My experiences of stigma around having Diabetes.

I can remember being at school at the age of 11 where I'd had some difficulties because we used to have to queue up for lunch and depending on what time you got out of your class would determine where you were in that queue and so it could make quite a difference. And so you could be in the queue for 20 minutes or so it seemed and that wasn't great in terms of regular meal time. So I was, my parents got in touch with the headmaster and they made an arrangement that I would always go to the head of the queue. And so the reaction to that would be Oh, here comes the druggie again. And here comes the drug addict. And I remember responding, I used to hate that, you know, that the stigma of that was dreadful. And I just remember responding one day by saying, I may be drug dependent, but I'm not a drug addict. And you know, there's a reason why I'm coming here. And I'm sorry I'm putting you out, but I need to go ahead. And, you know, there would be a rolling of eyes. But, you know, from another child's perspective, who, you know, they weren't necessarily informed, nor did they need to be, but it was just another aspect of being different, which may actually fuel my desire to kind of fit in. and not to be obvious about things. Let's just be discreet. But the other instance would be, you can't have any sugar, so why are you having that can of Coke? Or why are you having that chocolate? You shouldn't have that, should you? And so it was as if people make their minds up that based on the knowledge they have, that something's OK for you or something's not OK for you. And they don't get into the detail, actually, you might need that kind of coat because you're low. You might not necessarily want it, but you might need it. So I don't expect people to have that level of insight. And that's why I have to be organized and take responsibility for it myself. But it's as if there's a if you're diabetic, there's a rule. And if you're seen to break it, then you're bringing it on yourself. There's something that you're doing wrong and therefore you deserve to have complications, if I can put it that way. I think there's more awareness now than there used to be. So I think that in my background as a child, there was less information, was less known about issues and being with other children, you know, I couldn't expect them to know it. But there is a lot of stigma about being different. And my parents are Welsh. We were living in London. You know, my best friend, I can remember him saying to me, well, you know, you're here, you're taking our jobs. And I thought, this is this isn't coming from you. this is coming from your parents. So there's always this thing about the other and actually coming from Wales with the village life that I was used to there, it was always the other people in the other village that were either meaner or stupider or whatever. So there's this thing that I recognise that there's me and there's the other and actually the other isn't always that different but we perceive them to be. So having diabetes is just another element of that.