Pump up the Volume

06/18/08 Living Well

When I drive, I listen to music at an embarrassingly loud decibel for someone my age. It’s embarrassing because we associate excessively loud music with adolescents, not their teachers. Yet there I am, pulling into the parking lot, my Jeep thrumming from the vibrating speakers. Inevitably my colleagues gawk, and I shrug it off, but the question remains: why can’t I just turn down the volume?

I believe I’m one of those adults who has never fully grown up. However, there is a difference between being young at heart and being immature. As a teacher and father of two, I know I’m mature, yet I’m still able to relate to adolescents. I believe this is because I acquired type 1 diabetes at age 12. Because of that, I still  feel locked in that world of confusion, disillusionment, and identity crisis—the hallmark of teenage years. Why else do teens select a musical genre and then blast it, but to claim an identity and to then broadcast it to whomever will listen?

Music used to be a way to deflect my “diabetes” as well as speak to the daily distress I was under. Today music still screams from my speakers because I’m still desperate to be heard, for people to understand that I know who I am. The only difference is that now, as an adult, no one really cares.

Listening to loud music lets me escape my frustration and to enter into someone else’s. Diabetes and the pressures of adulthood—marriage, career, mortgage—can be overwhelming, add to the mix trying to make it as an author, and I’ve got a perfect recipe for angst. The music I listen to reflects that emotion and does not soothe me. More often than not it forces me to consider my situation more deeply, and it is at that point when I need to escape. That’s why I crank the volume so high that I can no longer hear myself, and instead enter the scene the singer is portraying.

I’m not indicating that this is a healthy practice or that I shouldn’t lower the volume. In fact, I make it a point to play music for my daughters’ ears when they are riding with me. When they are not I do try to turn down the dial. But frustration and downright anger have a place is the life of anyone with diabetes, and inevitably those emotions creep in. Then I retreat to my car and induce deafness to escape.

Eric Devine, 30, has lived with type 1 diabetes since he was 12. He lives in upstate New York with his wife and two daughters where he works as a high school English teacher. Devine is an avid writer and is currently seeking publication of two Young Adult novel manuscripts.