Personal Narrative: The Choice That Both Destroyed And Made Me

The Choice That Both Destroyed And Made Me Since I was diagnosed at five years old, I have been living with type one diabetes. Up until two years ago, I was forced to wear an insulin pump at all times. Over the years I developed a real sense of separation from my peers. Small comments from young children are understandable, but they're also scarring. The small insignificant things people had said to me have stuck with me through all these years to this very day.
I remember in eighth grade, my boyfriend of the time said something to me that struck my 14 year old self to the core.
“It doesn't bother me that you have it, I don't care.”
I remember just kind of stopping. I laughed nervously and said “thanks”. On the inside however, my mind was going. Why would he care... I wondered to myself. Was it weird? Did other people mind that I had it? All of these thoughts I had never considered flooded in, surrounding me in a cloud of uncertainty and paranoia.
I never really got over the feeling I had that day. It wasn’t because it was him who said it, or even what he said, as I
The first day of being on the shot and disconnecting my pump, I went to my best friends house. She had been another person who in meaning to be sweet, had made me feel terribly uncomfortable with myself. I remember clearly, walking down her stairs for the first time without my insulin pump clipped to my hip. I was filled with an exhilarating feeling of weightlessness. Although the pump weighs virtually nothing, for so long I had worn the shame and embarrassment I felt on my person. For the first time, that weight was lifted off me. My eyes filled with tears, I had never felt so genuinely... normal. I stood there at the bottom of the stairs, just basking in the