It goes without saying that life with disability, is a life lived with limitations. And I suppose also, it’s worth noting that that is every life lived, ever. No one is capable of every single thing ever.
I’m struggling at the moment though, to accept the very real limits on my capacity, my chances, my opportunities – my ability to live my life as I would fully, authentically choose. I guess that’s part of being a PDAer, we don’t take well to having that taken from us. For me, my chronic pain and my bipolar (and my undiagnosed traumatic stress) really do take that autonomy from me.
Hopefully over time I can go from strength to strength. Hopefully I can build a robust, and real, support network. Hopefully clopixol is as good a drug for me as I think it could be. Hopefully I can quit being a revolving door patient now we’re five years on from 2020.
It’s all just “hopes” though. Progress is slow, and so uncertain. It’s so hard not to get lost in the “if only” and the anger. The grief. The rage at mental health teams that seriously let me down in my 20s. I first communicated my complex trauma at 22, at 34 I still do not actually have any trauma diagnosis – I find this frankly ridiculous. The closest I ever came was “it’s mild trauma, therefore BPD”… which just, uh, no. I’m angry that I had to spend thousands of pounds of savings to get a PDA modifier that was the only reason they ever changed their tunes, and started actually *listening* to me.
What do you even do with that amount of anger? It’s only worthwhile if it’s used to channel towards something. I’ll always value fellow psychiatric survivors/patients/service users, of any stripe.
On that note, I’mma quit rambling, and share one small thing I’m doing to try and help make a difference:
Raising money for mind is a small way I can channel myself, my experiences and my emotions right now – please, if you can, help me take a stand for those of us in society living with mental distress.
PDA fae 
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