1.
I only fear him when he sleeps.
2.
It began with bedwetting. Every night for two weeks straight.
Shame is a powerful force in shaping a child’s understanding of themselves. I was 5. Nobody had to tell me. I knew I was too old for this. Yet night after night, my body wouldn’t wake itself up.
3.
A sharp elbow dug into my side. I could feel my boyfriend’s hairy leg rub up against mine. I was used to this. He was big, 6’4. We shared a queen-sized bed.
His limbs shook like firecrackers, fighting for the space he already took up. I rolled over. In the red flare of the alarm clock, I saw the time. 1:13 am.
Then I looked at him.
4.
Then it was the thirst. A type of thirst that makes you understand desire for the first time.
“I know you’re thirsty. But do you want to wet the bed again?” my mom said.
“No, but I’m really, really thirsty.” I felt myself edge into whininess.
“Go brush your teeth. You’ll get water that way.”
I stood in the bathroom and ran my toothbrush under the stream of water. I sucked the toothbrush dry. I did it again and again. I don’t know how long I stood in that bathroom. Long enough that my thirst should have been satiated, but the untenable amount of sugar built up in my blood refused.
This is the first time I learned that diabetes is discomfort. It’s a battle where you understand your tools perfectly but your body is following completely different rules of war.
5.
Suddenly I was on my feet, barreling into the kitchen table.
“Oh my god, he’s having a seizure,” bounced around my mind like the DVD logo long after amovie ended.
I found his blood glucose level testing kit. I held his hand as steady as I could through hisspasms, pricking his finger. His blood glucose level was 26.
I didn’t bother wiping the remaining blood off of his finger.
6.
“Macey has Type 1 Diabetes.”
Excuse me?
It was supposed to be a bladder infection.
7.
Back at the kitchen table, the red container splayed open in front of me, a voice began shilling directions at me.
Push the liquid into the vial.
Twirl the vial to dissolve the powder.
Don’t shake it or the bubbles will give your seizing boyfriend a pulmonary embolism, too.
But move quickly. His brain is imploding in there.
I ran back into the room with the 2” long needle held away from my body.
I grabbed his thigh and wrestled it as steady as I could get it. I forced the needle through his skin. Willed him to stop moving as the glucagon seeped into his quadriceps.
8.
My dad pulled his red truck into the garage. As my mom exited the passenger seat and walked toward the house, he pulled me aside and knelt down in front of me.
I touched his shoulder as tears fell from his eyes. “It’s okay, I’ll be better soon. It’s just Diabetes.” I imagined it was just like the flu.
“No, you’re going to have this for the rest of your life,” he told me as he looked into my eyes.
I felt the air slow around me. This was the first moment of my life I felt reality rearrange itself. The first moment I walked into where I would exit as someone else.
The first time I learned how it felt to break.
I turned away from him and walked toward the house. I imagine my dad stood in front of his work bench for a moment, trying to right himself. I found my mother in my room, packing my stuff for a hospital stay while calling my uncle to pick up my three older siblings from school.
I can still see her face drop as she saw me walk in sobbing.
9.
On the phone with the 911 operator, I removed the pillow from behind his head. She asked me to announce every breath he takes so she can count.
"Breath, breath, breath, breath,” I repeated. I stumbled as the speed of his limbs began to slow, my own breath caught on the promise of stillness.
“You stopped, so I need you to track the breath again so we know he’s breathing well,” she said. I rolled my eyes.
Breath, breath, breath.
10.
“I do not care. I will be staying with her this entire practice.”
I could hear my mom’s voice take on her angry tone as she spoke to my gymnastics teacher, who I considered warning to be quiet before she really got in trouble. It was my first class back after my diagnosis.
“Well, it’s not parent’s day, so I really can’t have you here...” the gymnastic teacher replied.
I don’t remember the rest of the conversation, although however it went, I’m sure I would have rolled my eyes and muttered to my mom to stop embarrassing me. I do remember reaching the end of the tumbling mat, running back to the beginning in a post-somersault haze, and seeing her dewy eyes glued to me.
I asked her afterward why she was crying. She told me I wouldn’t understand.
11.
His body slowed like fresh foliage unfurling. I rushed between the bed and the front door, peering through the frosted glass and watching the electricity continue to seep into the bed sheets.
His eyes began to focus. He sputtered towards speaking.
“Hold me baby,” his voice the thinnest I’d ever heard. “Please hold me, I’m so cold.”
I lay my entire body over his torso.
“I’m sorry, I should have listened to you, I should have gotten the monitor. I’m sorry I’m so sorry I’m sorry.”
12.
I wrote about my diagnosis in 2021. I’ve done this so many times it feels trite at this point. But apparently that was the first time I included the part where I ran my toothbrush under the bathroom sink.
I don’t know if my mom was more shaken by the fact that I felt driven to do this at 5-years-old or that I had never told her. I know that she cried, more than she normally cries when she thinks of my diagnosis or diabetes or what it’s meant to my life. She still hates hearing it, no matter how many times I tell her that she was just working within the context she understood.
13.
Ten months prior, before we’ve moved in together, we’re sleeping in the guest bedroom at my parent's house. COVID-19 is a burgeoning historical event. I’ve retreated to my rural hometown for some distance and he comes to visit.
I awake in the windowless room to the dripping sound of his voice.
“Help. Help me.”
“What?” I ask through the bleariness of a room with which I’m unfamiliar.
“Help. Just help me.” His voice is dull, unmatching to the bone-chilling implication of what he is asking of me. “I need help.”
When I turn on the lights, I see him drenched in sweat. I wordlessly open a package of fruit snacks from the bedside table. His mouth grows wide as I throw them down his throat. I run upstairs for a glass of orange juice.
The next morning, before he heads back to his own home and we’re unable to see each other for two months, I tell him he scared me.
“What if that had happened when I wasn’t with you?” I ask, accuse. “You need a continuous glucose monitor. It will wake you up.”
“Yeah,” he responded.
14.
Fifteen years prior, I am sitting on the living room couch digging through my purse. It’s 10:30 pm, long past my bedtime.
I am searching for a cotton pad. My mom used to cut them into eighths to wipe up my blood when I pricked my finger. At this point, it’s been a few years since I last carried them with me everywhere. But in a dreamlike trance, I can see it sitting at the bottom of my purse where my fingers cannot reach.
My brother sits on the loveseat across the living room. He asks me what I’m doing.
“Searching for a blanket,” I tell him.
“Excuse me?” he asks.
“I’m looking for a blanket!” I start to get upset. It’s the only word I can think of to describe the white sheath of cotton I need.
He starts to laugh. My mom hears him and walks into the living room, sees me sobbing as I push around the contents of my bag.
When she sits next to me, yelling at my brother for not coming to get her, I start to gain real consciousness. I don’t remember walking to the living room. I only remember the cotton swab.
My mom pricks my finger for me. 42. I’ve never sleep walked before, nor have I ever not woken up to a low blood sugar.
“This is not funny,” she said to my brother after handing me a juice box. “She could have been in serious trouble if I hadn’t come out here to help.”
15.
Four years have passed. He is now my husband and when he leaves for a trip I slip extra fruit snacks in his bag, check that he has pretzels to eat before bed. A fishing trip up north and I made him promise he’d show his friends how to use the emergency glucagon. I don’t know if I believed him when he said he would.
When he’s gone, I usually message him immediately in the morning. A photo of one of the cats urging me towards their food bowl. Sometimes, just a hey.
Anything to know that he woke up.