Have you ever had your world thrown upside-down and rattled until everything that can possibly be out of place, do so? That day, the sun shined through the foggy window in my kitchen. The light sparkled as I walked to my metallic fridge to get a snack and then go watch T.V. My mom was on the phone with the hospital again, but today seemed amazingly perfect, and I truly believed nothing could go wrong.

After I grabbed a snack, I started towards the living room. My mother hung up the phone and sighed. She called my dad to the room and I heard them talk in hushed voices as I walked away. After a minute, they called me to them. My mom’s eyes sparkled with tears as she whispered my fate,

“Haley, the hospital called. Honey, they re-looked at your tests. We’ll have to go stay at the hospital again. You could have diabetes.”

I immediately started to weep. A hundred thoughts raced through my head. Why me? What will happen? Why around Christmas?… I wouldn’t let anyone touch me. I didn’t want to get stuck with needles again. I had already been through this, why would God make me do it again? Having to follow meal plans like following the only road to water, and having sharps poking and prodding at me all day. Being diagnosed with diabetes was a tricky process. Genetics had outsmarted me again.

After a day, I went to the hospital. The needles sparkled on the sharp tips that would soon be under my skin. I ended up staying for about a week. My classmates in the second-grade class made me get-well cards, hoping for the best. My family also stopped by routinely to check in on me and bring gifts to make me more comfortable.

I am no longer on a strict meal plan, and I no longer have to have syringes with me wherever I go that make me look like a drug addict, who has lost her life. Looking at me then, I looked without hope. I have learned that I can live like anyone else. I have hope in my future. I can look back and still see the sparkle of my family’s eyes when the bottom fell off of my world, and I guess theirs too. I can see the medicine, and the crystalline floors of which I walked to secure my future. I can see the sparkle of hope that someday, somehow, there will be a cure. And with that, I will no longer have to live with the demon of diabetes on my back