There's a picture of me in pre-K with no smile and looking incredibly unhappy. It's a class picture and the rest of my classmates are all smiling and happy. When you turn the picture over, my mom's handwriting reads "Lindsey had a very high blood sugar this day and did not feel well."

That same year, my mom took pictures of me on the first day of school. I still don't look happy. In the background, there is a pink kit with a blue handle. My name is written on it. The contents include a meter, low treatments, and emergency information for everyone in our family.

These kinds of pictures really aren't normal for me. I was generally a happy child who took smiling pictures. But that year was the year that I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. 1993. It was a time that I struggled to understand why I was so sick and why the doctors wouldn't fix me. It was a time that my family struggled to make diet and insulin changes and grasp the intensity of this disease.

I pulled out those pictures yesterday as I looked for old family photos to include at my graduation party. My heart broke as I thought about me at four years old coping with diabetes. I don't remember the struggle, but it's so obvious in those pictures. And I hate that my four year old self had to go through that.

I've often wondered which is easier: diagnosis at a young age or one when you're older. Each has its cons and each has pros. For me, I have no idea what it's like to live without diabetes because I can't remember a time without it. But I also got most of my coping done before I hit the tough years of my life. I have more years with this disease which may lead to greater complications, but I also have the benefit of foregoing the beginning stages of diabetes management.

I'm not sure that one is truly better than the other, but as I looked at those pictures yesterday, my heart longed for a late diagnosis. I so badly wanted to take the pain away in those pictures for myself and for my parents. For my mother who had to write an explanation for her unhappy child on the back of a class picture.

I wish that I could tell my four year old self what I know now. I wish that I could tell her that it's okay and that we make it and that maybe one day there's a cure and that diabetes made us so strong. I wish that I could tell my mother who struggled with depression because of my diagnosis that her daughter turns out to be a great, strong woman because of this disease. I wish that I could tell them that the future isn't so horrible.

And a major part of me wishes that an older me could tell my current self those same things. I wish that someone would tell me from the future that there's a cure that doesn't compromise my reproductive abilities or anything else. I wish that they could tell me that my fear of complications is unfounded and that our control was enough to ward off anything detrimental.

I can't do any of that though. I can only look back each year with the knowledge that every year is different and that I keep learning as I go. Each year, I know that the next year is going to be no better or worse than the last. It's simply about growing with what I'm given. It's about remembering how diabetes, how college, how falling in love feels.

Because when it comes down to it, it's not about the snapshot in a photo. It's about the way that I'm living my life as a human being and if I'm giving myself the faith and the strength to grow.