I saw this pic of an “insulin cupcake” on Boing Boing a few days ago, and it’s kind of haunted me ever since:

I’m fortunate not to require insulin myself — I’ve got my case of the ‘betes pretty well controlled with only two pills a day, watching what I eat, and taking an afternoon walk — but my relationship with food has changed irrevocably since my diagnosis, and this picture is a good metaphor for the new paradigm. I am now extremely conscious of everything that goes in my mouth, and every decision I make about food requires a careful cost-benefit analysis. Hell, the mere fact that there is a decision to make is a major adjustment. It used to be somebody at work would offer me a donut or a cupcake, and I’d take it and enjoy it without the slightest worry. But nowadays my answer to “Would you like a… ?” has become an automatic “Yes, but…” I can no longer even look at desserts without feeling a twinge of dread. Rich chocolate cake has assumed an ominous air, pecan pie seems downright treacherous, and I just know the Oreos are plotting against me. And it’s not just sweets, either. I approach white-flour pasta with the same trepidation as pistols at dawn, potatoes may as well be radioactive these days, and I shy away from umbrella drinks as if they were made out of the same green-glowing sludge that transformed Jack Nicholson into the Joker.

In short, I don’t find a lot of comfort in my comfort foods any more. It’s not that I can’t eat the things I’ve always loved. I can, at least once in a while. But I can’t do it with joyful carelessness anymore. Now food is freighted with consequences. It always was, of course, which is why I’m in this mess to begin with, but now I’m aware of them in a way I didn’t have to be before. I am hyperaware of them, actually, as well as the knowledge that I’ll have to adjust something else later in the day to compensate for what I do now. For me, the pleasures of eating have been blunted by anxiety. And I fear that’s never going to change… ever. This is who I am now.

I hate it.