When I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, my father told me that hard things only happen to strong people. That Allah only gives us as much as we can handle. I didn’t tell him this, but 8-year-old me wanted Allah to take my strength away. I didn’t want to be strong.
I was raised knowing that I could just as easily have been born a beggar on the street. That I was no better than the child tapping on the car window asking for two rupees. I didn’t deserve the comfortable life I had any more than anyone else. This may sound harsh, but it’s true. I don’t deserve the vials of insulin in my fridge more than any other person on this planet.
I didn’t realize I was allowed to be angry at diabetes. I wasn’t shielding my children in a bomb shelter. I wasn’t afraid of getting shot while walking home from school through my uncle’s gated community. I wasn’t walking miles to the closest health clinic once a week only to get turned away because they had run out of test strips, again. I wasn’t dying because I lived in a part of the world that didn’t have equitable access to vaccines.
Sure, paying more for healthcare than my mortgage is a pain. Sure, dealing with all the orders, the prescriptions, the doctors’ visits, the blood draws (all of it x4), is exhausting. Sure, the highs that won’t budge and the lows that won’t come up until you’ve eaten the whole house really suck. Sure, the failed infusions, the wonky insulin, the sites that get ripped out—they’re all awful. Sure, the guilt when one of my kids has a really shitty diabetes day is heart-wrenching. I can go on, but if you guys are reading this, you know this life. You know the hard days that make you angry at the cards you’ve been dealt.
But hopefully you also know the days that diabetes is just in the background. The days where I am overwhelmingly grateful for the tools we have access to. The days where I am baffled by the fact that I can choose between the best tools on the market based on my mental health (Loop vs. the InPen vs. Control IQ?) whereas other people have to ration their insulin, or worse. Yes, T1Dx4 can be really, really hard some days. But more often than not, it’s just something I am privileged enough to have the tools to manage.
Unfairness and shitty cards are relative terms. I can choose to see the world as though I got the short end of the stick. And don’t get me wrong, on those hard days, I sure do. But I try really hard to view the life I have been lucky to live the way my parents raised me to. My life, even with T1Dx4, is a glass way more than half full. Even on the days I don’t want to be strong, I have the means to be all the same.
