If You Were Actually Sick

I was watching Modern Love on Amazon Prime this weekend. For those who don’t know it is a tv show based off of a weekly column in the New York Times. People write in telling their love stories. Each episode is a 30min vignette adaption of someone’s story. Highly recommend checking it out.

I was on the second episode of the new season when the diabetes feels smacked me in the face. Let’s set the scene…

This episode was about a young couple where the girl has a condition that causes her circadian rhythm to be flipped. She stays up all night and sleeps all day. When she tries maintaining a regular sleep schedule she “feels like she is constantly jet lagged. Having worked nights for 3 years I totally relate. It’s awful. Things go well for the couple until she misses brunch with her boyfriend’s mom because she didn’t set an alarm and overslept. They get into an argument and the guy complains about how they never get to do normal things and he has always had to adjust to her. The girl defends herself saying she has a medical condition. It’s not a lifestyle choice and it’s good to know how he’d act if she got sick someday. He doesn’t miss a beat and then says “If you were actually sick I’d take care of you”. That sentence stung so much I audibly gasped and clutched my pillow tighter. The look on the girl’s face is one I recognize from my own face.

No one has ever told me my chronic illnesses aren’t real, but for the most part they are invisible unless I choose to show them. People forget that I am doing all the same things they do, but with diabetes in tow. I show up to work after a night of being woken up after multiple lows. I show up when I feel like absolute crap because my blood sugar was 400+ most of the night because I went to bed without putting my pump back on after my shower (I’m human. it happens). Even on a normal day I am constantly making decisions about my blood sugar.

People also don’t realize how serious diabetes is. You don’t just take insulin and everything is fine. Everything seems fine because if the constant effort I put in. I see it in little comments here and there. Hearing the boyfriend say if you were actually sick felt like not being seen or heard. It’s like someone telling you you aren’t worth it. Or that your lived experience isn’t true. It hurts. Even more when it’s someone you love and trust.

The fact that a 45 second scene could stir up all this emotion also shows just how insidious this disease is. The fact you never know when those feelings will come sucks. For me, once they come it is hard to get rid of them. It puts me in a funk for a few days. Today all I wanted to do was lay in bed and listen to sad songs with deep lyrics (Bon Iver or City and Colour). Instead I showed up for work and gave 100% of the 5% I had to give. This is why they say they say the mental burden of diabetes (or any chronic illness) is the hardest.