#DBlogWeek ’15 – Day 3 – It’s dirty

This, I think, is the amount of BG meters I’ve acquired over the years that are stashed away on the top shelf of the linen closet. I was planning to make it the topic of today’s DBlogWeek post.  But a better idea came to me at 2:15 on Tuesday morning while engaged in a bit of a dispute in a diabetes-related Facebook group over something that really isn’t relevant here. I was also awake at 2:15 am surfing Facebook because an hour earlier I had mistakenly rage-bolused one-third of my normal Total Daily Dose of Novolog to bring down a stubborn BG of only 260 mg/dl, and therefore had to stay awake to chow down on a dozen glucose tablets and patiently and fearfully wait for my CGM to roll back to an upward-trend. For some reason, these are the times when I come up with my best blog posts.

It must have been karma, that self-administered overdose of insulin. That worry of “what have I done?” and “what’s going to happen to me?”, simultaneous to the implication I made in that online discussion that someone else isn’t doing “it” right. Do unto others as I did, and something bad will happen unto me.

I emerged from the insulin-overcorrection incident with little physical evidence other than the chalky, orangeyish residue in my mouth. The opinion-overcorrection left a scar — a scar in a place that has seen many other scars develop lately.

My conscience.

In response to today’s DBlogWeek prompt (click here), the thing that needs a thorough cleaning the most is not my museum of blood glucose meters, nor is it my collection of unused pen-needles from eight years ago (“just in case”), nor is it the bottom of my backpack which is coated with the residue of an exploded Level-life gel.

It’s my conscience. I have a dirty conscience, and it’s been weighing heavily on me lately.

Over the past year or so, I’ve not been as warm within the diabetes community as I’d hoped to be. Some of my posts have been increasingly critical. Some of my tweets have been outwardly confrontational. Some of my comments have been borderline condescending.

It hasn’t gone unnoticed by me. I’ve been making a concerted effort to change and to be more welcoming and more accepting. But so far it hasn’t worked, and the regret reprises itself moments after I click “Publish” or press “Send”. The unpublished drafts on my own blog, you’ll see that it’s filled with these types of examples, but my published comments on some other blogs are out there for eternity.

As I make my short-lived cameos lately within the DOC, it’s as if a dark cloud hovers over me and drives me to retreat back to seclusion and isolation. I’ve really grown to dislike who I’ve become sometimes, and I’m troubled by the perception I expect others to have of me.

If this has gone unnoticed by you, wonderful. But I know some of you have seen my improper statements, followed by a feeble attempt to un-say whatever it is that I had just said. At one point, a d-blogger for whom I have tremendous respect and admiration noticed my sudden streak of negativity and called me out on it (thankfully, in private via email). I still haven’t forgotten it, and if that blogger is reading this, Thank You. I needed it (and perhaps a few more doses of it as well).

But it’s not only the things I’ve said and regretted that weigh me down, it’s the things I’ve thought and not said. The opinions I keep in the privacy of my own brain. After all, I am my own worst critic.

Now, I am committed to finding a way to making my conscience clean again.

Somehow.

I recognize it won’t come from changing my behavior; it must come from changing my thoughts.

How do I do that? One possibility is to step away from these situations (as I’ve been toying with doing) and take an extended and forced break from the DOC. Another possibility is to immerse myself so deeply in the community that I grow to love everyone in such a real and non-superficial way that a mean thought never crosses my mind again. That’s probably not realistic. I’m not sure there is a right answer – but it’s got to be somewhere in the middle.  I’ll try to find it.

In the meantime, I still seek a clean conscience.

So — if I’ve said anything to you that was upsetting, offensive, rude, or demeaning, or if I just made you uncomfortable, I’m sorry. I won’t link to those spots on the web (why open old wounds?) but trust me when I say that I haven’t forgotten, and I haven’t forgiven myself yet.