Secrets

This is my second post of the 2015 Diabetes Blog week. I hope you are following #DBLOG week but if not let me start with an explanation. Bloggers from around the Diabetic Online Community (DOC) are sharing the seven blogs in seven days about common topics. If last year is any indication we will end up with around 600 blogs on seven topics. If you are interested in joining please stop over to Bitter~Sweet and follow the instructions provided by Karen for how to join up. If you do not have a place to blog and wish to join us leave me a comment and I will make room on RADiabetes.com. (I always have room for the aspiring blogger). If you want to read some wonderful blogs look around the DOC, they are everywhere this week.

Today’s prompt is: What stories do you keep to yourself and will never tell others?

Wow this is a tough topic for me. Why? Well I pretty much tell everything. In fact I might be called a blabber mouth. If anything I tell too much. I always say that if you do not like diabetes, you will not like me very much. So what do I keep to myself? Well….

I do not like to talk very much about why I felt a pump was a bad idea before I got one. I do not like to talk about not seeing a doctor for over 20 years, and I clearly do not like to talk about how and why I stopped working (even though that is more about RA than diabetes).

Can I stop fretting about these things? Not really. The truth is no matter how closed off or open we are we have junk in the closet we will not talk about. Like most people I dislike talking about unpleasant things. My personal failures are tough to talk about and unfortunately the longer I live the more of these failures I have. Ugh. So it is not surprising that I tend to hold onto failures. Secrets and failures then stack up until a man has a choice, spill it or lock up it up and let it rot. When I reached that point a few years ago, and I let it out. Since then I suppose I have never stopped letting it out.

Why keep them quiet?

A more important question is why did I keep things in? Fear, is a good motivator for keeping things quiet. Fear of what? For me it the fear of appearing weak. Let’s face it men generally hate to appear weak. Ok most people don’t like to appear weak or even worse be weak. I think with chronic disease we are afraid that we look or are weak.

Therein is the issue. If disease equates to weakness (in my mind it did for a long time) then I did not want to talk about disease less I be judged weak. That is a problem and one I had to get over in order blog or be a whole person. So I will confess that for years I kept it in, I wrestled with my perception of disease. It was a self-perception but one I held for years and one I struggled to release. This sixth annual blog week, I am happy to report I have overcome my self-perception of being weak since I have disease. Am I empowered by having disease? No I am not. But after many years of hiding I have developed enough backbone to put it out there.

The Telling Muscle

Today if we talk face to face, within five minutes I will tell you I am married to Sheryl. I have two wonderful sons and three fabulous grandchildren. But I will also tell you I have had diabetes for 42 years and that I have Rheumatoid Arthritis. Telling these things, is a better way to be. Oh and yes it takes courage to say those things, but it also takes muscle, the telling muscle. I work hard to keep mine in tone.

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Other posts from around the DOC can be found here

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