There's been a lot of ta-doo around here lately about hating - or loving diabetes.

I'm a hater.  In the twenty seven years I've lived with it, I have heard people say that they can't hate diabetes because it has given them so much, taught them so many lessons or because it's helped to make them the person they've become or because it's brought them some of their closest friendships, or simply because it's a part of them.  That's not my view. 

The lessons of patience and perserverance and balance that diabetes has taught me don't matter.   The many beautiful, kind, and wonderful people I've met because I have diabetes don't matter.  The parts of me that are stronger or more focused because of diabetes don't matter.  I would give up all of those lessons, those friendships, those parts of me to be free of this disease.  

I would give them up to be unleashed from the constant battle to stay in control, from the specter of complications.  I would give them up to have a life that doesn't hang on the threads of unreliable chemicals and technology.  I would give them up for my mother, my father, my partner to have a daugher or partner who hasn't lashed out during a fit of hypoglycemia or been inconsolable because of the stress of this existence.

I don't hate lightly.  But when I hate, it is deep and rigid.   And I don't believe there is anything wrong or unhealthy or spritually damaging about hating diabetes.  In fact, to deny the way one feels about something so pervasive is far more detrimental to living a contented, peaceful existence.    Beyond that, offering diabetes forgiveness and moving on - "blessing and releasing" it - is not a choice we have.  Because diabetes is relentless.  

This does not mean I spend every moment of every day wallowing in self-pity and negativity.  It does not mean that I have not looked diabetes in its ugly face and accepted it into my life.  It means that I can feel passionately about - it means that I have allowed myself the freedom in my heart, and my mind to despise the weight, the burden, the trouble it has brought into my life and the lives of my loved ones.  For me to feel any other way would be self-defeating and would not bring peace.  

I am not perfect.  None of us are.  To think otherwise would mean we've accomplished all that we need to accomplish.  That we've got nowhere left to go and nothing left to learn.  Perfection and peace are relative terms - I think it's perfect and comforting to know that although I live with diabetes (and I mostly do it well) it doesn't deserve a warm place in my heart.