Confession: I find myself hopeless as of late. I find myself getting very discouraged and frustrated. I don’t think that it really has anything to do directly with diabetes but more a situational frustrated.
Confession:I am not confident. I play tough and like I am prepared to take everything on head on, it’s not real most of the time. I am a Capricorn, I enjoy structure, planning and control. I have no job, no car, no confidence (at least in myself), and as a result I don’t have control. I crave control of my own destiny and the power to determine it, this I do not have right now.
Confession: I feel like my dreams are out of reach. I once knew that I could do whatever I wanted and knew what that was. Now I feel defeated, discouraged and ashamed. I am 26 years old, unemployed, living at my parents house being supported by my boyfriends who works VERY hard. I am 26 years old and should be able to at the very least take care of my self. Now I feel like my dreams are gone and the best I can do is just make it.
Confession:I want to give up. Wouldn’t it be easier if I just didn’t try to fight my way out of the dark? I often find that I move forward for others and not for myself. There was once a time when I was supremely confident in my self, my decisions, my knowledge, and my abilities- this has moved away from me somewhere along the line.
Confession: I don’t feel like I deserve the help that I get and the guilt eats at me. I know that people think that I am taking advantage of Marshall and the feelings of guilt often consumes me. I often wonder whether he takes care of me because he knows I need help and he would never abandon someone or whether he just really wants to live this life with me. These feelings are affecting out relationship.
Confession:I want to have my life back. I continue to apply for jobs, I continue to try and stay busy, I continue to test monitor and correct, I continue to tread water. My question is when will I be able to actually MAKE PROGRESS? I am tired of “keeping my head up”, “putting one foot in front of the other”, “just continue swimming”, etc. I want to actually take steps forward, I want to make strides toward the things that I want.
Well… that should cover my confessions for now…
Paws. Love. Diabetes. 
I have been where you are at many times in my life. Fighting , climbing , slipping and falling only to start over again.
Let me tell you first that your boyfriend is with you because you are a beautiful , lively , intelligent woman with a great sense of humor that sparkles in her spirit. I have no idea what you look like. These are qualities and traits that I feel in your writing.
Let me tell you ,second, give it up. I don’t know if you are religious but if you are give all this doubt , these insecurities ,to whatever God you believe in. Keep doing the things that you are doing , apply for a job with the idea that if you get it great and if you don’t then that’s not a problem. Because once you relinquish all control then He has the power not you. And if you are not religious then give it up to the cosmos or whatever and believe that since ridding yourself of these insecurities you are now in balance and harmony with the world and good things will gravitate towards you as if you are a magnate. Well I’m stepping down from my pulpit now. SMILE!!!
haha thank you for the kind words, I know it was kind of a depressing post. Right now I am pretty isolated out here and sometimes (as pathetic as it might be) a little vent session on the blog happens, more than I’d like lately.
Ohhh. It can be sooo hard. I am sorry you are blocked from your dreams just now. Life is long. 26 is not forever. Not that my saying it helps. But, the best parts of my life happened in the years after my 26th, for what it’s worth. Hell, at 33, I got into a fix and had to call my mom to come get me in Wenatchee – don’t ask! Just saying, you are a special woman, and whatever the bravado factor, just thank those who deserve it and know you will, in time, balance accounts. Life is long. And, you are right, you rock!!
Thank you for the kind words as well! I know I have lots of time left I just find myself looking at the challenge of coming back from the hole I am in (HUGE debt) and I find it smothering me. I know that eventually I’ll be able to let it roll off my back and move forward (I always seem to get there eventually) but knowing that it’s all still lingering there is difficult. Ah well… such is life I suppose.
Hi again. So what are your dreams, exactly? From what you write I know you love horses. And dogs. And Marshall. If you were in your perfect setting, doing your favorite things, what would all that look like? (Only if you are ok with sharing that. No intent of prying here. -Just wondering if I or any of your other blog readers here might have useful (to you) info or ideas 🙂
Well in all honesty I don’t want to struggle through life and that would be enough :). But, if we are getting into dreams here…
I want to run a sanctuary 🙂 For dogs mostly but what kind of sanctuary says no to animals in need?
My dream is to have a place where the worst cases find a place to go. I don’t believe in euthanasia because of behavior issues, but I recognize that often these dogs CAN’T live in the common population as they are. I truly believe that humans create the problems we see in dogs (and other animals i.e. horses) and then we punish them for our mistakes. I think it’s wrong to do this.
There is a better way through education and rescue. There aren’t a lot of true sanctuaries out there (Best Friends Animal Society has it down!) and certainly nothing like that on the east coast- so there are a lot of lost lives and missed opportunities due to a lack of resources.
I also want to have the ability to step in and help people with their dogs, through behavior consultations, adoption counseling, and I want to be able to help good people with the wrong dog by taking in the dog they have that isn’t a good match and being able to pair them with another dog to adopt that IS a good match.
It’s a pretty specific dream… and big… but you asked… haha 🙂
You think you could train other dogs to be BG monitors for diabetics? The one place I saw offering such dogs wanted about 2K each. -A sort of pre-dream fund raising thought… Do your other dogs notice or understand what Judah is doing when he alerts you? Or is it just a special gift only some dogs have?
GREAT dream, BTW!!
🙂 Thank you
You can def. train nearly any dog to do this, the hardest part is finding a dog that can handle the public access part of the work- but it can be done, I am confident in that. The other dogs I have here certainly don’t pick it up naturally like Judah, but my mom’s dog is very interested in training exercises we do.
A lot of places I have found require A LOT for alert dogs, which I understand because of the time and training necessary to create a reliable alert dog, I had an advantage with Judah because he taught himself before I taught him anything, haha
That being said often the dogs are placed through funds raised by donations and things like that.
I would certainly want to train a dog from scratch before I was even remotely in a position to train for someone else, it’s different then dealing with a natural alerter for sure. I’d just want to make sure that I had the ability to produce a reliable dog and would want to see other programs at work too. I don’t want to become one of the people who isn’t doing it properly and reliably- it’s an important job and isn’t something to be taken lightly
I think if I could afford one, I totally would. I bet a lot of PWD and Dmoms would too. You’re so right about wanting to do it properly. I think I’d want to connect with the person training the dog for/with me, pick out a likely pup or young dog (rescue, ideally!) together. Then cooperate throughout the training process so I’m on the same page. Actually I might suck at keeping the training crisp and myself in alpha position. I always want to cuddle and love my dogs, and I hate bossing other beings around. (So I have bassets 🙂 ) Really interesting topic to me, alert dogs. So cool you have one!
haha Basset Hounds are so funny! Some day I will have one! It’s a pretty special relationship between SD and handler and yes! rescue dogs can do it! (Judah is a rescue, and wasn’t trained from puppy hood for his job).
Don’t worry it’s not bossing, it’s leading 🙂 You’d be surprised how much they like the leadership. If you are interested keep researching! and check out the blogs:
RAINIEANDME
&
doggoestocollege.com
these are new friends of mine and they both use Diabetic Alert Dogs. Rainie is a program dog from early alert canines and is Hilary’s partner.
Amelia has her dog Merlin that she trained through a program in New Mexico. Great ladies and great dogs! 🙂