"The worst part is over."
- Rachel A.
- Feb 9, 2022
- 1 min read
Updated: 4 hours ago
When I was little, I would cry before every poke and prod — screaming louder and louder as it got closer. The moment it happened, I'd go quiet. Adults always assumed it meant the worst was over.
It didn't. It meant I'd lost. All that screaming, all that begging and pleading, and none of it had changed anything. There was nothing I could do to protect myself. So I stopped fighting and went somewhere else inside myself.
I was sitting in an ER recently when I heard a child crying in exactly that way. I heard the escalation — and then I heard the moment he went quiet. The moment he understood, the way I once had, that he'd lost. That his body was not entirely his own to protect.
The silence after was the loudest thing in the room.
I was raised with injections. 5-10 a day, I never struggled with the physical part of diabetes but when i look back I had no other choice. Ive spent my entire life in the walls of a doctors office. I had no other choice but to surrender to the disease. I want to hug 5 year old Rachel and tell her that how badass she is!