coming to terms with a diagnosis
I’ve recently been diagnosed. Officially. In an official capacity by an official person. She was very lovely and very understanding, and very communicative, all of which made things easier. And it’s not like I didn’t go there with the explicit intention of getting an official diagnosis in an official capacity — I very much did. I also needed medication, and someone who had the training to appropriately prescribe it to me.
And it’s a relief, mostly, as I’m sure you understand. To have a framework to understand yourself, to know what’s going on inside your head, to know that you ARE different, that things DON’T work the same for you as other people. To have a reason why all of a sudden, all of the girls in your class decided you were persona non grata at the drop of a hat — or at least what the probable cause was, in lieu of an actual reason.
It also means there’s a lot of learning to do. Where my limits are, what’s actually feasible, when I’m tired but up for something, and when I’m too tired and need to lie down alone in my room. The limits are frustrating, too, especially when I don’t understand them. WHY can I not come home from work and spend time on my hobbies? WHY are my mental faculties so strained by simply going to my desk job?
I want to do so many things, and I’m filled with fear that I’ll never be able to accomplish them. That I will always be too tired, too scattered, too distracted.
Hell, at this point, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to hold down a full-time job without losing my mind. How can I even think about moving out, moving forward? Am I doomed to continue looking in to the future, telling myself that some of my conditions should ease in severity as I age? (I am steadfastly ignoring the economy, at the present point. There’s nothing I can do about it except vote, which I’m already doing.)
I haven’t actually told my family yet. About the big two diagnoses. I mean they know about several of them, but not the new one, and not since the official diagnosis. I talked to my mom about it once, between sessions, and it was a very funny conversation that boiled down to, “I don’t think so, that’s a normal thing to do/something I do.” Yes Mom, I know that’s something you do. That’s part of why I went to my appointment. But I haven’t actually told them yet. I don’t really feel like dealing with them telling me that’s wrong, or not the case, or that I’m mistaken. I don’t want to have to explain every nuance of my life, how navigating work relationships feels like a minefield (I don’t really have any), how stressful driving is and how much I hate it, how exhausted things make me, how my brain sometimes just simply won’t cooperate no matter how hard I try, how sometimes the proverbial straw breaks and I end up sobbing and wailing in a ball on the floor.
Have you told any of your family? I assume your sisters know, at least some of them. How do you cope with knowing that you’re disabled, that it’s never going away? What am I supposed to do with this knowledge?
I wouldn’t change the way that I am. I like myself. It just feels a lot of the time like the world doesn’t like me — and I don’t really think they do.