I keep juggling a couple of words in my head. Is diabetes unrelenting or is it normal? Compared to life without diabetes or other illness, diabetes can be defined as unrelenting. But compared to things like eating or breathing, which are also unrelenting in their need to happen, diabetes can be seen as just normal, to those of us who have it. I guess it all depends on what you're comparing it to.
What's interesting is all the feeling I have attached to these words and how each works best at describing how I personally feel about diabetes at certain times. Neither one is more true than the other. Each feels right at different times. For me, unrelenting means burdensome, noble, tiring, sad, erosive. Normal, on the other hand, is basic, expected, lived with, "part of life", unnoticed, seamless. Someone who survives an unrelenting disease is brave, unlucky, and very admirable to me. Someone who deals with a disease like it's normal is also brave, accepting, maybe a little resigned to the facts and also admirable to me.
I guess the truth of the matter is that this isn't an either/or proposition. Diabetes is both unrelenting and normal. Diabetes is both words and many others too.
