Broken

I’m known as the ever positive, go get em disabled person. But there’s another side to this face that you don’t often see.

I do semi regularly post about PTSD, about the Dysthmia struggle, and ASD mix adding to amputee makes life a struggle quite a lot of the time.

But the way I see it is what’s the point of giving the negative side air time. Life is too short for that. But, it’s there and perhaps talking about it will help me with healing in some way. 🤷🏼‍♀️

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Not I’m not looking for sympathy, or anything of that kind. But I just need to say a few things out loud.

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Having to deal with ACC all the time is no bed of roses. I can totally understand why some people just want to find a way of being ACC free, but there’s two sides to that for me.

• This was done TO me. I didn’t ask for it. In fact I challenged everyone all the way. That makes me very very angry indeed and I can’t see how I will ever get past that.
• In addition the mental health struggles I now have was also done to me, I didn’t ask for that either. In fact I did everything I could to prevent all of this, but no one listened to me till it was too late.
• I couldn’t work full time right now even if my life depended on it. I’m self employed, I’m motivated. But, trying to work any more than the 8-10 hours we have just had to reduce it to just sends me crashing over a precipice. The last time they forced me to do that, it brought back my stress induced asthma that has been dormant since my 30’s.

I feel like I have to be at breaking point or beyond before I will get listened to.

I feel like I’m between a rock and a hard place. There seems to be no incentive at all for me to be back working as much as I can, in fact the opposite. The more I work the more I get financially penalised. What’s the point?

And all the while, the organisation that’s meant to make this all better for me is my main PTSD trigger right now. This makes life very very challenging indeed.

The thing that I reach to for self care (exercise) also forms part of a trigger. It’s both the solution AND the problem.

And the more people say – ‘but your doing so well’ the less it makes me want to actually show the full story: I will just sound like a moaning Minnie.

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Yes.

Life is harder when you’re disabled. I have physical reminders multiple times each and every day that I just can’t get away from.

Reminders that are so deeply psychologically ingrained it makes everything hard. Very hard.

Yes.

I expend more energy (and time) just trying to ‘do life’. This means my overall capacity is significantly less and it’s much easier to dip over the edge before I even realise.

Yes.

PTSD is hard to deal with. It pops up even when you least expect it. I spend most of my waking time making multiple contingency plans to avoid triggers and overt disaster. It’s exhausting.

And when I don’t get that balance right.. there’s dysthymia in the background to take over and send me into a deep dark spiral spin.

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It feels like I’m spinning a million plates and only JUST getting them to all stay upright without crashing to a million pieces.

What do you see?

You see the freeze frame success moment, the photo of the whole thing working.. for that split second. the photos I allow the world to see.

While I’m crying inside fighting my own daily battles to just to get up the next morning, find the motivation to do the next workout and worry about how I’m going to pay the next bill.