I saw the new diabetic Barbie and felt… complicated.

I’ve had type 1 diabetes since the early 90s. I was doing my own needles before I could tie my shoes. My blood sugar meter took 45 seconds and a prayer. There were no CGMs, no carb-counting apps, no looping systems. And definitely no dolls that looked like me.

So seeing this Barbie now, decades later, stings a little.

There’s an article floating around that says she was created to help kids with diabetes feel “more included.” But honestly? I never felt excluded. I felt alone. I felt responsible. I felt terrified. I felt like I had to grow up faster than everyone else—and manage something no one around me understood.

It’s not that this Barbie is bad. She’s not. For some little kid out there right now, she’ll be magic. And I’m glad for that kid. But I can’t help but think about how different things might’ve felt if she had existed back then—when I was the only one in class checking blood sugar, the only one packing a juice box “just in case,” the only one feeling like a burden when I went low at a sleepover.

She’s just a doll. But she represents something I never had. And maybe that’s why it hurts a little to see her now—twenty years too late.

I don’t want a Barbie. I just wish I had felt seen like this when I really needed it.