first of all- your picture is beautiful!

My name is Mary and I'm 17. I've had diabetes for about 9 years now. Let me tell you, I have been through my fair share of a diabetes rollercoaster- emotionally and physically. It's a tough disease... sometime's I'll describe it as a "hands-on" illness.. it isnt like other diseases where you sit back, take your medicine everyday and just hope for the best. We have to work to figure out how to take care of ourselves, so sometimes that can be extremely emotionally wearing!

I know I'm a little older but I would love to keep in touch and just talk about diabetes and life and whatever we feel like. If you want, you can keep talking on here, or my e-mail address is mjwaller91@gmail.com.

Anyway, back to what I was saying...

I've been through times in my life where diabetes was the last thing I wanted to care about. I pretended like it wasn't even there- and my body and mind paid for that negligence as I continued to get bad test results. My mom reminded me the other day of how when I was 13-16 I would just sit there at my doctor's appointments and say nothing, just pissed off at the whole situation and pissed off that I had diabetes. Looking back on it, I know it was a normal response for a young teenager...  but in the end it didn't get me anywhere. I'm not saying I'm some perfect diabetic right now- I won't lie to you, my blood tests aren't pretty but at least now, at 17, I'm accepting that I have the disease and even though it sucks, a whole effing lot, and sometimes I may be angry for no reason and sometimes I may cry about it ....there's nothing I can do but keep working at it.

My best tip of advice is to REACH OUT. I'm still in the process of digging myself out of a dark nasty whole that I put myself in because I wanted to ignore the fact that I had a disease, I wanted to ignore my emotions and let them destroy me! In the last couple months I've tried to be more active with my Diabetes, by getting a new doctor that I am able to get along with ( I hated the last one- no wonder I never wanted to go to my appointments!), and even talking to a therapist about the feelings I had about diabetes. He ended up prescribing me to some low-dose antidepressants... and that's OKAY! Years ago I would have been so ashamed to admit that- but you know what, Diabetes is a cruel, crappy disease and if I'm sad about it then I'll do something constructive about it.  Also, I've seen a dietician a couple times to talk about what sorts of foods I should be eating (And you'd think after 9 years I would already know all of this!)  

I'm sorry this is such a long rant...

but basically I hope you just see that I understand where you're coming from

I'm no diabetes genius

i'm trying

some days I don't give a s**t about it, and then the next day I just try to pick up the pieces and keep going

what else can we do?

-Mary

Hey Emma, my name is Sarah and it seems like we have alot in common! I'm fifteen and type one diabetic as well, and I want to talk to people who are going through the same thing as me also. I was diagnosed about 2 years ago, so I'm still kinda adjusting to a few things, but I think we could probably help eachother out. Well I could go on talking for days, but I'll keep it short... Anyways, I'm new to the site as well and I'm really happy to find someone that seems to be in the same boat as me! Soo feel free to message me or something if you want to talk! :)