In the 14 or so months since Hurricane Michael, any semblance of a healthy lifestyle has been a distant memory. Like many in the wake of unspeakable disaster, I’ve been existing in survival mode. It’s different for everyone, but for me, this means skimping on high quality nutrition and opting for convenience foods. It means stress eating and avoiding nonessential activities that threaten to separate me from my beloved comfort zone. 🛌 It means outside of work, school, errands, and appointments, I’ve been a recluse… a very sedentary recluse. 👀

My actions {or inactions} have not been without consequence. In my descent into madness, I’ve also been incrementally gaining weight and creeping out of the normal A1C range and into Pre-Diabetic territory. This ‘elephant in the room’ was addressed at an appointment with my PCP in July.🐘 She told me that my A1C had put me in pre-diabetic status. 🙃

I have to be brutally honest here. I’m a fairly intelligent person. I’ve worked in healthcare most of my adult life and I’m desperately trying to make it through nursing school. I understand the implications of diabetes, better than most. However, I’m also really stubborn and like to live in denial. Thus, when she said “pre”, I just brushed it off, like an idiot.🤦🏻‍♀️

Unfortunately, some things simply will not be ignored. Whether you take them seriously or not. 😐 So, a few months later, at my October appointment, she gave me the news that my A1C had finally crept high enough to propel me to FULL BLOWN Type 2 Diabetic status. 😱

Wait. What? I was outraged, confused, and terrified. I can’t be a type 2 diabetic. I have a lot going on in my life right now. I don’t have time for this. 😵 How could this have happened? Why didn’t anyone… Oh, right. 🤭 Now I remember. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I was given countless warnings and valuable information, resources, and tools to help curb this. It didn’t have to be inevitable. I could have stopped it. But NO. In my delirium, I had honestly convinced myself that this serious {preventable} illness would magically resolve on its own, with no effort or lifestyle modifications on my part. 😤

And then it hit me! OMG! I was one of THOSE PEOPLE. 😮 The people who ignore all advice and fair warning from medical professionals. I may as well have been the patient who had just had her foot amputated, but stockpiled Little Debbies in the drawer of her hospital room’s night stand. WTF was wrong with me? 🤬 I had no one to blame except myself. 🤐

My doctor gave me a couple minutes to process the news. Then she asked me a very direct question that I wasn’t sure how to answer. She asked me if I felt like I could make the necessary changes or if we needed to begin pharmacological intervention. There’s no easy way to say this… My willpower SUCKS! I have stalked fad diets like a lion stalking a gazelle. 🙃 If I had devoted as much of my time and energy to making healthy changes as I have in researching tips and tricks from unqualified gurus, I wouldn’t be in this predicament. In short, I wasn’t sure I could make {and commit to} the changes I needed to make, but I wanted to try.

I started making small changes to my diet (counting calories, decreasing carbs, limiting processed foods, etc.) and because dietary changes are futile without some exercise, I decided I’d better try to move slightly more than a sloth. 😬

As is my way, I started feeling discouraged. I was tired. I was hangry. I wanted dessert! 😫 I mean, where was my dramatic improvement? All this work and I still looked like a ‘before’ photo. What a ripoff. 😒 Thankfully, my guardian angel knows me well. Whenever I felt weak, I’d be hit with divine intervention, in the form of a tv or print advertisement for T2D medications. 🙉 So, I was cranky and achy, but I pressed on.

Today was my follow-up appointment and I was dreading it. 🙈 I didn’t want to go. 🙅🏻‍♀️ Why should I? 👧🏻 All I ever get is bad news. I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life. 🧐 I just wanted to pout and eat some ice cream.

Don’t worry. I behaved myself and went. 😑 And you know what? I’m so excited! 😃 I’m not one of THOSE PEOPLE anymore! I’m compliant! 🥳 I’ve lost 12 pounds and my A1C has dropped an entire point. 🙌🏻 I’ve returned to a normal range and pharmacological therapy is officially off the table! 😃 Maybe I CAN do this.

I think I deserve a treat! 💁🏻‍♀️

Don’t give me that look. 😏 I’m having an apple cinnamon rice cake. But I’m gonna pretend it’s a cookie and there’s nothing you can do about it. 😜

Who knows? Maybe there’s an after photo in my future. 😉

I have been feeling so nervous and apprehensive since last semester concluded. And it occurred to me that other people may have been struggling with similar demons. 🤔

Many times over the winter break, I’ve had to fight intense urges to drop the classes in which I enrolled and just take a semester {or 2… or 3} off, admit defeat, and hide. 🙃

My inner voice is boorish and vicious. It feeds off of my self-doubt, basks in my temporary setbacks, and revels in the rise of obstacles. 😢

No matter how hard I work or how much progress I make, it insists I’m fooling myself. I’m just wasting precious time and money by attempting to do something with my life. It tries so hard to convince me that I’m a failure and a fraud. 😬 That I’m just not nursing material and everyone knows it. 😭 It’s a huge challenge to brush it off and press on. 🥴

If you’ve never experienced negative self talk, I hope you never do. It’s a frightening, unsettling feeling to constantly fight with your inner voice. It’s so odd to have genuine support and encouragement from countless people, but not from yourself. 😱

These are the same feelings that propelled a downward spiral and an unplanned 10 year college hiatus, from which I almost couldn’t recover. 😳

This imposter syndrome has plagued me my whole life. I’m not a typical student and never have been. I’ve always loved learning, but never felt worthy of the knowledge I sought or the goals I wanted to achieve. It’s been an exhausting uphill battle, always trying so hard to disregard the internal voice that declared so incessantly {and so believably} that I would never amount to anything.

A few days into each class, I gain some momentum. I find a groove. Things start to click and I know I can do what’s necessary to succeed. I start feeling like I’m where I belong and that I can actually achieve the goals I’ve set for myself. That’s when I’m at my best. That’s when I feel like me. Faint memories of that feeling are part of what helps me go on. 😌

Everyone looks forward to spring break, summer vacation, winter break, or even just extended weekends and student holidays. 🥳 They think I’m so strange when I say I don’t share that enthusiasm. 🙅🏻‍♀️

What they don’t understand is that breaks are not enjoyable downtime for me; they are all-consuming, undeniable torture. Breaks are when things slow down and that hateful, taunting inner voice can become louder and louder, until I’m hanging on its every word and nodding, tearfully in agreement. Breaks are when it takes every ounce of energy and tenacity I can muster to plan my next step and not lose sight of the big picture. 🤦🏻‍♀️

The time has come to start the new semester, to move forward. I made it. I survived. I didn’t surrender. My tuition is paid and my textbooks are in my bag. The break is finally over and in a few days, that awful inner voice will be just a low hum. 🤫

So, just know that if you also struggle with a negative inner voice that would have you believe you aren’t good enough or smart enough, it’s a liar. That voice has no idea what you and I are capable of and it has no power here. 💪🏻