Am I a control freak? A striver? A rebel? Maybe I'm self assured? A slacker? An ostrich? Or am I just along for the ride?

Diabetes can really take a toll on your life, your actions, your experiences, and your personality. It challenges your likes and dislikes, your dreams and impossibilities. It's continually stretching you, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.

For me, diabetes is always present. It never leaves, no matter what I do. My thoughts are riddled with diabetes questions and answers and ideas. My body constantly checks itself to see where my diabetes stands. Everything around me is marked with the signs of diabetes, from the meter in my purse to the prescriptions in my fridge to the test strips everywhere I turn.

For sixteen plus years, I've been continuously surrounded by diabetes. So needless to say, it's definitely shaped who I am. It's in the way I live my life, the way I spend my money, even the way I eat my food. It's everywhere defining what and who I have been and will continue to be.

So what personality am I? I'd say on any given day, I am all of the above. There are times when I wake up and I'm on top of everything...I test my blood sugar, do my insulin, count my carbs, and eat the right things. But then there are also days where I stick my head in the sand and eat whatever I want and don't consider the consequences until the high blood sugar shows up on my meter. Sometimes I do just enough to get by...I do the normal things knowing that it works, knowing that my blood sugars will hopefully follow suit. And most of the time, I'm stretching the limits...looking for new ways to challenge my diabetes management.

It's this mix of personalities that makes me who I am though. It's the tiny tolls that diabetes takes that form me into the Lindsey that I know today. My need to plan, my need for control in all areas of my life, my fears of the future, my hate of the unknown...all come from the years of diabetes management that I have under my belt.

But all of it makes me stronger in the end. Even though I have bad days, weeks, and sometimes months, I know that when I come out of it all I'm better and stronger and more assured. I know that diabetes kicks my butt, I know that diabetes just plain stinks. But I also know that I like who I am (for the most part). And who I am is deeply intertwined with my diabetes.

If I separate the two, I'd have no idea where I stood. Would I still be a controller? Would I be a planner, wanting to know every step days ahead of time? Would I eat the way I do now, would I even like the same foods? Would I challenge my health care the way that I do now?

Who knows...I surely don't. Because diabetes is here, it's now. It's been here and it isn't going away quite yet. I've learned to live with it, to know that I'm along for the ride. I've learned to be a control freak when necessary, to strive for the best continuously, to feel self assured that I'm on top of things, to rebel against the system, to slack off when I need to, and sometimes to just stick my head in the sand and wish it all away.