Both models are Terminators. Any rivalry is invalid. NASA’s instruments detect no difference in mettle between the T1D and the T2D. Both withstand severe seismic activity. Both pause in the grocery store to subtract sugar alcohols from total carbohydrates.

But the world is still teething, and it gnaws on conflict. We pit red against blue, bread against cake, diabetic against diabetic.

Type 1 gets sympathy. Diagnosed at five or forty, “juvenile” diabetics are the innocents on the endocrine ark. In the time before insulin, we received a sophisticated course of treatment called “starvation.” We wizened to ethereal pixie sticks. Thirty-pound teenagers kissed their mothers goodbye with pineapple breath. The fruity fog of ketoacidosis was all that remained.

Then came Drs. Banting and Best, maple leaves who fell from heaven to Canada. Syringes in hand, they walked the pediatric ward performing resurrections. The children rose. T1D became a chronic illness.

Ever since, parents have wept for joy when their fading children turn urine sticks purple. It is just Type 1. They will live. They will flaunt pink pumps on their hips or under their bra straps. They will flex biceps with continuous glucose monitors. They will dive deep, win medals, sit on the United States Supreme Court, and learn to dose for daily bread.

They will live, and they can live with themselves, because none of this was their fault. They will memorize overviews of autoimmune disease for teachers and pastors who ask if they “ate too much sugar.”

They are not T2Ds, so they get sympathy. But the saccharin crust is stale and flakes off.

T1Ds hear, “that’s the bad kind, right?” We watch Steel Magnolias like a documentary, finding comfort that at least we were played by Julia Roberts. We program our pumps with atomic precision, only to pee purple as though we’d just begun. Strangers tell us of dead grandmothers and peg-legged uncles, then bleed us with an asterisk like a ninja throwing-star: “It only happened because they didn’t take care of themselves. You take care of yourself, right?”

We will live, but we can’t live with ourselves if we get this wrong. We get kisses on the forehead for “time in range.” We are cast as air-traffic controllers. Our bodies grab the joystick and gallop down the stairs. We fear retinopathy because we want to see everything the pre-1923 T1Ds never saw. We fear retinopathy because we don’t want the world to think we didn’t try hard enough.

We don’t want them to think of us the way they think of T2Ds.

There is no shame in being either Terminator. T1Ds cannot produce insulin because our bodies are buffoons. T2Ds can produce insulin but not use it effectively, because their bodies are buffoons. This is as accurate a scientific and theological explanation as you will find. We ought to sit cross-legged on the floor, teach each other our favorite prayers and expletives, and pursue meaningful debate over which Diet Mountain Dew flavors is superior.

The pungent world tells us we need to feel less inferior. It jabs us into the arena.

T1Ds should know better. Sound bites are overprocessed and full of byproducts. T2Ds did not earn their disease any more than we did. Whether out of weariness or hunger to feel safe, we stack brown-sugar sandbags between ourselves and our siblings. We slather on margarine war-paint. We toast the lie that T2D is a cocktail of genetics and gluttony.

They were self-indulgent. We were only children. They ate and drank. We can’t remember a time before we had to measure our “merry.” They lived like every day was the Last Supper. We are as lean as John the Baptist.
We tell people who do not care that we are less than 10% of all diabetics. We do, and do not, want them to remember that we have “the bad kind.”

T1Ds get citric sympathy, but T2Ds get upbeat advertisements. They are inspirations and grandmas. They can still make their own insulin. They can “reverse,” “outsmart,” and “defeat” diabetes. Their bellies are smooth, lacking the scarry constellations of a thousand infusion sets. They have B.B. King and Jerry Garcia, Halle Berry and Chaka Khan. We have the guy who sang “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.”

T2Ds are ubiquitous. T1Ds are confusing: “Were you heavy once? Will you always have to take insulin? Can you have children? Can you go in the ocean? Can you eat that?”

Yet this is the question that may broker peace.

There is not a diabetic alive who does not field these four torpedoes. Can you eat that? The answer is formally “yes.” So long as Aunt Lurlene leaves the anthrax out of her stuffing this year, we can partake. Yes, the cake too, and the sleazy nougat, and the brittle that no one has wanted for fifty years.

The question is kind. The question serves a merciful menu. The premise is false.

Yes, we can eat that. The cost may be higher than we wish to bear, or it may be light as meringue. Each body is a sovereign nation that rewrites its constitution without warning. There are T1Ds who can pirouette through a century of carbohydrates before lunch. There are T2Ds who can’t give ground to a single grape. There is no comforting explanation. Bodies can hold each other, but they can’t pass calculus. There is no atlas. There are numberless Ds doing the best they can, fighting hourly for an A+ that never comes.

The world has teeth, and living here is a chronic condition. We do not believe our political opponents have warm blood. We make insulin the 6th most expensive liquid on earth. We prop our weary bodies on straw men who should be our siblings. We wrestle under the table while daily bread sits inches over our heads. We could eat that. We could feed each other.

Angela Townsend writes for a cat sanctuary, where she bears witness to mercy for all beings. She is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, and the 2024 winner of West Trade Review’s 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, Epiphany, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Terrain, among others. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College. Angela has lived with Type 1 diabetes for over 30 years and laughs with her poet mother every morning..