Her gaze steady, without blinking she exhales the words as if she's been holding her breath...
"You have generalized anxiety, major depressive disorder, panic disorder, and a touch of OCD"
She looks at me curiously as if she's just let out a terrible secret and is waiting for me to freak out
Unable to read my expression, her concerned voice cuts through a faint ringing in my head, "How does that make you feel?"
Relieved? - my erratic behavior has a name, well name(s), naming your demons renders them powerless..right?
Hopeless? - the way she reads the disorders like reading off a grocery list, so many diagnoses, how could i not be a lost cause?
Fast forward to every relationship I will ever have with another person.
I usually end up apologizing, as if I’m hurting them with my slightly crooked smile and fingers that won’t stop tapping
He asks me "Why are you like this? What's wrong? How can I help?"
(I'm exhausted from trying to pick apart which diagnoses I'm battling at the very moment someone asks "What's wrong?")
So I default to ambiguity - I shrug and I tell him "I don't know, I'm just sad...or something."