Bereavement without a death.

When I was a kid I wanted to be the kind of person who can crash land in the desert and walk for days to safety; the loyal adventurer who won’t give up searching the mountains for a friend even when everyone else is exhausted. Then I got a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. Life with type 1 is manageable, but it’s hard work to be adventurous and it’s impossible to be completely spontaneous. If I were dropped in the desert, I’d die pretty quickly. In fact, if I want to walk to the shops, or even eat a piece of fruit, I have to plan, think about what happened since my last injection and what is likely to happen before my next one; I have to carry emergency supplies; I have to do blood tests. I can’t even have a drink without having to do maths. Nobody real had died, but the person I wanted to be was gone forever. I hated the person I was supposed to become