Ain't No Fool For Love Songs

A friend of mine has recently been diagnosed with one of those disorders that makes most people go "oh, that's not a real disease, it's all in your head." While on the phone with her tonight, I found myself thinking about what it is about a diagnosis that is so debilitating.

Because it's not the disease, or the disorder, or whatever. It's being told you have it, and what your options are. I mean, I have post-traumatic-stress-disorder, or PSTD as I never fail to call it when people are around to make fun of me. It didn't really bug me until I found myself seeking treatment from the kind of people who said "oh, poor you" when I told them about the source of my trauma. DON'T FUCKING PITY ME. I am doing just fine, thank you.

And then, after the diagnosis, they start in with the list of how this--thing--has affected your life, what a cramped existence you're living, and you start to think, well, maybe it would be nice to not mentally murder people who walk behind you in the street, that might be nice. And maybe to be able to ditch the nightmares that leave you feeling six years old, afraid to sleep and so pissed to be awake because you can't shake the terror, that might be nice. Maybe even stop kicking every other boyfriend during sex because...well, you get my drift.

But the thing is, I'll take the nightmares, and the sexual hangups, and the fear of being followed any day over a group of people who just want to help me. That help nearly failed me out of college and ended every relationship I had. During therapy I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, and couldn't do any schoolwork whatsoever. I had to get a doctor's note for missing tests, and the soul-crushing despair of being the kind of person that cops out like that was far, far worse than being a rape survivor.

I quit therapy about a year ago, and although I am no better than when I started, it sure as hell beats being in it, and being enabled in all that victim-ness. (okay. I haven't kicked anyone in a while) Nothing is ever going to convince me that terrible things don't happen. Nothing will ever make me forgive the people involved--including myself. But you move on. You live with it. And you get up in the mornings, and 99 times out of one hundred, it doesn't rule your day, because no one is telling you it can.

That's the thing about my friend. She's still in the glorious phase where she's discovered she's not crazy, that there really is something wrong with her. That relief, the feeling that you have done nothing wrong, that you are not damaged or inferior in some way, is incredible. Then it starts to sink in that you will be expected to live this lifestyle, this having-this-disease-ness, for the rest of your life, and then it starts to suck. And if she's anything like me (and I know she is) she will come to much the same conclusion I did: admit you have a problem, and move on.