But I’ll try. Last night I got into verbal argument with both of my parents, separately. (There goes my perfect teenager image.) The first time it was because I overheard my father talking about “the way I talk to adults” and that he isn’t having it anymore. So I flipped out, because this is a line he uses all too frequently. There is an extremely long back story to why I flipped out, involving the fact that my father is bi-polar. As a result he wasn’t involved much in my childhood, although he has always lived in our house. Because of his emotional unavailability and an incident that occurred 2 years ago, our relationship (or lack thereof) is very volatile and there is an admitted lack of respect that goes both ways. So anyway I said a lot of admittedly disrespectful things, but I was angry and I could not help it. So he ended up leaving the house. I then said more admittedly to her. It all ended badly and is yet to be resolved. I don’t even know why I am telling anyone about this. It is just that today I had one of those days where everything felt completely wrong, and I didn’t have any way of fixing things. I could cry about it, but I couldn’t talk to anyone. I told my sister but that was just worse, because she is studying for law school exams and the last thing she needs is for me to burden her with this.
Then to top it off, for some reason because of my Diabetes 365 picture today and the responses I got from it. I got upset. I felt like all of my diabetic life I was short changed. I had diabetes for all 11 years of my life in traditional school. I only had 3 weeks in school without it. But guess what I never had? A 504 plan or anything like it. My parents never even knew about them until my sister got sick when I was 7, and still I never had one. No one ever told us they would be appropriate for a child with diabetes. Not a doctor, not a school nurse, not a guidance counselor. Thankfully I never needed anything special for my diabetes while in school. Yes, the trips to the nurses office where tedious and I thought there had to be a better way. But what did we know? We asked for change and still no one told us what exactly we needed to do. No one ever gave my parents the guide for diabetes and school (does it exist?). This got me thinking. How many kids out there have any type of disability that could require special adjustments or protocol while in school, but their parents are under informed or are told that nothing is available to help? I’m upset about this, and it doesn’t even matter for more me anymore. I no longer attend traditional school. I’m upset that little me went to school every day with diabetes and something could have been different. But I am more upset that there are probably a lot of kids out there like me who are not being helped. I have no idea where I am going with this like I said it’s just one of those days…
