Hi
@Deborah 85,
It's a real bummer being first diagnosed. I remember well.
But please, please don't blame yourself for becoming diabetic. It's not your fault.
For T2s, there is something wrong with our metabolisms, which becomes appearant maybe even 10 or 15 years before showing up in our blood sugar levels -- if they bothered to look for it. The gist of it is that our bodies don't respond to insulin properly and thus we overproduce insulin to compensate. The insulin then does two things: First, it stores all energy from food (especially carbohydrates), which we don't need immediately, as fat and second it prevents us from using our stored fat energy for energy. In normal people, there are phases when insulin is low and stored fat is burned for energy -- for us, however, this never happens, insulin is always high, so we just keep gaining. Thus, our weight gain is a symptom of a broken metabolism, not necessarily the cause of it.
This might not necessarily help you with how people react (also due to how the media present T2s), but maybe it helps you personally if you know you did not bring this on yourself.
This is probably a worn sentiment -- but it will get better with time (trust me, I've been through it).