Breaking up with diabetes

We’ve been together for a six long years. We met almost six years ago today which is why I’ve been thinking about you a lot. You arrived with great drama, throwing our ordered lives into disarray. We didn’t have a choice when you leached onto our son just as his teenage years began, so we reluctantly accepted you and brought you into our home.

During these years, I have stuck by you no matter what and you have certainly not played fairly! Your temper and lack of ability to stick to any routine have challenged the ebb and flow of our days.

You don’t belong with me! I have to say this! Your relationship is with my son and the time has come for you to spend all your time with him. It’s the natural way of things. Children grow up and leave. I count myself lucky that I can break up with you and feel for my boy that he has no choice but to carry you into his future.

I have such a special relationship with my boy and the constant spectre of your existence has strengthened the love we have. I sometimes wonder if we would have been so close if it were not for the constant curl of your fingers around his arm.

I’ve tried quite unsuccessfully at times to hide my maternal rage as you made my son dance to your stupid, pointless tune and over the days, nights, months and years I have tried to accept the inevitability of your place in his life. I could see and occasionally predict the unfair moves you’d pull before my son did, but in order to let him grow and learn, I’ve stood back and allowed him to find his own way. This was the hardest part of being a parent.

Despite everything, I know you like hanging out with me, as I give more structure to your foul existence. You do seem to thrive on the structure and routine that I prefer. I have tried to make you accountable for some of the numbers you have pulled. Just as my boy gets his moments in the sun, you always have a way of bringing the attention back onto yourself. You know what though? I feel I have to tell you what a pain you are! I still feel a deep rumbling rage that you are here but showing that anger to my boy will only increase the burden of your existence so I paint on a smile to mask the heartache you cause me.

This breakup is tough on me too. Letting you go also means letting go of my son and you are a wily creature whose fickle ways I do not dare to trust. Letting you walk away with my boy is the hardest thing I will ever do but letting him go is right. Over the last year, he has come to understand you better and I hope you can make peace with each other and coexist.

Don’t think though that you will never see me again! Oh no! I will turn up when you least expect it. Although my boy is pawing at the ground, eager for his independence, I will be a distant point in the triangle, no longer in your face but still there nonetheless, stretched out on the horizon watching and hoping.