Symptoms Before Diagnosis

I get asked all the time, "What was it like before you were diagnosed? How did you know you had diabetes?"
Well, I didn't know, not until the very end, and even then, I wasn't really all there mentally.

The most noticeable symptom was how thirsty I was. I kind of miss being that thirsty. Water tasted so good. I thought, "Why don't people drink more water? Water is fantastic!" There wasn't enough water on Earth for me. All I wanted to do was drink water. I would chug down bottle after bottle and think "Water is good for me. I'm going to be so healthy."
And what goes in must come out. I was getting up late at night to pee. I had to pee all the time. Rode trips were the worst. Every rest stop I would insist that we stop to pee. My family was so annoyed with me. "What's wrong with you, Elizabeth?" How could they have known?
Family trips were frustrating for another reason: I was incredibly tired. I couldn't keep up when we were walking around Washington D.C. I hardly remember the trip at all. I lagged behind my family as they walked. The only time I sped up what when I needed to race to the next bathroom.

I didn't have the energy to feel sorry for myself. I didn't have any energy at all. I think, how did I get through any of that? How could I feel so horrible for so long and not know that something was wrong? I lost a chunk of my life to feeling that way, which is why I try so hard to take care of myself now. I know what's wrong and what I can do to not feel like that ever again.
Life comes at a cost and I'm willing to pay it.

I won't lie, I cried while I wrote this. This disease has made me feel like a burden to my family since it started. There's a part of me that stopped being me over the course of this, call it what you like: my childhood, being carefree, my freedom. It was gone long before I knew I had lost it, or even had it. But I knew I had stopped being a kid the moment I first put that needle in my leg. I knew, from this moment on, I needed to be on top of my own health. I knew that it was on me and nobody else.