Not every day is easy with diabetes. Not that it should be. My pancreas doesn’t work so technically I can’t properly digest food so technically, five years after my diagnosis, I shouldn’t be alive.

I should be thankful for technology, thankful that even though these medical supplies cost me a ridiculous copay, they keep me alive – they help me maintain an overall good quality of life.

I should be thankful, but there are days when I come home from my two-hour commute from DC and I stand in my walk-in closet debating what outfit I should wear tomorrow and then I lose it. I just sink to the dilapidated hardwood floor and start sobbing.

Okay maybe there’s more to it than that? Maybe it’s been a rough day? Maybe I’ve been having highs all day for no apparent reason other than my hormones started going crazy? Or maybe I’ve spent half the day going back and forth from the insurance company to the pharmacy to the doctor’s office trying to get my 90-day supply of test strips covered?

It could be any number of things that make me want to rip Gizmo’s tube from my belly and hurl its $6,000 vibrating body across the floor or hide my glucometer in a concrete block in the basement so I never have to read its imperfect numbers again. And what’s up with Cosmo, my CGM, warning me my blood sugar is dropping at 75 when it’s actually 120?

Oh to be normal! It took me writing a book to come to terms with my disease and since then I cry about it less. I refuse to feel sorry for a disease that will never feel sorry for me, that will never show me mercy. It does not get to win.

But that doesn’t mean I still don’t doubt my strength. As my mom used to hold her thumb and pointer finger together, almost touching, and say, “My wick is this short,” sometimes that’s how I feel about diabetes. I didn’t ask for this, but I can deal with it.

So I hold my knees together on the floor of my walk-in closet and let myself cry. I sob as if I’m dying but I don’t care. I let it out and then I get up and pick out an outfit for tomorrow.