Showing up.
I’ve been going a little bit nuts this week - in my own head. I’ve been thinking about my life and how busy I am all the time and that I really need to find more time for my friends and family, and I also need to work harder at my career and I really should be running longer than I am right now if I want to be ready for the half marathon and didn’t I say I was going to floss more this year? Basically, I’ve been trying to revamp everything in my life, and not surprisingly, I’ve succeeded at changing nothing - except for adding more stress to my life about all the things I’m not doing.
I woke up at the crack of dawn on Tuesday, determined to get in a three-miler before what would end up being a 14-hour work day. I plugged along the foggy coastline, going over and over my to-do list in my head like a hamster on a wheel. In the distance I saw what I thought was a typical San Diego sight: a trim, toned, bleach-blonde woman with a nice tan and impossibly small thighs. This is pretty normal down by the SD beaches, and the first thought that crossed my mind was that she must be one of those wealthy young yoga moms, up early working out before she dolled herself up to take the kids to school (judging, I know, but I’m just so far from that type of chick that it really comes from a place of “how do they do that?”). But then I noticed she was walking very slowly, and my eyes shifted to the companion by her side.
He was shorter than her, but several times her size. It was a man dressed in black and grey workout clothes, and he must have weighed around 350 pounds or more. He lumbered along slowly, each step taking gargantuan effort. As I drew nearer, I could hear that his breath was short and labored, but he kept moving, one foot in front of the other. And then I realized that the woman with him was a personal trainer. Here he was, amongst the tanned, toned, spandex-clad runners and cyclists of the San Diego coastal community, working out. Making a change for himself. Doing something for his health. Up before the sun, with a personal trainer who could probably bench press him and just getting it done. That, my friends, is the definition of awesome.
We all have things we’d like to change about ourselves. And us folks with diabetes have the added burden of being constantly evaluated about how good we’re doing by our glucose meters and CGMs. Sometimes this “must improve” attitude bleeds over from diabetes to all areas of our life. But sometimes, we need to applaud ourselves for just getting up, and putting one foot in front of the other, not worrying about how fast we’re going on when we’ll get to the goal. Just knowing that we’re trying can be enough sometimes.
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Sometimes, like on days like today, I think I am really lucky to “just” be struggling/juggling/surviving/thriving with type 1 diabetes and a breast cancer gene mutation. I work with so many people who are struggling with diabetes and then 3 or 4 or 5 other chronic diseases plus all of the other barriers that come with trying to live, let alone trying to live happily ever after. Sometimes the goal of the day is, “Just show up.” They took a step by making a doctor’s appt, and I’m so proud of them for simply showing up. So many of us step away from the plate and never even take a swing at it.