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There's a lot about diabetes that isn't so happy. Really, 98% isn't. But to me, there are things about this disease that top the list of the worst parts of diabetes. The biggest thing is the utterly hopeless need for insulin.

I can't hide the facts from myself like I can when I think about complications or discrimination. I can tell myself that better control will lower my risk of complications, that they might not happen to me. I can believe that employers, lovers, and friends won't judge me on my diabetes. Those are things that always leave glimmers of hope in my heart; they aren't finite.

But insulin is completely finite. Without it, I die. I can't run from that. I can't say that I might be okay or somehow my body would survive. There is no hope.

And when I consider that, it literally hurts. It makes me want to cry, to scream, to jump out of my skin. I hate that insulin is integral to my life. I detest that I'm completely reliant on a vial of this hormone and some means of injection.

The hate for this reliance comes from the fear that someday insulin might not be around or as convenient as it is currently. The fear comes from the countless movies, TV shows, and books that outline "end of the world" or at least "end of MY world" stories. It also comes from the desire for adventure that lives inside my bones: the want to extensively travel the world, go on the game show Amazing Race, or live in a tiny village as an ethnographer.

I watch movies like Blindness which shows how the world comes to a halt with no production what-so-ever and think I wouldn't live. Or I read books like The Host that outlines how a human rebel group survives an alien invasion and think I would be dead weight to the group because I couldn't survive past a year or so. All around me, my imagination gets charged with these surreal stories of survival.

But my imagination can never stray far from reality. Because reality tells me that these scenarios are survival of the FITTEST. And without an endless supply of insulin, I'm not anywhere close to being fit. The stories tell me that it's living on a bare minimum. A bare minimum that I could never survive on.

So I hate that I'm so attached to this hormone. I hate that my reality is always in the back of my mind, that I can't let my imagination take over. I hate that these fears make me want to horde insulin in the same way that water becomes so vital during a hurricane. I hate that if it ever ran out, it'd be a slow, unrelenting fight for my life that I could never win.