The question “Do you hate diabetes?” was the subject of discussion last week on one of my favorite blogs, Six Until Me.

The question made me pause and reflect on my feelings about my insulin-deficient condition.

And then there was a flashback. Humor me just for a few paragraphs. I promise you this will be fun:

Rewind to circa 1990. We were living in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, a sleepy suburb of San Juan that I remember for its coqui lullabies and rolling hills and flamboyant red royal poincianas. There is a part of me that will always hold space for life as an adoptive Boricua de pura cepa, but my memories of the place are now blurry. Like last night’s dream that you can only remember at the edges in a form that’s only half-coherent, some vivid memories remain. But these memories are not of Place, they are of Feeling.

Fending off laughter attacks during Sunday morning church with Sarah. Nausea on the way to school with the Gonzalez clan in the back of Rubia’s white Suburban (Robert, te lavaste los dientes?). My cold feet sticking out from underneath the blanket as we watched the Oscars on a school night, propped on pillows sprawled across the tile living room floor), breathlessly chasing for lizards barefoot in our backyard, the bright light around everything Nicole. But I digress.

Anyway, this was the idyllic tropical backdrop to the time in life when I first discovered the word “hate.” I must have been around six? Was that late in the game?

I learned the word hate the same way I learned other expressions I’d been told at that age that “we don’t say.” Like “shut up” and “stupid” and “hasta cuando por la cresta” – I’d learned them I suppose from school, or in the case of Chilean slang, from the interminable traffic jams on Avenida Kennedy on my Mom’s carpool shift days.

I’ve had a thing for language as far back as I can remember, and using new words carried with it excitement, like wearing a new outfit or writing in a blank notebook. At the time of this flashback, naughty words in particular could hold special excitement (Nicole and I used to play a basketball game where we spelled out all the new four-letter expletives we learned from our friends as we tried to make free-throws in her driveway, she with more success than I where the basketball was concerned).

I don’t remember the precise contours of what happened. It was a moment in which I can now see I discovered words as a way to cope with a feeling. In my memory, it goes like this: I was upset with someone at home – my Mom or Dad or sister, my entire universe at the time. I said, “I hate you” or “her” or “him.”

And while I don’t remember the causal nature of the whole thing, I remember vividly my mother’s response. Something along the lines of: “We don’t say that word in this house to other people. Maybe we say, ‘We don’t like that person,’ but we don’t say hate. Hate is when you want the worst thing for someone, and we don’t want that.”

And true to myself, I entered us into a negotiation of the whole thing. There were a hundred of different What If scenarios that I needed to run through.

I imagined something that I perceived as detestable, which at the time I would have verbalized along these lines, “But, what if someone cheats on a test and then steals your book and cuts you in line and eats your snack and then lets Sarah’s bunny run away, then can you say you hate them?”

I imagine we carried on with this exercise until we came to a philosophical compromise, which went as follows: (1) if we really needed to, Household Rules said we could hate something, but think hard about how you use this word, because words carry power; and (2) don’t hate people, just things.

“But how about Hitler or the Unibomber?” I asked. Escapism by way of exceptions.

There is a lot that I simply don’t recall from my childhood, and I’m not sure why conversations about using the word “hate” come to the fore now. They seem somehow relevant.

I now return to the original question. “Do you hate diabetes?”

And my conclusion for today is this: there is language that can help express a feeling (for example, strategic use of the word “hate”), and then there is the harboring of a feeling of hate. The former empowers you while the latter cripples. Apples and oranges, if you will.

My views on the former – language as catharsis. And I’ll caveat by saying that I address only the way we use language with ourselves – how we use it with others I’ll save for another day.

I’ve said “I hate diabetes” in my head and out loud many times. Here’s the deal: when your cup runneth over, let it out.

Just like dropping a good F-bomb can be exactly what you need in a given moment, using the word “hate” as an expression of your emotional state in key moments can be cathartic, like wiping the slate clean or like a new calendar year. It allows you get unstuck and start over. And, for me, this has been the key: use it as release, and then actually just let go. Because if you don’t, language that’s meant to get you unstuck can be its own trap – a mental cage, to use one of my Dad’s favorite expressions.

Our language is a uniquely human gift.  Can we use it responsibly and with self-compassion? Like wine in moderation, can we do just enough of this in a way that will serve us, bring lightness? (Maybe give you a nice little buzz?)

Which takes me to my views on the latter – not use of words to express a feeling, but actually harboring the feeling itself.

At my best, when I self-soothe by proclaiming how much “I hate diabetes,” (or anything really), I can see that’s just the cover business, if you will. What’s behind it? For me: depletion, fear, powerlessness, copious amounts of guilt, and on occasion, loneliness.

Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room: “One must love everything.”

So my thoughts on diabetes? Do I hate it?

Well, there are moments to say I do, just so I can bridge the space between. If I’m at my best, expression of hate brings me to self-love, actually.