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)

The Beginnings...

I remember a time before Diabetes when I ate because I was hungry and the only crashing I did was from playing too hard and having too much fun. I had nineteen great years of ignorance of the complicated life and incredible intelligence of my hard-working pancreas. And then it was over...

ENTER DIABETES

I now eat because "it is time." The insulin that I gave myself at 8a.m. has peaked and I must match its somewhat unpredictable peak with the appropriate balance of carbs and protein or my numbers will be off and I have gotten back another F on my most recent "pop quiz."

I was never one who wanted a schedule. I don't want to know by 6 a.m. what I'll be doing at 3 that afternoon. You know, a "never know where life's going to take you" kind of person. Be able to leave on a moments notice to go do anything- not even pack a bag.

When I was fourteen, I tried to wear contact lenses because I hated glasses. I just couldn't get used to it because you have to bring a case and solution with you everywhere in case something gets in your contact lens. There was no way I was going to have to bring something with me everywhere I went.

Fast forward five years- Pump, kit (i.e. wallet with built in meter, strips, lancing device, Sympen, extra needles, 2 extra batteries for the meter, 1 for the pump), and diabetes I.D. to explain to whoever finds me passed out why I'm lying face down on aisle 2 of Vons in front of the Gatorade not able to get sugar because I can't, in my 32 induced stupor, figure out which flavor to rip off the shelf and down in 2 seconds.

And that's just the daily stuff I carry with me, not the stashes I have everywhere -- 2 kits at work (1 in the emergency ditch bag, 1 in the desk) in both cars, almost every backpack I own, and a virtual pharmacy at my parents house for when we visit. Oh and my back-stock of pump/meter supplies that takes up more space in my closet than my paltry wardrobe. So much for the simple, carefree, spontaneous life of my PreD youth.

The worst was sitting down to a prescribed meal at a prescribed "meal time", not being hungry, and having to force down a whole meal so I wouldn't get low. Or after a bunch of highs, trying to force down food between tears because I knew the very thing that was saving my life when I was low was also the thing that was slowly and methodically killing me, or at least working hard at building up some gangrene to steal my left leg and right pinkie finger and throwing in some blindness for fun.

Or having to choose between choking down bite after bite of poison or waiting until I got low and then having to drink my poisonous lifesaver. And me, being the lunatic I am, couldn't wrap my brain around this concept, so I waded in it up to my chest and splashed around, all the while, making slow progress to finish my 3-day leftover lasagna that had been shoved in the freezer 2 weeks earlier (hey, I was a poor, culinarily challenged college student trying to stretch a buck, what can I say.)

The Start

I don't feign myself a writer. Although I suppose I might have turned out to be one, the daughter of an author and a Literature teacher. I suppose maybe science and math were my own little rebellion.

But of late I have been inspired by an author and a couple of good songwriters, whose writings seem so simple and understated, that I was at once reminded of the pure joy of childhood and first loves. It is that which I want to do here. To find the joy and simplicity of a life lived in the midst of diabetes.