I don't want to start with spontaneity. I wouldn't know how to word it. 

I wonder what it means to me to be spontaneous.  Impulsive, I get.  Self-indulgent, I get.  Spontaneity, I don't get. 

You know what I mean? 

It seems like a sort of freedom, and to me, freedom is "normalcy". 

I didn't start omitting insulin so that I could lose weight.  I didn't know that weight loss was a side effect of insulin omission and I had no prior history of disordered eating.  I started omitting because I refused to accept that I would never be able to feel freedom, and, at that age, I wanted more than anything, to be the 'same' as everybody else.  I was rebelling from my personal truth and have been doing such for the past 13 years.

For a long time, I did not even come close to correlating my insulin omission with any form of eating disorder.  The added bonus of weight loss was just that, an added bonus [although it took over in short order].  Diabulimia wasn't a word, and as far as my experiences could tell me, it wasn't even a concept.  It didn't happen.

At the age of 26, 13 years after I began omitting insulin, I was sent to an eating disorders unit at the University Hospital.  It had been 5 years since the unit had seen a diabetic patient, and at the time of my admittance, there were 4 other women on the unit with "Diabulimia". 

It was a slap to the face!  There are other people in the world with this problem!?  We're coming out of the woodwork all of a sudden!?  This is becoming a serious issue!?

I don't think that Diabulima is new or emerging; rather that it is becoming recognized by the medical community as an actual illness, not just laziness or non-compliance by patients, but a bonafide illness separate from Diabetes.  People do not willfully destroy themselves because of "laziness" and "non-compliance".

This is all well and good, but it does not solve my issue.  That of a dream of normalcy.  Naturally, I've a delightful slew of complications due to prolonged hyperglycemia.  It's surprising the way we can just change how we live day to day to work around things that are debilitating.  Just re-arrange your entire way of life and be accommodating.  Sheesh, that's not so bad, is it??  Every new issue is band aided just enough to make it bearable.  Denial is my sword and shield. 

Now consider all of this, really:  would you say that developing a full system of actions and behaviors to account for the ways things are going wrong, both physically and mentally, is, in any way, normal?

There is both a physiological and social breakdown.  Things more than the nervous system are destroyed by living in this way, and I find that instead of turning to insulin omission for freedom, I am forced to adhere to taking insulin to feel the closest thing in my experience to freedom. 

I will probably die before I feel a cure for Diabetes, and my death is (if I can be fully honest with myself) likely to be full of painful delights, but I do have the chance to be my own free, in my own way.  I can feel the freedom of choices that just happen to be facilitated by medicine.  But I have to get this fully into my head before I can recover from this eating disorder. 

Diabetes is food-centric, insulin is weight-centric I will always need insulin and food if I want to live any kind of life in this world.  I need to accept that I can't have both food and emaciation - normal is that fact. 

I need to feel free from the shackles of a lie.  And Diabulimia is a lie.