot-camp. I did benefit from the regular exercise, the regular sleep and the regular blood tests. My diet….well, “diet” is a foolish word to describe the regimen of comfort food and irregular meal times I indulged in while I was gone. It sure wasn’t the brown rice, broccoli and salmon I thought I would be so committed to. But come on! I have not once in the last four years seen an honest to goodness enchilada in NYC! There are some things that this life is too short not to enjoy.  I will just say thank goodness my favorite, authentic, carbohydrate and fat laden Mexican food is a plane ride away.

We all know this is what people do on vacation. If I am going to be true to life as a human being on one hand, this is fair. Yet, on the other hand, I want to be fair to my diabetic side and take what I experienced and put it into practice now that I am back. Oh…but wouldn’t you know it! I can’t believe how easy it was to slip right back into the same routines and changes of focus that do not lead me where I want to be. It’s almost shocking how fast that little turnabout happened. They don’t call it a New York Minute for nothing!

While I was home I talked to my mom a few times about the kinds of things I struggle with in my adult life, and as she has many times in my life, she remarked on how proud she is of how responsible I am. There are times I say to myself, “Well, no shit, Ma! How else would I have turned out?” Yet, there are also plenty of times when that word just doesn’t feel like a good fit.  “Responsible” is a word I came across today in a book my mom gave me: Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. She handed it to me and said, “Honey, I know you’re smart enough to get through all the schmaltzy crap in this book and get something out of it. Maybe even just skip to the part about India.” So, I’ve been making my way through it and right there on page 94 (in the Italian chapter, which I didn’t skip), I came across this part about that same word:

“Oh, Lord – responsibility. That word worked on me until I worked on it, until I looked at it carefully and broke it down into the two words that make its true definition: the ability to respond.”

I think I identify so much of the work involved in diabetes management as just that – WORK! I often describe having diabetes as a full time job you don’t get to quit. Some days it’s an uphill battle, other days I feel like I’m on auto-pilot, but at the end of the day I still look back on the last 24 hours and think about what kind of job I did managing it.

Yet somehow, since I read the passage quoted above I have found my attitude….ever so slightly reoriented.  I find I really like this new way of looking at “responsibility.” I want to try spending the next few days not as a series of diabetic tasks I have to work harder at completing, but as opportunities to strengthen my ability to respond to my diabetes.