Today is the seventh annual DBlog Day. And I’ve participated in all of them. Wow! Well, I can hardly break my streak now.

This year’s prompt is “scrapbook diabetes.” I made our scrapbook for DiabetesMine, where I work as assistant editor. It was fun, but a lot of work. One thing I have learned: I am soooo not crafty! But if you want to see our contribution, go check it out!

Gina, who started DBlog Day way back in 2005, also included a written prompt for those who didn’t want to make a scrapbook. Since I don’t feel like making a separate scrapbook contribution for Lemonade Life, today’s blog post is going to be my response to that prompt.

Why you feel the Diabetes Online Community is so important? especially to you personally? Give examples of other diabetes involvement may you have, on or offline, how it helped you etc… How do you think “we” as an online community can band together to reach broader audiences to help even more people living with or affected by diabetes.

For as long as I can remember, I have always been in the diabetes community. Even before it was online, I was part of the community. I consider myself the luckiest girl because I have always known people with diabetes. I have been friends with people with diabetes. I have been supported and educated by people with diabetes. They have always been in my life. People with diabetes have shaped who I have become. (So if you don’t like me, you only have yourself to blame — just kidding!).

The online component became increasingly more important when I was in college. College was a removal from everything I had known. I was two hours away from my hometown, from my family and my diabetes community in Portland, Oregon. And there’s this thing where doctors and CDEs can’t actually tell you who the other diabetics are. I remember telling the campus CDE (we were blessed to have one in our student health center — I have a feeling it’s a rare thing) that I wanted to meet others with diabetes. And I was occasionally contacted by someone, but it was few and far between. In four years, I probably met four people with diabetes on campus.

So that’s where the online part came in. I had become more active in high school, but college is where I really dove in headfirst and immersed myself in the support that I needed. No one in my social circle had diabetes and I no longer had my parents to vent to about the frustrations of diabetes. I felt very isolated, except for when I was online.

And now we’re even bigger. In 2005, I actually kept track of all the blogs we had in something called the Diabetes OC Directory. But soon, there were too many people emailing me their blog. I would get five or ten every week. Some people would fall away and stop blogging, but there were always more people coming into the fold. It was incredible!

Now I feel like we could do anything. If we stay united. There are a lot of divisions in the diabetes community, sadly. People make divisions between type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Between parents of children and adults who grew up with the disease. Between those who grew up with diabetes and those who were diagnosed as an adult. Between pumpers and injectors. Between the old and the young. Between English-speaking and the non-English speaking. Right now, I sometimes have a hard time feeling unity in the diabetes community.

Even those who are committed to the diabetes community can create divisions — we should focus on the Blue Circle, or we should focus on changing the name, or we should focus on just the cure, or just research, or just this or that or the other thing. We should only support this researcher or this organization. It’s really sad, actually.

Because everyone wants the same damn thing.

We want a world without diabetes. A world without either type of diabetes. We want to live long healthy lives, so we can enjoy our families and friends, pursue our interests and go to sleep confident that tomorrow we will see another day.

Right now, we don’t have that guarantee. Right now, life with diabetes is not only hard, it’s deadly.

I remember the day I realized that diabetes could kill me. I always knew, I suppose, but I remember this stark realization that taking this artificial insulin that doesn’t even work all that well was the only reason I wasn’t dead. I remember realizing that I had almost died when I was 8 years old. The only reason that hadn’t happened was because I was born in the 20th century.

If I had been born on August 6, 1885, I would not have lived past my 9th birthday.

And the scariest thing? There are still children with diabetes who do not live past their 9th birthday. There are people with diabetes who do not graduate from high school. There are people with diabetes who will never get married or grow old. Who will not travel the world or pursue their dreams. Not because of anything they did or did not do — but simply because they have diabetes and diabetes killed them.

People in the diabetes community frequently change their profile picture to a blue candle (the color of diabetes) whenever a person dies from diabetes. If you ever see my profile picture change to a blue candle, you’ll know that the world is mourning another senseless death from a disease that needs a cure. One death from diabetes too many.

So what I’d really like to share with everyone, my diabetic and non-diabetic readers, is that diabetes is big fucking deal. It’s not “just like brushing your teeth.” It does not get “easier” and you never get a day off from thinking about your own mortality. It is not a happy thing.

The only thing that keeps me happy, keeps me sane, keeps me focused on the important things in life, is the diabetes community. And there are so many people in this world who are not as lucky or as blessed as me. I would like for all of us, as much as I can, to continue reaching out to those living in the margins of society, who are afraid and feel alone. Because they are not alone. That could be reaching out via my blog or guest posting on other blogs. It could be emailing the media to share my story or volunteering for organizations like JDRF or ADA.

There are a lot of great things we are doing, with the Blue Fridays and the Big Blue Test and the Blue Circle Campaign. But we can always do more. There are always more people we need to reach, to talk to, to support. To hug and to love. Because they are not alone.

You are not alone.