Struggling and Surviving

I've been trying to write this post for a while now. I'm not sure why I'm even writing it now. I don't share these stories with many people. But something about the DOC makes me feel comfortable and "at home". I feel compelled to write this post- maybe it will help someone, maybe it will save someone. Who knows.
For 2 years (maybe more, I don't remember details) I suffered from diabulimia. I didn't know that's what it was at the time. Looking back on it, I know. It all started when for a week I let my blood sugars go up into the 300's or 400's. I ate what I wanted and didn't take insulin. I only took my long acting at night. At the end of that week someone made a comment at school "Brea, have you lost weight? You look so good!" It all clicked right then that my blood sugars were making me lose weight. I've never been the skinniest person and my twin brother constantly (and still does) made fun of me for being fat. (Just to be clear, I know I'm not fat and that he's a jerk.)
This went on for months. Every time I went to the nurses office at school I would lie about my blood sugar and say it was in the 100s, when really I never checked it. If I did, it was really in the 300s or 400s. Days I didn't want to go to school I would tell my mom my blood sugar was high. I started missing so many days that I was eventually put on a program call "Home-hospital schooling" where my school sent a tutor to my house to teach me. I missed my entire 8th grade year of school. They all thought I was too sick. Nobody ever thought that I was doing it to myself. I went to my endo and my A1C was slowly creeping up, it was somewhere in the 8s now, previously it has been 7 or below. She wasn't too concerned or suspicious then, but did make some changes. Changes I didn't follow. I ignored them and kept up what I was doing. Not giving insulin, slowly destroying my body.
I ended up in the hospital several times. Everyone thought it was just diabetes, and I was a teenager. Every time I went in they found some kind of infection or something that could have caused it. But I knew that I caused it. I was loosing weight and that's all that mattered to me. I had lost about 30 pounds by then. Yes, I thought, keep going. So I did. I never understood and still don't understand why my family didn't see right through me. Maybe it's because that was the same time my parents were getting divorced, the same time my dad's addiction to alcohol got worse, the same time we were being abused. (Did I mention this was going on the same time I was battling an addiction to self-harm? That's another post for another day.) My sadness and depression was consuming me. But everyone was concentrated on something else besides me.
Fast forward three or four months. I'm a freshman in high school now. I went back to the endo. She started the appointment with asking if I'd been doing anything to lose weight. Not really, I said. "Your A1C is 10.8%" What? No. No. No. That is way too high. She downloaded my meter. For the past month I had been doing better. But there was no info from before that month because I had changed meters. And she knew why. She gave me the truth that day. And that's exactly what I needed. I cried. She recommend that I see a therapist (which I did and she told me that I was fine and didn't need to keep coming). She talked to my mom alone and she came out crying.
That day was exactly what I needed. I woke up. I realized that my life was worth more than that. I realized what I was throwing away. The next time I saw my endo my A1C was 7.7% and the next time it was 6.9%.
Today, I'm getting ready to start my junior year of high school. I'm happy (okay, not completely, but working on it). My latest A1C was 6.5%. I'm on an insulin pump and hopefully will be gettting a Dexcom soon. I haven't self-harmed for months (again, I will make another post about that when I'm ready). I'm glad I realized I needed to change. I haven't told anybody what I went through except for one of my friends. My family still doesn't know to this day what I struggled through. But you know what? I survived. I will survive. I will thrive. I will live my life and I will love my life. I'm thankful.