This personal blog post once again comes from Nick Masercola.
Let me tell you a story.
I work another job on top of this (such is the life of a recently graduated English major), and that job is located right next to a school for the blind. About two nights ago I was walking home and an older blind man was shuffling alongside me. I wasn’t really paying attention, so I didn’t notice until it was too late that another, younger blind man walking right towards him.
They collided. And to my surprise, the old man got pissed.
“Watch where the hell you’re going!” the old man barked. “What’re you stupid or something? Get out of my way!”
Unfortunately, I can’t type up what the young man said because it’s not entirely, uh, family friendly. Anyways, after they exchanged a few profanities, each walked their separate ways.
Neither of them realized the other was blind.
I tell that story for a couple reasons. One, it’s funny. Two, I think it’s very emblematic of living in New York City (oh what a considerate bunch of people we are). But three, I think it says something important about how people face up to their own shortcomings.
I’m an unforgiving person. I’ve always had a bit of a mean streak, and tend to judge harshly—both myself and everyone else. In some ways it’s helped me (being your own worst critic is a very useful tool), but many times it’s stunted my ability to be empathetic towards others and their own problems.
I’ll give an example. About a year after I was diagnosed with diabetes, I was introduced to my friend’s uncle, Monkey (his nickname, and one I never understood). Monkey was a good guy—considerate, and damn funny. In the words of the late Richard Pryor: “the type of guy who could make you laugh during a funeral, Sunday, Christmas Day.”
He was also 350 pounds overweight, forced to use a cane to walk and hold himself up, a type 2 diabetic, and he’d recently gotten his foot amputated (it became gangrenous due to his high blood sugars). When he found out I was a type 1, he began talking about the woes of the disease.
“Terrible thing. It’s hard. Watchin’ what you eat, trying to stay healthy, keep yourself together. Just took my foot.” He wriggled the stump at me. “ Now I can’t take my tap dancing lessons.”
He tried to dress his wounds with humor, but it didn’t work. I could tell it hurt him. It scared him. And while I sat and listened, trying to be empathetic and compassionate, I couldn’t. I was disgusted. As far as I was concerned, this was his fault. He didn’t take care of his blood sugars, so his foot got chopped—the end. If he’d taken self-control, he’d be fine. My inner monologue was worse: I’m 13 years old and doing fine, and you’re a grown man giving me a sob story of why he can’t get his act together? I’m supposed to sympathize with a man who, if he lost weight, would get rid of an ailment that I never will without a cure?
Yes, it was ugly, and I’m not proud of it. I didn’t think about the fact that Monkey had depression most of his life, and the pills he took to keep his emotions level dramatically increased his weight gain. Or the fact that if he went off them, he was liable to wind up in the emergency room like the last time. Or that the adult stressors of keeping his job, supporting his family, in addition to managing a chronic disease created a storm of circumstances far more difficult to deal with than my own. He was just another diabetic, and I was doing better than him. That’s that.
In my experience, there are two types of ways people deal with a disease. Many find comfort and strength by reaching out to others in a similar situation, sharing their triumphs and troubles as they occur, engaging in support groups or discussion boards. Or they go the exact opposite direction, and try to regulate, diminish, and “rise above” their illness. To control it, master it, and act as though it doesn’t ever give them problems. I’ve spoken before on how I’ve never really gone to any diabetes support groups/sites, because something about it never sat right with me. Until recently, I never really thought about what it was.
Weakness.
To not need support? It means I’m better. Stronger. I can stand in front of diabetes with a chair and a whip all day and back it into submission without anyone’s help. To need support—to need help—is a sign of weakness, that you can’t handle things on your own. I never liked the idea of support because it exposed fragility in my character that I didn’t ever want to see. It showed that I wasn’t “normal”.
When those two blind men hit each other, they were momentarily reminded how much of an obstacle the simple act of walking down the street could be for them. Though they might refuse help and do it on their own, no matter how hard they try, in the back of their mind they know they’re different. It forces them to confront their disability, and when you spend so much of your time trying to be “above” your ailment, it hits hard when you realize you never truly are.
It was the same weakness I felt when I started at a man 30 years my superior, watching him fall apart in front of my very eyes, knowing (in the back of my mind) that someday that could be me and not wanting to admit it. I want to say that he got sick cause of his own negligence, for lack of control, not because of a cavalcade of problems and circumstances that could very well hit me someday. It’s the same as when you walk by a homeless person on the street and think that the reason they’re there is because of bad decisions they made, not a string of terrible luck they’re trying to dig themselves out of. If you believe it’s because they made poor choices, then it couldn’t happen to you. If you acknowledge that sometimes bad, uncontrollable things happen, you open the door to realizing that maybe you yourself aren’t more than a few paychecks away from being on the street.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to separate diabetes from who I am, to act almost as if I don’t have it, that it’s just a small nuisance I have to occasionally tend to—the relative you hate visiting but do just to keep the peace. But I’m slowly realizing that it’s not entirely possible to diminish it, pretend it’s not there, and that trying to be a lone wolf is only going to go so far. I’m coming to realize there is strength in numbers, in camaraderie, in coming together to push for a larger goal capable of helping us all. We are all diabetics We are all in this together. And I’ve realized that if I’m going to be part of an Alliance for a cure, then I need to admit that yes, I am sick, diabetes is more than a “mild inconvenience”, and I want to get better. I need to stop shunning support, and stop acting as though I’m “winning” by not engaging with others on this level.
I never used to think about a cure much. I was indifferent because I was doing fine, because I had everything under control. But what about ten years from now? How about twenty? Will it always be this easy? What if I have children, and one of them becomes a type 1? How will they handle it? God forbid, what if I lost my health insurance? Or what about the people right now living in other countries that aren’t even lucky enough to get medical care?
I’ve ignored the big picture for a while, seeing only vulnerability in the group. But a group of like-minded, passionate individuals has more strength than a man alone. While I’ll be trying to ditch my aloof, “lone wolf” tendencies, the JDCA will be here growing, eager to show the power of what happens when the group finally lets it’s voice be heard.
