Twenty-one years of diabetes feels like forever sometimes, and I feel as though nothing surprises me anymore – it’s just same, same, day in, day out. And most days really are like that. But then there are moments that jolt me.

I had a moment this weekend that did just that. It felt familiar, because it happens occasionally. But it passes and I forget. I think that before this weekend, I’ve never really tried to work out just what it was that I was feeling.

But this time…this time I did.

Perhaps it was because I had four glorious days of long weekend and time to think, or maybe it was because diabetes was far more dominant than I’ve come to expect, thanks to thirty-six hours without Loop (which is a story for another time).

This feeling is like being in the ocean and being pushed under by an unexpected wave. I feel overcome and I feel that every single part of me is being caught up and I can’t escape. It hits me out of nowhere and as I’m being pulled under, it takes over.

It lasts no more than a heartbeat or two, and usually I just shake it off and get on with whatever I was doing.

But this weekend, I stopped and along with feeling swept up, I felt an overwhelming and complete sense of sadness descend upon me. I know I have diabetes. I have accepted it. I feel it living in me. But this sadness is matched with a realisation that this is it – I don’t get a chance to be without this ever again.

I’m doing a lousy job trying to explain this, and I don’t want to sound like I am in the midst of some sort of crisis, or about to sink into the depths of a period of burnout. I’m not there – or even staring it down.

This is just that fleeting moment of remembering that diabetes will always be present, and each day, it will rob me of some of my time, my mind, my headspace. It makes me feel sad when I think of this.

I was reminded that we do so much to just settle ourselves around all that diabetes demands of us. Some of that is physical rearrangement as we accommodate the devices and scars and paraphernalia that accompany this condition. But so much of it is how we think and feel. In the past I have not given this feeling a name, or allowed it to be any more than a passing flash – barely a blip on my consciousness. Maybe this time I permitted more because I could handle it and was ready and able to give it a place.

My body and mind are taken up so much by diabetes – I don’t want to give it any more attention. But this weekend, for more than just a minute – although not too much more – I gave name to this sadness that I feel. It passed and on I went. But it lives there now – or rather it always has.