Department of English

Spring 2006 High School Edition

Accepting the Unacceptable

Staci Wilson
Personal Essay (11th-12th)
First Place
Parowan High School
Teacher: Gail Harris

My life is complicated…not unlike the other 7 billion people on the planet.  But because I am a human being, of course, I am a little short-sighted and selfish.  Being a teenager with raging hormones doesn’t do much for my happy disposition either.  But I shall do my best to grin and bear the atrocities of life with the greatest humility I can muster.

For me, “life” really began when I was twelve.  I was like any other little girl caught up in dolls and those really mushy movies that some would deem “chick flicks”.  I was happy with where I was and the only thing I thought was hard about life was when I didn’t get to the TV in time to watch one of my favorite cartoons.  I had no idea how drastically my life would change in the course of one day that year.          
I had just started high school, and was enjoying it despite the regular grumbles that are always heard from kids that age.  I was dead-set that I would start off high school right and get straight A’s and 4.0s in the next six years…after all I had a pretty darn good head on my shoulders.  It was fairly simple to keep up; I went to school and socialized with my friends.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  It was normal.

Then suddenly I noticed that when I ate, it was never enough.  It was as if I could never be satisfied.  Drinking was the same.  I always felt like I had cotton for a tongue.  Then there were the endless trips to the bathroom, which I logically concluded were due to how much I was drinking.  I knew in the back of my mind something was up, but ignored it and again, logically concluded that I had a cold.  I complained fiercely to my mother about always being so thirsty and having to get up in the night to use the bathroom at least three times.  She shrugged it away like always, and then I was content having fumed about it modestly.          

It was October 31, 2000, or Halloween.  I remember sluffing school because I was so tired, and then later hearing my mother talking to someone at the school on the phone.        

“Staci might not be back for fourth period, it depends on what the doctor says.”  Those words made my blood run cold and my heart constrict.  It wasn’t just the normal fear of doctors that I had…it was something far more.  I confronted my mother about it and she made me promise I wouldn’t panic.  She told me she thought I had diabetes.  That was a foreign word that had only crossed my ears once or twice in my life.  I knew my grandmother had it, but I didn’t think kids could get it.  And of course, I panicked.  To calm me down she said she wasn’t even sure, and that I might not have it, so by the time we went to the doctor, I was positive I didn’t have diabetes. 

How wrong I was.  Our family physician, Dr. Melling, came in and told me that yes, I did have diabetes.  I will never forget the look on his face, which is a long running joke in our family, of the “I’m sorry, but you’re going to die” look.  At the time, it was far from even amusing.  After he left the office, I sobbed and cried with my mother.  I made her a promise that day that I haven’t forgotten.  I whispered through choked cries, “I won’t die.  I promise I won’t die.”

This promise was probably a little dramatic of a statement at the time; not really knowing what was in store for me, but now, as I realize what my life could be I feel that it was a premonition of sorts that I uttered those words. 

Those days in the hospital learning and filling my head with everything I would need to know to live my life from that day on was like a dream.  Looking back, I still don’t know how I did it.  Learning a new diet and giving myself shots and checking my blood sugars and learning about all the things that were happening to my body was overkill for a twelve-year-old.

That first year was so long ago, and so much easier.  The only thing that upset me was when my brother, Brandon, ate my applesauce.  Then the complications started in.  High blood sugars and bad tempers—I don’t remember much except for being mad at everyone, including myself.  My mother later told me I was a witch, which I laughed at and apologized for.  I was living in a denial of even having a disease to treat, and I wasn’t the only one who paid for it.         

It wasn’t fair, I told myself, everyone else my age can just skip around and worry only about their homework and whether or not to tell their latest crush in school that they liked them.  I had no down time; a misconception that a lot of people have had about my diabetes.  I can never forget, and I can’t put it on the shelf like other problems in life.  It’s there, and here, and always an undercurrent in my life that can sweep me off my feet if I’m not careful.            

And not only was having diabetes just not enough, my body decided to play tricks on me.  Since my freshman year in high school, my overall health has been that of an invalid.  From sinus problems to having my gall bladder taken out this year, I’ve had it all, devoid of cancer.  I lost hope.  It became this small and silent voice deep inside my mind that only came out in times of stillness and silence.

School became a burden; it didn’t seem like it mattered whether I passed or not.  I probably wasn’t going to be around much longer at the rate I was going.  That is truly what I thought.  But I kept going—that fear of admitting out loud that I was in bad shape kept me limping along.  I simply gave up, sliding by every day, unhappy and depressed.  The road to accepting an illness that would be with me the rest of my life was more than I had ever bargained for. 

But then, in May, I had my first wake-up call.  I decided one night to ignore a low blood sugar, deciding if it really got low it would wake me up and I’d go grab something from the kitchen.  I fell asleep.  The next thing I remember is waking up in the kitchen with my mom staring at me, and my dad holding me in his lap.  I thought I had died.  For the second time, I sobbed, not knowing what had happened to me.  I was more scared than I ever had been before, and all I knew was that I should’ve been dead.  In all reality, I was probably far from anything really serious.  My mother explained to me that I passed out and had a seizure in our pantry closet.  When I tried to get up, I couldn’t walk.  My hip was causing me a great deal of pain.  The next day, after a middle of the night hospital trip, I hobbled around as best I could in a complete daze.  Memory slowly came back, and I wondered what I was doing.

Time went by, day in and day out, everything was so ritual for the next few weeks, that I don’t even recall them.  At the beginning of this summer, I kept busy, anything to forget my problems.  But I couldn’t.  I would lie awake at night wondering what I was doing wrong, why I was so unhappy with my life.  It was as if it had sneaked up on me suddenly, and so I blamed it on the only thing I knew to blame it on—my diabetes. 

Of course, it brought on much of my difficulty, but I was really the one who had the problem.  I had given up on trying to live with my disease and all my sicknesses.  I just figured, “What’s the point?  I’m just going to get sick again soon.”  It was almost as if I lived waiting for the next thing to go wrong.  And that was when my questions were answered.

I hadn’t accepted the fact that I had a disease; if I didn’t fight to be healthy, I would always lose.  Diabetes had been my enemy subconsciously.  I had been in the mind-set to conquer it.  Conquer it, and then everything will get better.  One night, I just realized the answer.  I wasn’t living with it.  I was living a double life, the life of Staci the diabetic, and Staci the normal teenager.  It sounds ridiculous out loud, but in my mind it made perfect sense.

I guess I’ve finally found out the secret to diabetes: let it be a teacher.  Listen, don’t linger; wonder, don’t worry.  And most importantly, accept and forget.  I don’t mean ignoring it, but knowing it’s there, and still living.  It doesn’t have to make me afraid, or different; I do that.  And now, I know that for myself.