There’s one aspect of my diabetes that I’ve kept hidden, hidden from the Internet and online community, hidden from my friends and family, and in many ways, even hidden from myself. What have I hidden for so long?

My fear.

When I started this blog over a year ago, I stumbled on a blog post from Six Until Me from a couple years ago about PostSecret. Kerri asked her readers, “What would be your PostSecret submission?” A lot of people responded with different “secrets” that they had, but one really struck me. This anonymous poster’s secret is my own biggest fear, one that until now I have never told anyone.

“I feel that despite my best efforts, I will still end up suffering with complications, and I will have to live with the guilt of feeling like I did it to myself.”

This is probably the biggest internal struggle that I have. I know that keeping my blood sugar in control now will help me to avoid future complications. This is not a hard concept for me to understand. Yet, my A1c is consistently higher than I want it and higher than the recommended number to avoid complications. So the obvious answer is, lower it! Get it under control! It seems so easy, but it’s not. Every single day presents the struggle of keeping my numbers in range. Every. Single. Day. I have good days and I have bad, but I am trying.

I often wonder if I am too late, have I already done irreversible damage to my body? And who will I have to blame except myself if something does happen? Even with good control, it’s still quite possible to develop complications as I have read from other diabetic’s experiences. Then what? How do I explain that? How do you avoid the guilt and the blame and the “could have’s”? I know that I would be saying to myself, “you could have prevented this, you could have done more, you could have done better.” Maybe that isn’t true though.

In many ways I’m afraid of the future. But I hide that fear among my hope and optimism. I bury it under the long list of things that I have to do each day to manage my diabetes and live my life. I know that I can’t live my life in fear, I have to just live each day the best that I can and cross each complicated bridge when and if I get there.

This post is part of the 2015 Diabetes Blog Week. Today’s topic: Many of us share lots of aspects of our diabetes lives online for the world to see.  What are some of the aspects of diabetes that you choose to keep private from the internet?  Or from your family and friends?  Why is it important to keep it to yourself?