I first heard the term “stream of consciousness” when I was in high school. My creative writing teacher used it in class one day when she asked us to start writing in our journals for 10 minutes straight – without stopping.

She described it as an opportunity to just let our thoughts flow out from our pens without interruption. Anything we wrote didn’t have to make sense…it was simply an exercise in just letting our writing be, in an unrefined and unapologetically honest kind of way.

When I was struggling to write a blog post for today – because let’s face it, writer’s block is real – the stream of consciousness concept popped into my mind. And I started thinking about it in a diabetes lens, which resulted in this*:

Ugh there’s my alarm blaring again
let me reach for my phone and check my CGM data first thing
okay I will use this to bolus for breakfast what do I even want to eat today
okay let’s go ahead and just get the insulin pumping
input for 30 carbs even though I am not sure that I really want to eat 30 grams worth of carbs but whatever I’m sitting at home all day anyways so I may need any of the extra insulin that gets delivered
finally roll out of bed and make my way down the stairs and eat breakfast and do the crossword like I always do to wake my brain up some more
then set to work and work straight for the next two hours or so I forget exactly how long it was but then my CGM alarm interrupts my flow so rudely OMG why am I this high
okay I guess it’s time to take my lunch break a little earlier than I wanted but my blood sugar is too high and it will distract me further if I keep trying to work through it so I get up and do a high-intensity cardio workout for half an hour
and that does the trick, by the time I jump into the shower my blood sugar is coming back down
oh that’s so much better I sit back in my chair not too long after and get back to work and pause again only to have lunch
I make an egg with an English muffin and also eat a banana for “dessert” though I wish I could have chocolate boy am I craving chocolate lately or what
I pad my bolus with extra insulin because I seem to be trending higher lately which is obnoxious and then I settle in for an hour-long meeting and I’m relieved to discover I’m on mute when my CGM starts alarming again and I’m so fucking exasperated,
I’m high again and it’s probably because of the banana although I can’t really be sure so I start rage bolusing
BAM BAM BAM
get that insulin in my system puh-lease and then I work again for another couple of hours before it’s time for another break and
I go for a walk with my mom and the dog and we’re midway through our usual route when I start to feel those familiar signs of an early low blood sugar some shakiness and some general unease
sure enough when I get home I check my CGM (so many times that I check it throughout the day) and I’ve got a down arrow and I’m plunging into low territory quickly and FINALLY I can have some of that chocolate I’ve been wanting all day
YUM Cadbury eggs.

*I added punctuation and line breaks after writing for five minutes straight just to make this somewhat more readable.

What did I learn after doing this little writing exercise? Diabetes really dominates my mind from the moment I wake up. It is the reason behind just about every decision I make and I don’t really ever get a mental break from it.

But luckily, there’s chocolate for that.