Low Again...

Even as I sit to write, I am struck yet again with a low (just overzealous to correct a high, fueled by my general frustration with this whole diabetes thing) so my brain just cannot get into that writing place.

The Middle

ENTER INSULIN PUMP

For the first time in over a year, I actually got hungry. And it was such a foreign feeling. How odd is that, that such a basic human feeling, one that a baby can feel immediately after birth, was so foreign to me. I actually would go without eating for a few hours just to feel it again. And I somehow felt a little more human, more while, more "fixed".

Of course, that was short lived because for the next ten or so years it became all I felt. Eat 8:00 a.m., 8:30 high b.s., feel munchy, be thinking about when the next time was that I could eat. Even a Thanksgiving feast couldn't turn on the full signal. I could eat three plates of food and I just couldn't get that over-full feeling. I became jealous of my relatives, lying on the sofa, moaning in pain because they ate too much.

But life did become a little more normal. No longer was I sneaking off to the bathroom to shoot up during a dinner at a restaurant with friends. I didn't have to plan my life around that first shot in the morning. I could eat when I wanted and exercise on a moments notice.

I got one step closer to that carefree life of my youth. Except for the fact that I was now attached to something, and every three days I had to refuel it, and bring extra supplies, and...

Disclaimer

This is not an upbeat, encouraging page of how great I am managing my diabetes. I think I've gotten to the place in my life where I am either too tired, too lazy, or too cynical to put on the brave face, or the happy face, or the "what are you talking about, I have no problems?" face.

I think so often we try so hard to be good that we forget to show other people our faults. We sit in a group of people who all have on their 'good face' and we think we must be so weird, so jacked up, to be struggling, because everyone else has it so together. And everyone else is sitting, thinking the very same thing.

But, I would never know it because we're all trying so hard. So I've resolved not to try so hard. I've accepted that I suck at diabetes and that's okay. It is a disease and IT SUCKS!! It complicates everything.

And yes, it has added so much to my life and we can control it and it probably won't be the thing to kill us and I'm sure I'll get to all that good stuff too, but certainly not to the exclusion of its suckiness (and, believe me, there is a ton of suckiness.)

But, I've always said I want to have a good life. Not an easy life, but a good one. It's the pain and hardship that deepen and enrich our ability to experience the love and joy more thoroughly. I guess that includes diabetes.

So, look, if it's real and I see it, it's here. (But, I'm not beyond fictionalizing when it seems necessary)