I haven’t always been good at liking how I look.

My face is too round, my forehead is too big, my eyes are two distinctly different shapes, I broke my nose in third grade and it healed in a strange shape, my collarbones curve forward, my arms dislocate if I move them in certain ways, I have stretch marks along my stomach that are often red and angry, there is cellulite along my butt and thighs, and my gait is a little strange from years of walking pigeon-toed.

And, regardless of what I did to get in better shape, it’s still hard to accept these things, because they really won’t change much regardless of how much I weigh.

But now, there’s something else that’s changing everything.

When I was initially diagnosed with type one diabetes, I was generally not feeling great about my appearance. I was sitting at a weight that I hadn’t seen on a scale since fourth grade. All of my clothes were hanging off my body, and I suddenly found myself missing the prominent cellulite and stretch marks that had bothered me so much previously. I could feel my bones in places I really never had felt them before, and I was beginning to feel them jutting out when I sat in certain positions or stretched out on a hard surface. My body ached a lot of the time, and it was getting harder and harder for me to motivate myself to function at a normal level. All I wanted to do was soak my disintegrating body in hot water until I dissolved and evaporated into water vapor.

Of course, once I started treatment, that began to change, and now, I’m back to a weight that I deem acceptable and am happy with. I’m not constantly sore, and my old curves have started to come back. However, with the addition of my treatments, a new obstacle has appeared:

My fingertips and stomach are constantly bruised from testing my blood sugar and injecting myself with insulin.

Although neither of these things are easily noticeable to anyone else, it is still a large change to get used to. But, instead of trying to hide the bruises on my stomach, I’ve decided to try a new approach:

Whenever I am feeling bad about myself, my disease, or the blue and yellow blotches on my stomach, I will wear a shirt that shows off my bruises to the world.

Okay, that sounds really silly. And it’s really nerve wracking to do sometimes. And, believe it or not, I’ve gotten weird looks from people because of it. But it’s not worth my time to be ashamed of my bruises, because, whether I like it or not, they’ll be there until the far-off day when there might be a cure for this thing. And moping about the visual repercussions of my disease will turn into moping about the fact that I have diabetes in the first place, and that’s worth even less of my time.

And so, if I tell myself to show off my bruises instead of getting upset anytime anyone sees them, I get to be proud of the fact that I am able to manage my disease. I know that I can fight this, and I know that it won’t defeat me.

And if people don’t like to see my bruises, then that’s their problem.