I always thought love was supposed to feel like fireworks. But when you’ve got Type 1 diabetes, it feels more like a fire drill— constant alarms, racing hearts, sweaty panic, and no clear exit in sight.
Let me set the scene: I’m 23, I’m from Gaza, and I have an autoimmune disease that one day decided, “You know what? Let’s kill all his insulin-producing cells and make him do the work instead.” That’s Type 1 diabetes for you— it doesn’t ask, it doesn’t knock, it just barges in like a rude guest and tosses your life right out the window.
And now, here I am, living in a body that’s constantly negotiating between life and sugar. Between staying alive and pretending to be “chill” when someone I like texts, “Wanna grab dessert?” As if dessert isn’t a landmine I have to carefully calculate insulin ratios for.
I used to think love was simple. You like someone, they like you. Maybe you share a similar taste in music, maybe they laugh at your terrible jokes. Boom. Love. But diabetes puts a weird filter over everything. It’s no longer just “Do they like me?” It’s “Will they freak out if I crash in the middle of the night, sweating like I just ran a marathon in my sleep?”
There was this one girl— let’s call her Layla—who had a thing for sad boys and vintage cameras. I liked her. We went on a few walks, swapped playlists, and talked about poetry. And then, during our third hangout, it hit me— a low blood sugar wave. The kind that turns your legs jelly and makes your soul step out of your body for a second, just to see if you’ll make it through. I tried to play it cool. “Hey, uh, do you have juice? Or like, anything sugary? I’m not trying to die on your couch.”
She laughed. I didn’t.
She brought me orange juice, and I drank it like it was holy water. She just sat there looking… confused. Not grossed out, not unkind— just unsure. And that’s when it hit me: this is always going to be a thing. Every time I fall in love, diabetes falls with me. The ultimate third wheel, the permanent plus-one nobody invited, but it’s there— every time.
Having Type 1 is like dating someone who constantly cancels plans and leaves you on read, except that someone is your pancreas. Every day, I micromanage what I eat, how much I move, how stressed I am, how well I sleep, all just to trick my body into functioning “normally.”
I lift weights, jump rope, and box. I eat clean, boiling six eggs every morning like I’m living in a Rocky montage. I count carbs like a Wall Street analyst. And still, some days, it’s not enough. My blood sugar crashes like a plane on fire. Other days, it spikes for no reason at all. Like, “Hey bro, did you think about chocolate today? Boom — 250 mg/dL.”
So when someone says, “You look good! You seem healthy,” I smile. But part of me wants to scream, “You have no idea about the war raging inside me just so I can stand here and look ‘fine’.”
After everything I’ve been through, I’ve learned to be upfront about my condition. I tell people early: “I have Type 1 diabetes. It means I have to stab myself with needles, watch what I eat, and sometimes I get shaky and weird— but I’m still me.”
I say it before the romance has a chance to bloom, before they start imagining me as some faultless, carefree guy. I ruin the fantasy early— because what’s left after that is the truth. And if they stay after seeing the truth, then it’s real.
But here’s the thing no one talks about: sometimes, the hardest part of love with a chronic illness is loving yourself. Some mornings, I wake up angry. At my body. At the world. At whatever glitch in my immune system flipped this switch. I get tired of the alarms on my glucose monitor. I get tired of eating at set times like I’m in a prison cafeteria. I get tired of being “inspirational.”
But love, I’ve learned, isn’t about perfection. It’s about presence.
There was one moment— I remember it vividly— I was alone, blood sugar crashing, hands trembling, tears blurring my vision for no reason (or maybe for every reason). I looked in the mirror and said, “You’re doing your best. And that’s enough.” It felt silly. But it helped. Love, real love, to me at least, starts there.
I wish people knew we don’t want pity. We want patience. We want someone who understands that sometimes we cancel plans because we’re drained— not lazy or flaking— just trying to stay alive.
I wish people knew that for us, romance isn’t candlelit dinners but someone learning how to use a glucagon pen. It’s someone asking, “Do you need a snack?” instead of “Why are you so quiet?”
I wish people knew that loving someone with diabetes doesn’t mean carrying their burden. It means witnessing their strength.
There’s a strange kind of beauty in living this way. You learn to treasure the small victories. A perfect blood sugar reading or someone remembering you can’t drink regular soda. The simple, stubborn feeling of coming back from a low and realizing— damn, I made it through again.
So… Can you love when your body is at war?
Yes. You can.
You love with resilience. You love loudly, despite the chaos. You love like your life depends on it—because in a way, it does.
I’m still figuring it out. Still building love around broken biology. Still hoping someone out there sees all of this—the needles, the alarms, the courage—and chooses to stay.
And until then, I’ll keep loving myself. One injection at a time.
This piece was initially commissioned as part of a collaboration between MILLE WORLD and Kalam Aflam.
Also Read:
Crossing Borders for Love: Navigating the Complexities of Distance and Desire
