after doesn't end
I was sixteen. There was a voicemail and a frantic Google search, followed by an article that recommended eating more tomatoes and mentioned, almost in passing, that there was no known cure. That was how I found out.
My pancreas quit. Not a gradual fade, not a two weeks notice. A full Bravo housewife mid-season walkout — no comment from the talent, production left scrambling, and absolutely no plan for what comes next.
I didn’t know then what I know now: that finding out is actually the easy part. The easy part is the before.
Before the numbers. Before the 3 a.m. urgent lows. Before the self-conscious glance down at my arm in a room full of people who don’t know what a CGM is. Before I even knew what those three letters meant. Before two horizontal lines became my stream of consciousness every hour of every day.
Before, in other words, became after. And after doesn’t end.
After, I would learn, looks nothing like what you expect. It doesn’t end. It doesn’t resolve. It just continues, in one direction, between two lines.
Most things in life are vertical. You set a goal, you climb toward it, you cross it, you’re done. Type 1 diabetes is not most things.
Two lines, a red one at the bottom and a grey one at the top, 70 and 180, and the whole job every single day is to stay between them. Not to finish. Not to cross. Just to stay in range.
There are moments, mid workout, mid dinner, mid conversation, where the numbers pull me back, quietly.
I check. Sometimes I curse. Sometimes I catastrophize. But always, I adjust.
The highs are exhausting. The lows are scary. The range is where everything actually is — not at the extremes, but in the quiet space between them, which is where life has always been anyway.
The arithmetic of just being alive isn't a problem you solve. It's one you just keep showing up for.