Guilt and Perfection

Those closer in a diabetic’s life have cause to nag sometimes when the diabetic lapses on some things in their care. The nagging questions can be ceaseless. The mutual care makes patience with the nag a necessity.
There’s a big difference between the beloved relatives and respected friends and people who just want to be bossy or show how much they know about the diabetic condition. There’s always a control freak aspect to all the unwanted advice. I don’t have much patience for the latter, and have no tolerance for it. Usually those displaying their knowledge are only showing me how much they don’t know.
The breadth of true full diabetic care is more ceaseless than the nagging. It’s not just a diabetic diet and "you shouldn’t eat that or this or when to take insulin and how much or exercise concerns. A proper range of medical appointments exceeds the personal days most employees receive. Extra time and care need to be paid daily to feet and toes, teeth, skin and eyes. Proper meal preparation is more expensive than for a "healthy" person. All food should be properly weighed and prepared. A dinner out is all but guaranteed to alter the routine and needs extra compensation. The testing a medication intake should be constant. Being sick with a routine illness need longer recovery times and overcompensation in daily care. The details of everything a diabetic needs to do form an endless list that I could not cover in one post and at least at this time have no interest in doing a series about. It gets so minute and specific as to sound like parody. A diabetic should never wipe themselves dry from a shower, but instead should always gently pat themselves dry while checking the skin for cuts or lesions that they may not feel.
Maybe there are diabetics out there who can do all that. I haven’t met any and I am not one of them.
Living the diabetic lifestyle is not just endless, but is pretty much impossible to do. The lifestyle is a constant compromise from impossible pursuit of perfection. Most feel twinges of guilt for most infractions of good diabetic rules. The nagging only compounds the guilt. Whatever lapse triggered the nag is probably hard to argue because the nag is most likely right, so the chance that the naughty diabetic cheats and sneaks as if a scoop of ice cream is an illicit lover increases. Heightened guilty feeling are then likely to escalate.
Diabetes is not a situation of a willing diet where the diabetic can forestall cheating by rewarding himself when a weight loss goal is finally achieved. It is the pursuit of perfection that will never end.
Those close enough to have legitimate standing be scold the infractions should choose their battles.
Those who for whatever reason think it’s okay to scold, question, correct and advise despite a lack of genuine standing in the diabetic’s life just need to shut up.