I was checking out of the grocery store yesterday and the checker leaned over the counter to me, looked to my side, and returned to a normal stand. He said “that a pump?”
Geez. It makes me so happy when other people know what it is! I felt like a cornball for the grin I showed him.
Then again, HE reached out to ME so maybe he feels the same way I do.
He has type one diabetes just like me. He showed me his tattoo of an insulin syringe on his forearm. He said he’d tried a pump but didn’t like feeling attached. I told him I eat too often to always give myself a shot. He said he takes about 8 shots a day to accomplish the same thing.
That was about it, but he’s my current favorite employee at that grocery store.
It is such a small thing– meeting another type one and sharing less than 30 seconds together.
But it doesn’t feel small; I assure you.
I feel in a way I’m preaching to the choir now but it seems that I feel I can only truly relate to someone else who lives with type one just like me. Someone who has been 400+ after being 35 an hour before. Someone who knows how many ways a low can feel and how frustrating every high can feel. How the volume of our internal monologues may increase or decrease, but will never be silent. How we’ve learned through the years to do our best to take it all in stride and keep moving through life.
I don’t mean to minimize the importance of support from friends and family: that is huge. But this one is a different and very touching feeling for me. This one is one that doesn’t require anyone to say “I know how you feel”. I know it just meeting him. It’s a kind of quieting inside and rather difficult to explain.
But I felt in those 30 seconds I had made a friend. A friend who could be closer to me than most, in fact, despite the many different experiences leading to our meeting at the grocery store.
It’s a very cool thing to meet another type one.
Very cool.
AND, you know what else is super cool?? Watching a fellow type one race around the world and WIN. Congratulations to Nat and Kat!!
