I used to wait on that cure. Not openly, but quietly. Every time a five year mark come and go and I’d be confused and feeling like my disappointment was silly, yet pervasive. After a few years, I stopped feeling bad about it. And after several decades, I stopped thinking about it at all.

My hope lives in a different house now. I’m not expecting diabetes to be cured, but I’m anticipating that I may be able to ignore it altogether in the future; that data and technology will come together in a way that doesn’t make me produce insulin but also doesn’t produce worry and anxiety in the same way. Stick on the device and it will diabetes for you. Yes, please. Hurry, please.

There’s way more to my life than diabetes. Most of what the social media world sees is diabetes in high definition, with the rest of my life a blur. But as a writer, a traveler, a mother, a wife, a person who doesn’t enjoy cooking, a fast walker and an even faster talker … it’s all part of the whole of me. Diabetes is part of that whole, too. “Beyond diabetes” is easy to see. It’s every day. Life doesn’t revolve around diabetes. Diabetes simply part of the foundation of my existence in this world, one of the many things that makes me ME.

After now 32 years, I look at this body, all riddled with shouldn’ts and can’ts, and see that it should, and it does, and it can.

Hell yeah.

(This prompt was pulled from the #happydiabeticchallenge over on Instagram.  To check out that hashtag, click here.)

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