Beyond the diagnosis: Fighting the stigma

So, here's the thing. Normally, when I write an entry, I have this previous image of how it may turn out and I usually have gone back and forth about the topic and the way I want to portray it. As for this piece, I have no idea how it will result because I don't know if it's an honest reflexion or the consequence of a high fever and lots of medications. Let me explain. For the past 5 days I've been home to a wonderful bacteria that has taken my larynx and joints as hostages, swelling and infesting them up and giving me what is best known as laryngitis and reactive arthritis. That, plus the flu-like symptoms which have woken up the best assets of fibromyalgia and asthma, have really made of the past week a very difficult one health-wise. For that, I haven't been able to get out of bed which has really brighten up my holiday spirit, that was previously non existent. As part of this crappy week, there has been a lot of sleepless nights: It wasn't just courtesy of ...

Hoy me despido del que pensé que sería el último año de mi vida. Hoy le digo adiós al 2016, hoy vivo un día que juré, en mil momentos, que no lograría verlo en vida. 2016, fuiste mi Everest. Fuiste mi enemigo número 1. Fuiste una cadena de eventos, que no me atrevo a decir que fueron desafortunados, pero que me cambiaron la vida. Te odie, te detesté, intenté escapar de todas las formas posibles, exceptuando claramente la muerte (Porque soy una gallina o porque Dios es muy grande, o las dos). Internet y las noticias tampoco te ayudaban, fuiste un año extrañísimo y francamente fuiste un año sorprendente en términos de elecciones, de violencia, de maldad, de premios Oscar (tal vez Leonardo DiCaprio fue de las pocas personas que pueden decir que el 2016 fue un gran año). Y sigo viva... Creo que la vida, las tradiciones, han puesto mucha cargo en los años y especialmente en los fines de año. Hay como esta carga mística que dice que el 31 de Diciembre, cuando el reloj marque las 12, s...

It's harder than you think it'll ever be. It's more exhausting than you ever felt before. But you keep on going. Why? How? Who? You wonder and wonder. Why you? Who chose you? How will you deal with it? For how long? With what purpose? Will those answers matter? Probably the only one that truly would make an impact is if someone could help you finding out a meaning, and a way for all of this. The rest... Would it be better if someone gave you a time limit of the symptoms? An expiration date? Or if they told you it'll be as long as your life. Would it be better if you could blame it on someone? On your parents for the genetics? On God for placing this cross on your path? On destiny for choosing you? On every single person that has ever hurt you in a way or another, even if it wasn't in purpose? Would it be easier if you knew why all this suffering? How about because it was the only way you could truly be empathic with others? Or because you needed to be ripped apa...

Pain changes people. It changes how we approach to life, how we live our daily activities, what we want, or what we are afraid about. You can't avoid it, pain demands to be felt with every fiber of your skin, and once this happens, your life or who you are is changed somehow. You can't explain how it changed you, why it happened or how to turn it back. You only know that you aren't the person you used to be before the painful experience. In the past 2-3 years, I've felt more pain than I had ever felt in a lifetime, and I've changed. I'm not the same person I was 3 years ago, or even, a year ago. Eventhough I was heart-broken last year because of the realization that my parents were no longer together, the crisis haven't struck yet, so I was somehow positive, in love, and the shock of the moment kind of numbs you from the pain. I have always had this habit of, in December, looking back and see how things have changed. And even if last Christmas was hard and...

"I feel like I'm going crazy" I've talked a lot about depression, I think it's easier to identify what it is because I remember the time in which I had no depressive symptoms. When it came along in my journey it changed who I was, how I felt and my notion of life was turned around. But with anxiety it's different. I've always been anxious and frankly I can't think about a time in which I didn't had that type of thoughts or in which my mind worked in any other way. I was the little girl whose mind was way too negative and way too extreme, who worried about everything waaaay too much, that was constantly nervous and scared and bit her nails. I remember when little being absolutely terrified about my parents going to an event without me because I immediately thought something bad was going to happen to them, they might die or something like that. Or being absolutely afraid of the dark because I thought someone will appear at my room at night. Or fee...

Dear people who've told me fibromyalgia doesn't exist for the past 4 years: Hello there. First of all, merry christmas and a happy new year. I hope your life is doing fine, and I wish that you are enjoying the seasons' celebrations. As for me, I'm writing this after a very tough episode of fibromyalgia, and I'm in a rush to type this letter as I don't want to forget any detail of what I felt the past days. I know I'm no doctor, I'm just a simple psychology student who was her life ahead and still got a lot to learn. Still, I'm trying to talk about those topics in which I have experience, and therefore, I feel my experience is valid and true. As for that, I may not be able to explain to you what is fibromyalgia. It's new and unknown in the medical world (as far as I've heard) and there is still A LOT of research needed to be done. I've heard it's a muscular thing, a nervous system thing, a psicosomatic thing, a genetic thing... For m...

This is, by far, the most important piece I've written. As the matter requires, I'll try my best not to cross that thin line that divides testimonial information from a sensationalist piece. It hurts, as it comes from the darkest of all places, from that place where we all keep those taboo topics safe from public display. It hurts to accept it, to face the fact that you've dreamt of never waking up again. I know, fellow reader, it will hurt your heart to face the fact that I've gone through that. But we've gotta talk about that, about the things that hurt. About suicide. This is, by far, the most important piece I've written. Because once you've experienced suicide as a close reality (not necessarily because you've had an attempt, just wanting it is enough) you've acquired a responsibility, which is to talk about it, to create awareness. Not only for you, for the ones that struggle daily, but for those who are gone but never forgotten. You need t...

Once you open your mind and soul to the world, you struggle with several thoughts. One of them, that's been in my mind lately is how to be a voice that represents the struggle with mental conditions and fights for the end of stigmatization and discrimination while still battling depression and anxiety. How to encourage others in days in which you can't even encourage yourself. How to show that you are more than depression in a depressive episode. So meditating and talking to friends have made me realize that this is exactly what this whole experience is about. Showing that you can overcome a disease and that you are so much more than a diagnosis, but that doesn't mean you deny your reality. It's about accepting that depression and anxiety are guests in your world and sometimes like to make a scene and take over your body, but that they aren't your entire being. So I decided to speak about the bad days, because is as real as the positive experiences and it's part...

I like to use the term "battling" a mental condition for what it represents. I don't know if it makes much sense of if it's just my very own way of finding magic in a topic that's usually taboo. I'll discuss a very common thing, that's becoming even more common and it's the mind-body relation when it comes to physical illnesses. I'm no doctor and not a psychologist yet, just a woman who've heard the word "psychosomatic" way too many times. And I don't know about others' experiences but at least in mind, there's something that is really frustrating about that term. Stating the facts: you have a mental condition, depression and anxiety in my case, which comes with marvellous symptoms that you in fact feel and express. You feel the anxiety raising up in daily harmless situations that somehow your mind interprets as dangerous, you've cried one too many times, you go to therapies and talk about all your nightmares and diff...

  Today I made this blog public by sharing it on my Facebook page. I can't point out the exact moment in which I decided to make it public and share my intimacy with strangers, friends and family, I just felt that I had to do it. They say it takes 20 seconds of insane courage and something good will come out of it, and that's sort of what happened. Through the day, I've had tons of feelings. I was out there. All of the sudden I realized, I was exposed. I felt like I was naked, I've just opened the door to my intimacy, to my private little heaven/hell, and to whoever wanted to come in. For the first time, I was out in the open, no sugar-coated, no rehearsed lines. Just me. In the most private and raw way. As I realized this, I felt sick, I just wanted to crawl up in my bed and delete everything and just move on without ever mention my experience or the blog or anything. It's scary, frightening actually, to let the world see your complete humanity. I was taught (a...

One of the hardest issues I've had to deal with is acceptance. I've come to realize it that somehow it's harder to accept your own "demons" because we've been taught to be perfect. Life is a constant separation between opposites: Good-bad, light-darkness, happy-sad, healthy-sick, and so on...We are taught that we should be on the "good" side of those categories, but what happens when you are faced with living with opposites? Is that possible? Here's my case. I've always been little miss smiles. I'm always smiling, I constantly laugh. I oftenly tell people about my depression with a smile on my face (which makes it weird, I know). I've always been that way, since I was little, joking around and messing up with people with a happy, cheerful face. That's certainly not compatible with having a depression, or at least what people imagine a depressed person looks like. Or so I thought. When you are battling a mental condition, you are...

Battling a diagnosis regarding a mental condition can be difficult. The stigmatization, lack of information and social rejection are some of the challenges that you come upon living with a mind that works in a different way. In my case, it's depression, anxiety and the physical consequences that come upon the ones that have changed my life. This blogs purpose is solely for all of those who struggle or ever feel hopeless, to find a place where they feel understood and that even though the road may be difficult, it's possible to live a calm, happy existence accepting yourself. The challenge is no the condition itself, but how you choose to fight it and the way you manage to balance your darkness with the other aspects of your life.

This article won't have an ending as it portrays my current situation. I've been struggling depression for 5 years now, and anxiety my whole life. I was always a scary little girl. Everything used to frighten me, darkness, school, social interactions, loneliness, death, plus those amazing anxious fantasies in which everyday situations turn just chaotic and tragic. Foremost, I hated changes, I hated when things just changed out of the blue. Unexpected situations were (and still are) my biggest fear. For that I had my life, my every move, perfectly planned out. I left no room for disaster (or so I thought) in my life: I would graduate from high school at the average age, then I would study psychology for five years, then I would get married young, have 2 babies, and so on. I wanted the movie, Hollywood type of life, while being a happy, perfect, in sync lady. What could go wrong, right? How did my perfectly planned life got here? I have no idea. I just know that depres...