I wish my daughter was making better decisions

Three years ago this week, my daughter was diagnosed with diabetes.

While in the hospital, I learned how to care for her condition and within 6 months I had her A1C down to the healthiest levels. It took so much work and so much time. I had to stay on top of her diabetes as if I had it myself. After she turned 17, I started pushing her to become more independent with her own health and care and our relationship was never the same. I did it out of necessity. Not only for my own sanity, but because I knew someday soon she would be leaving me for college and her future in general and as an adult, she would have to have the skills to be responsible for her own care. She resisted. She made me tell her it was time to check her glucose levels before every meal and snack rather than being proactive and doing what she knew she should. Resentment formed between us and grew and grew. After her father was diagnosed with insulin-dependent type-2 diabetes, I asked him to take the lead on her medical care. I thought that because they had the disease in common that she would be more receptive to his guidance because they could relate to one another. Alas, he has never been any kind of “enforcer” as a parent and her numbers got worse and worse from the ideal place I had gotten them to. I admit I gave up, especially as she approached her 18th birthday. I felt that it was her place to take care of her own health. I wanted her to be able to manage her condition on her own, I felt like that was important, so I pulled away more and more from it and I consistently gave her a hard time for not doing the things she knew she needed to to be healthy and well (while she did little else to that end except complain about how shitty she felt and how hard it was). Now we’re here. Her latest A1C measurement was higher than when she was initially diagnosed. She’s currently uninsured and I just found out that she hasn’t checked her blood sugar not a single time this year because she claimed I was withholding her glucometer (I think we all know I am not and would never).

I am angry. I am hurt. I am afraid. I want her to do well and be well so badly…but I can’t do it for her. That’s not how life works. The world is what you make it. Your life is what you make it. YOU. You have to choose. You have to do the work. Nobody is ever coming to save you. I’ve been here a long time and I’ve been through alot of things and that is something I KNOW. I don’t know why we’re here. I don’t know where we came from. I don’t know how to fix or save anybody. I don’t know alot of things. I KNOW who we are, who we become, is entirely up to US. We have to desire. We have to decide.