So maybe I write about this a lot. Maybe I talk about it a lot as well. But for me, writing this blog is cathartic and freeing and so I’m going to talk about it. Again.

Sometimes I forget that I have a really bad disease. I blend in to those around me, I eat what they eat, I work out the way they work out. From the outside, everything looks fine. And because of that, I find myself forgetting as well.

I forget that my life expectancy is shorter than my husband’s or my best friend’s. I forget that my body is defective. That my organs don’t work right. That I will very likely face really scary complications at some point in my life. That I will face complications at some point in my life.

I think about my eleven year-old self. My gangly, unshaven legs, oversized pink Umbros and hand-me-down tee-shirt from my sister’s youth soccer tournament. I think about my face and what it must have looked like when my mom said “you have diabetes”. I think about my bony, undefined little girl arms as they received their first of thousands of injections. The way I cried and looked to my parents to make it better, to heal it, and I think about their faces as they realized that they couldn’t. I think about how it felt to walk into Junior High wielding a bag full of needles and blood glucose test strips. I think about how it felt to like a boy for the first time and to wonder if he would like me back, if he would think I was gross or scary or strange. I think about what it felt like to be hospitalized after a severe hypoglycemic episode, and how my friends knew, and how they looked at me when I came back to school that Monday. I think about the conversations their mother’s had with them. “Anna has a serious disease”; “You are to never give Anna candy or eat junk around her”; “Anna is very sick”.

I think about the years and years that followed. A life reel of frustration and grief and anger and self-pity. Of rejection and defiance. Of of pizza and binge drinking, cigarettes and late nights screaming through tears “Fuck This!!!!!” and “That’s it God. I give up!!!!!”. Of sadness at the realization that it’s never going away. That I will probably die of this disease.

I think about my feet and how much less feeling I have then I used to. I think about my eyes and how glossy and sore they get after a long day of high blood sugar. I think about my future and how there is no reprieve. No fucking break. There will never be a time when I don’t have to inject myself with something. I think about my skin and how much it hurts. How red it is from poking and poking and poking. How profoundly heartbreaking it is to have something broken inside of you. To have been made incorrectly.

And you know what? Today I feel sorry for myself.

I feel really scared about what’s waiting for me in the future. I feel panic to think of leaving my children or my husband without a mother or a wife. To leave my parents without a daughter. To be a sad story that my friends tell down the road.

And of all the pain, and all the fear, the anger, the worry, the frustration, the sadness, you know what is worst of all?

The undeniable fact that after writing this entry, I will put away my computer. I will take a deep breath, and then I will check my blood sugar, I will inject myself with insulin.

Again and Again and Again and God Damnit, Again.

And tomorrow, and the next day and next week and next month and next year and next decade, I will still be a fucking diabetic.

And all I want to do today is forget.