Who Are You?

What do you do when you’re not sure who you are? Or when you don’t understand what you’re about anymore?

I imagine we all experience it at different points in our lives. Maybe some of us experience it multiple times, until we start finding our true selves.

Or until we start returning to our true selves.

And I guess a lot of us experience it in conjunction with the journeys of others, those we love. Or used to love.

I found myself again after a lot of years being lost. And I can’t believe it.

I wish I could bottle it. Or capture the formula so I could write the best selling book.

But the twisted path that got me here is too sticky and tricky and filled with details that nobody would understand unless they knew the whole story.

And that’s a bad pitch for a best selling book.

So I’m continuing to finish up the book I’ve been working on. The helpful little book about living with life’s challenges. Because I know how to do that.

But the more helpful story, I think, is the story of questioning when your life is a bad fit or when it makes no sense.

I don’t want to sound like I’m a sad-sack walking around grunting with resentments or shoulda coulda woulda’s.

That’s not me.

But I do wish I had gotten down to the bottom of the mystery sooner. And that’s what I keep trying to say.

So I’m going to say it one more time today.

Just one more time.

Does your life fit?

Mine didn’t make sense.

And yet I couldn’t figure out why nobody said anything. It seemed so obvious to me that my life didn’t make sense.

And for a long time, I thought killing myself was the only way I could ever get a message to people that my life made no sense.

I thought I could only make my point effectively through a really well-written suicide note.

Because I’m a good writer.

But I could never finish the suicide note because I wasn’t sure what my message was.

I wasn’t sure why I had to kill myself.

All I knew was that my brain was intent on making me do it and that I kept trying to do it.

But now I know my message.

And I know it because I no longer feel the need to kill myself.

Because now I know why my brain kept sending me that message.

And it’s not because I was depressed. I wasn’t.

And it’s not because I was suicidal. I wasn’t.

It’s because I had raging OCD intrusive thoughts of violent harm and I didn’t know what they were.

I only knew that nobody wanted to talk about my attempts to kill myself because they made no sense.

And because they were scary.

And because there were impressionable kids in my life.

And because somebody might say something that upset me or triggered me or caused me to do the worst thing.

Well, the worst thing is not understanding your own diagnosis.

And finally I understand why I felt my life was impossible.  Because it WAS impossible.

It’s impossible to keep working and functioning and maintaining a full-time life while living with constant intrusive OCD thoughts of violent harm.

But I did. Because there was no other option.

And because nobody seemed to think it was unacceptable.

But it was unacceptable.

And that is my message.

It is unacceptable to live with constant intrusive thoughts of violent harm.

It’s not just interesting. Or good material for a cartoon

It’s unacceptable.

And I don’t want to see another passionate, high energy, creative, smart, driven, kind, motivated individual spend his or her or their life in a mental and physical prison because of a brain that hasn’t been diagnosed properly.

My brain wasn’t diagnosed properly. And I have been in prison.

But now I am out.

And I have a new life.

And it’s really weird.

And I’m ready to start sharing it.

It’s only taken me seven years to be ready to share this.  Seven years.

It took seven years for me to understand the diagnosis and get the right treatment.

Add that to decades of the wrong diagnosis and the wrong treatment.

The math sucks.

But it’s okay because I have a new life.

And I don’t need to kill myself.

Because I’m not suicidal.

Maybe I was never suicidal.

But nobody figured it out until now.

I wish somebody had told me I wasn’t suicidal just because I kept trying to kill myself.

I can’t wait to start writing about my new life.

But I hope you won’t expect too much.

Not much has changed.

I’m not really that much different.

I’m not wild and crazy and spontaneous and free.

I’m still a major Type A introvert stuck to the sofa.

But I don’t have to kill myself now.

And that has freed up a whole lot of time for me.

You have no idea.

Boy do I know how to plan a suicide.

You have no idea.

But I am going to share some of that.

Not too much. I don’t want to trigger anyone or teach anyone how to do it.

I just want to drive home the point that you must become the lead investigator in your life.

If any part of your life is a mystery, you must figure it out.

Because everyone else is busy doing other things..

And they’re not thinking you might have the wrong diagnosis.

They’re just glad you’re okay for one more day.

Well, okay for one more day isn’t a life.

So become the lead investigator in your life and figure out the mystery if there is one.

You don’t have to kill yourself to escape a bad brain.

You just need to find the right diagnosis and the right treatment.

I did.

You have to also now so we can talk about it and help others too.

Happy Saturday.

xoxoxoxo, dee (and bella)

🤎🤎🤎