new diagnosis

I spent a really long time hiding my experience of mental illness for fear of hurting others or being judged by them.

I have had some people reach out to ask me how I am doing as my blog has somewhat been silent except for some scheduled post etc. 

I have been seeing my dr bi-weekly and counselor weekly, yesterday I saw my dr and she had some reports back and the verdict is I have PTSD- for those who do not know what that is- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. 

I feel like I am now labeled as a crazy person... I used to think only veterans, law enforcement, firefighters, etc got this and not a mom and a wife who had what most people would call a perfect life.  

It is important to remember that a diagnosis is not a label.

so this is not something a surgery or medication can fix ( well meds can help) but I am going to take some classes and hopefully help someone else get thru this.  I am also going to start some online psychiatry

My Dr has asked a lot of questions and I do believe she is on the right track, she really believes mine has stemmed from my lung surgery/scare, a bad car accident that I was in when I turned 16, and my bladder disease which I still live with. Those things are major triggers, I also live in fear ALOT. Fear of the unknown, fear of the wait if's, fear of losing the two people who mean everything to me, I have lost a lot of friends in the past and every day I feel the same will happen to me again. 

Every day I wake up to a different version of me. Will I be happy or sad, will I feel safe or scared? It’s not that I am unstable; I have grown to become a master of me. The things I feel because of my PTSD aren't invisible to others. I like to think of myself as a warrior in my own right, because I face invisible battles every day. But we all have our own battles, diagnosis or not. Do you know what mood you will be in when you wake up tomorrow? The only difference between me and you is that my battle has been categorized. Because society likes to do that, it makes people feel comfortable. They can try to “make sense” of things. The thing we forget is, we designed these categories and labels ourselves and for some reason, we feel like we must conform. But what are we conforming to?

We all fit labels. I fit various hashtags; #PTSD #metoo #survivor but those things do not define me or make me less of a person. After all, like you, I am a human being, not a commodity and that’s exactly what I think we have all forgotten. How to be human and to be just that. Because there is no normal, but there will always be different. Look in the news about how many young people self-harm or struggle with mental health now. All fighting to fit into those labels. Instead, let's teach our children to embrace self instead of hiding because they don't 'fit in'. Let's save the labels for clothes.