I have changed my diagnosis

I have changed my diagnosis. I used to always say I suffered from depression, anxiety and suicide ideation. It was a disease I was fighting like cancer. It was win or lose. I lived in the hope that one day my medication and therapy would beat the disease, or at least send it into indefinite remission.

At our first appointment I remember telling my psychiatrist that suicide felt like the calm of a
shady river bank while life itself was the chaotic turmoil of the rapids below. Anxiety and fear felt like drowning. The doctor assured me that after treatment I would feel the exact opposite. Poor mental health would be the turmoil in the middle of the river while life itself was the calm on the bank. It was a promise I wanted to believe, after all hope is hard to resist.

But after four years, countless medication changes, dose adjustments, five different therapists, two different CBT workshops, three stints in hospital one of which lasted 6 weeks, it hasn't happened. I still get anxious. Suicide still seduces me with its promise of calm, its shady river bank safe from the turbulent river. I admit the rapids are not as chaotic as they once were, the overwhelming sense of drowning has settled but am I cured? No. Will I ever live without anxiety or suicide ideation. No. Without depression? No.

I have resigned myself to the fact, I will always have symptoms in varying degrees. Life still lives in the rapids and whirlpools. My thinking has not flipped. My psychiatrist lied. But at least now with therapy and medication, I have a life jacket and at times even a raft which I can pull myself up onto to escape the turmoil of living.

There is no cure. But there is a way to manage the distress and each day I get better at it. I have let go of the idea of being "all better". I no longer assess my progress based on how far I am away from a "normal" life. I no longer see myself as suffering from depression but rather living with it. I have decided my condition is more like diabetes than cancer. I have tools and strategies to manage the "glucose levels" in my brain. Do I sometimes make mistakes and let my thoughts get out of control? Yes. And the suicide ideation can be strong. But now I recognize the calm of the river bank is permanent. It's where life ends. And so I do my best to swim, to hold onto my safeties, my therapy, my meds and my resilience. The difference now from when I first sought help is that I now know I can do it. I know I can live.