Inheritance
I would love to have a child.
Truly.
But I am afraid.
Not of fatherhood.
Not of the sleepless nights,
the messes,
or the questions I won’t know how to answer.

I am afraid
of giving them my blood.
Of wrapping them in a future
I never got to choose.
Of handing them a body
that might come preloaded
with syringes, numbers,
and the quiet weight of a discipline
most kids never have to learn.

Because I know what that life costs.
Not just in time, or money
but in identity.
In the moments no one sees.
The confusion.
The fear.
The ache of always being aware of your body
in a way no child should have to be.

You could do everything right
count every carb, pre bolus every time,
fall asleep in peace,
and still wake up in a warzone,
blood like acid.
With a body punishing you
for trying to live.

There are no more days left
where I will truly feel normal.
Only degrees of functioning.
The careful choreography of enough.

Some mornings I wake up
and it feels like someone
rammed their fist up my ass
and started punching my stomach
from the inside.
There’s no poetry in that.

Even one pump failure
can undo an entire day of effort.
Even one quiet malfunction
can leave me on the floor,
dry-heaving my trust into a toilet bowl,
Bile climbing out of me
like it has somewhere else to be.

There is no savior,
only damage control.
I become a medic in my own home,
triaging myself,
reading numbers like grief forecasts,
negotiating with a body
that never learned how to keep its promises.
So I sip salted water,
lying on my left side,
Curled up on my sheets
Waiting for my insides to stop attacking themselves.

What if a child of mine
inherits all of this?

What if they wake up in pain
and look at me
not with admiration,
but with questions
I’ll never forgive myself for planting?

I could be the best father in the world
gentle, present, patient, proud
and still lie awake at night
asking if I cursed them
with the same lifelong war
I wake up to every morning.

Because no child
should have to earn
the right to feel normal.
To make peace with something
they never asked for.
To look down at their own body
and whisper “please just work”

I can’t pretend
that wouldn’t break me.

That fear lives beneath my love.
It’s not louder,
but it is there.
A constant hum beneath a heart full of care.

I’m still scared of needles.
Twelve years in,
I still freeze sometimes
syringe full,
insulin drawn in my hand,
but I can’t get myself to pierce skin.
I’ve only ever managed to do it three times.
And even then, I looked away.

My body still remembers the hands that held me down,
the pleading from my parents,
And my legs kicking at nothing
but the inevitable.

An entanglement of panic and skin,
begging for anything
but a poke.

It wasn’t their fault.
It wasn’t mine either.
It was just fear,
loudly puncturing itself into memory with every poke.

I still wince when I see someone else get a shot.
Even now,

even after everything.
Some fears
aren’t softened by familiarity.
They just learn to live
quietly,
in the background
of survival.

My doctor understands the mechanics
the metrics, the science,
the nuance of this disease.
But even she reminds me:
understanding isn’t living.
And that difference
is everything.

I wouldn’t wish diabetes
on my worst enemy.
I say that all the time.
Because I know
what it means to do everything right
and still suffer.

That’s why I fight for fairness
why I double-check tone,
ask twice if someone’s okay,
try to balance scales no one else sees.
Because I know
how unfair even the small things can be.
I know how it feels
to have your body betray you
quietly,
and then ask you to smile through it.

I hate diabetes.
But I admire the part of me
I had to become
to survive it.
The part that loves gently.
That speaks calmly even when in pain.
That does not punish others
just because the world punished me.

I don’t choose not to have children
because I wouldn’t love them.
I would.
Fiercely. Truly unconditionally.
To see some small part of myself
laughing without knowing
what sorrow costs.
The kind of love that shows up,
even in silence.
Even when the math checks out
but the blood sugars won’t come down anyway.

And that’s what terrifies me
that all my love
would still never be enough
to protect them
from a future already filled with pain.

Because love IS enough.
It’s all I can give.
But it can’t rewrite the biology.
It can’t extract the pain.
It can’t un-carry
what the body never asked for.

So my choice
my restraint
isn’t detachment.
It’s devotion.
The kind that waits for equal love beside me.
The kind that won’t bring life into this world
unless it’s born inside a love
so steady, so complete,
that it can carry the weight
I already know too well.

Even then,
even with that,
I might still lose sleep.
Because some truths
go deeper than any needle ever could.

If I never have children,
don’t think I didn’t want them.
I just knew the cost
and chose to measure love
in what I was willing not to risk.

Some love is so vast,
so deliberate,
it chooses stillness
over longing.

Sometimes,
I still dream vividly of a daughter that doesn’t exist.
Not because I’ve changed my mind,

She’s cooler than me.
She wears mismatched socks,
sings off-key with confidence,
and tells her friends I make the best eggs.
Louder in her laughter.
Gentler with her questions.
And in the dream,
she doesn’t have my blood.
She just has my heart.
All of it.

Maybe I’ll never meet her.
Maybe she only lives
in a soft place between longing and restraint
but even there,
she is loved completely.

That’s the only kind of inheritance
I’ll ever want to pass down.

The kind of love
this world needs more of.
The kind that leaves a trace
not in what you do,
but in what you chose to do quietly,
no audience, just love.