Instructions Not Included

It's taken me more than a week, but I've reached Day Seven. I said on Day One that I would come to the Sin that I am most guilty of soon enough. And here we are.

I've always been the jealous type. I'm not proud of it, but it's true. It probably comes from the fact that I'm fundamentally insecure about so many things. I'm used to being second best. Second choice. 

So feeling envious is familiar territory. It's nothing new to me. I try to restrain it, but it's difficult. These days I find myself thinking how to rationalise being envious of someone because a part of them isn't broken. How do you make sense of the fact that some days you find yourself resenting people because one of their organs works properly? And there is only one real answer. You can't. Because it doesn't make any sense. 

I'll be honest - I never really appreciated how great an organ my pancreas was. I suppose it's like they say, you don't know what you've got til it's gone. But now there's an awful lot I would do to get it back. 

Watching people eating without worrying about how many grams of carb is in what they're putting in their mouth. Having pasta in the middle of the day, or eating garlic bread with it? Carb on carb? A total no-no. And then from time to time finding yourself jealous of other diabetics who have proper carb-to-insulin ratios, rather than the botched attempt of trying to guess things that you have. Of people on pumps who can bolus easily, even though it makes no sense to be envious of them because you don't even WANT a pump. 

The days that you're sick and tired of your fingers hurting, and injecting. Of thinking about every mouthful of food, and what it might do to you. Of not just being able to put off lunch for a half hour, because it might send you hypo. And if it turns out to be a bad one, it could ruin your afternoon. 

It's a bit like a fungus that grows inside of you. It doesn't feel good, and it doesn't actually help a thing. But it's hard to get rid of. It's like a monster, a shadow that just doesn't want to leave.

Random person eating a packet of my favourite crisps? I'm jealous of you, because I want those crisps. And I want your pancreas. There are moments when I almost hate you. And that makes me sad, because I don't hate. I can dislike, and I do. Strongly. But you, random person with the working pancreas? I could never say to you what I feel. Because you'd think I was crazy. But the thing is, I'm not. At least in my eyes. 

I'm not crazy. I'm just missing something I used to have that made me able to do all the things you still do.