Live with seven cats and a dog. The cats are all trained hypoglycemia liaisons. The dog was raised by the cats. I also live with my significant other, a male. We have consistently maintained a painstaking relationship interspersed with bouts of type 1 insanity a la insulin reactions and hyperglycemia, and he (significant other) occasionally toes the codependency line (as do I). I do not believe in perfection...perfection is synonymous with insanity. I am not insane. I am also a clean person (as in, in recovery; if you follow, good...if not, don't ask). I know one other type 1 here who is also clean in recovery; what a find. I try to maintain some semblance of good control. I just found out the other day that I can donate blood as long as my blood sugar is within the reaches of a 'normal' person's. I am just now beginning to finally appreciate the sheer scope of effort that my parents (mother as well as father) put in to keep me breathing and functional. This beginning of an epiphany occurred with a little cat in our colony needing medication every 6 hours. I realized that my mother had done that for years...waking up at 3 a.m. to check because, in the days before insulin pumps, I had the predisposition of dropping into seizures from hypoglycemia often. That was my epiphany. In any event, after around six years on SSI, I broke out of it, and got rehired as a professor (adjunct, no insurance except the vestiges of Medicare) where I teach developmental English, so if I write a little haphazardly, you might say it's because being the enforcer of grammar, I break the rules when I'm not required to uphold them. I'm trying to keep hope alive even though the economy just bombed, and I don't know what awaits me (us...me and significant other) next semester. I'm just so tired of walking at an excruciatingly slow pace on a treadmill while other people blaze trails and make positive impacts on the world about them, so I said, "Enough. It's my turn again." That doesn't mean I'm not horrified at staring the limitations of being on insulin as life support straight in the face. Occasionally, anger that stems from self pity wells up. But it doesn't stay there. And this is frightening. But I'm trying.