The One Where I Was Diagnosed With Diabetes

If someone were to ask me who I am. Part of the conversation would be about my diabetes. It's a huge part of my life and I live with it every day. But just because it's a big part of who I am, doesn't mean that it defines me. I am so much more than a type 1 diabetic and that's something I learned over the past year. So when we started talking about belonging to a culture I thought the diabetes community would be the best to talk about. Not many people understand what I go through and it's something that I belong to no matter what. Trevor Noah is always telling stories from his life and most if not all of them relate to his culture, identity and belonging in some way. On page 79 Trevor says “ I floated. I was a chameleon, still cultural chameleon. I learned how to blend.” When Trevor mentions this in his memoir (the feeling of being a chameleon) I realized that I can relate to that feeling of not belonging to a group, but what I can really relate to is the feeling of once you found a “group” that you feel like YOU belong to. For a while I felt like I had no one to talk to or understand what I was going through until I joined several support groups and that's where I knew I fit in. I could talk about myself and not feel judged and hearing other peoples stories made me not feel alone. Trevor Noah used a lot of humor in his writing and it made his stories feel more personal and I felt almost in the moment. So that's something I tried to use in my own memoir. Trevor used humor even when talking about really serious issues and when you would read the story you would laugh and then remember how serious this is. I talked about a story very close to my heart and I tried to make a couple jokes and make it seem less serious because it would be easier and more fun to read while still learning about something that I deal with. I explained in the beginning of my story what diabetes is so that if you read my story you’d understand what I was talking about. If I mentioned something I knew someone might not understand I would give a brief explanation as to what im talking about. The cultures that I belong to make up my identity and who I am. This is just one of many cultures that I belong to.