"But you're only 36" and Alphabet Soup

 "But you're only 36, you're too young for that."

Everyone tells me how young I am.  I know I'm young, but disability begs to differ.  I push myself, because I'm a stubborn mule, and then pay for it heartily.  Chronic conditions don't care if you're in denial or not, they don't care if you need to be functional for an important appointment, or to be able to concentrate, or to be able to keep track of finances, or to stand up and do household chores, or any other thing I try to do when I hit that wall of limitation.

The moment where "I got this" turns into "I can't do this".

I'm young at 36, but these battles have been with me my whole life.  Sometimes in therapy they tell me to think back to a time when I wasn't depressed or anxious.  I don't know of one.  I was suicidal at the age of 8, used to hide in the coat cubby in school at 5, and at 3 I "wrote" stories about being afraid all the time.  As far as I can tell depression and anxiety were with me while I was in diapers.  There are physical conditions I deal with that started at birth, many of the issues have to do with bone structure being bad.  Others have started as time goes on because of deterioration and damage from trying to compensate in the first place.

I may "only" be 36, but I've been battling these conditions for the entire 36 years.  I often feel much older, like I aged quicker than other people my age, and am weary.  How long can I hang on trying to trudge through this?  How much is one person supposed to deal with?  I'm sure it's a question that most people dealing with chronic conditions ask.

I'm a curious person and I analyze everything, so I have had lots of questions and spent lots of time researching and trying to understand what was going on with me.  I have had so many diagnoses it's unreal.  Spent the first 18 years of my life struggling with these things, talked to a few friends here and there, but mostly was on my own.  I honestly thought everyone went through what I was going through and I was just weaker because I couldn't deal.

I did finally try to get some professional help.  I had some horrible experiences, some good ones, and some that just seemed to keep me stalled in place.  From experience can tell you the damage a bad therapist or psychiatrist can do.  I've had medical doctors that laughed off my chronic pain.  It took a long while for me to find the help I needed to make it.  I stopped trying for over a decade at one point.

There were so many letters and diagnosis that they were throwing at me, and many of them were not based on facts.  I was called non-compliant in a couple of situations, and it seemed like no two people thought I had the same thing.  My records seriously looked like alphabet soup.  Double depression (DD), cyclothymia, depression, major depressive disorder (MDD), SAD, BPD, BP1, GAD, agoraphobia, schizotypal STPD, PTSD, ADHD, OCD, episodic psychosis, and bouts of DP and DR, and one doctor that decided I was faking everything....  Then of course the degenerative disc disease (DDD), stenosis, bunions, flat feet, tendonitis/carpal tunnel, spondylosis in my neck and back, my hips are crooked-one twists forward, my tibia are twisted so my knees are weak, and I could keep going on but it's kind of boring really.  

I look healthy, and that means people assume I am.  Believe me, I'd love to just assume it too.  Tried for many, many years.  Now I know I can't keep trying to ignore it, at the end of the day it doesn't matter what letters are used to describe what you're going through as long as you are getting help dealing with it.  If my treatment is working, does it really matter if I'm dealing with Bipolar or an unspecified mood disorder? 

Beginnings

Me and my condition...

*sigh*
Even after 20 years the stigma of having a mental health diagnosis is strong. But here we go.
When I was 14 I was seeing a psychiatrist who was also working as my therapist. After several months of weekly appointments and a variety of tests he told me I had bipolar disorder. Shortly after that I moved and he moved. It was another 3 years before I tried to get help again.
At that point I was getting ready to go to college. I asked my family doctor for meds. He wasn't comfortable with anything more than an antidepressant. I accepted this as good enough, since the depression was the biggest issue. I didn't know how very wrong I was.
A few years later, I began seeing a psychiatrist on a regular basis. Eventually Borderline Personality Disorder was added to the Bipolar. I have been through a variety of meds. It took a while before finding a mix that worked decently for me. I am not anywhere near a "normal" level of functioning, but I am considerably better than before.
And, were those not enough, I also have Fibromyalgia. That is more disabling than the others. Bipolar and Borderline Personality Disorder are relatively well know illnesses with treatments known to work well. Fibromyalgia, not so much. The best advice you get for that is take pain relievers, use pain management, and try to exercise regularly.

How we came to make a blog...

We started as a couple friends just helping each other through hard times. There were many late night text conversations about how to accept our conditions and learn to live with them.

My friend was SO good at talking me through the worst times I told her she should put that stuff down in a blog. For a couple years we talked about it once in a while. We started making up topics from our conversations. That led us here.

What is living conditionally...

Living conditionally means living with something that takes away your freedom, your choices. It means dealing with not being able to live like the “normal” people. It means living with chronic illnesses, mental health issues, and disabilities. Any of these things create conditions we must adjust our lives around.