sometimes a diagnosis rips your heart apart, and other times it gives you peace.
it’s like when you can finally address a demon by name, and it gets easier to handle.
you start burrowing into some niche kind of humor, and suddenly there’s a whole tribe of people who feel the same way you do.
there was nothing “wrong” with you, you start to believe.
it was just an unfortunate order of authorities that failed you,
a case of heightened sensitivity in some pathways,
a nervous system that got too nervous.
that you didn’t feel tired for no reason,
and you slept more than you “should” because that’s where you had nothing to prove.
and that personal space mattered—
because it messes with your head to feel sand on the sheets,
to see shoes on top of shoes.
that all you wanted was a room with clean window ledges,
and a bathroom handle you’re not afraid to touch with your bare hand.
if it’s any comfort, franz kafka wrote about the ache in his head in his diaries from the 1913s.
it’s likely all that we feel, have felt, and will feel
has been felt, is being felt, and will be felt by someone in the world.
we aren’t the first, and we won’t be the last.
it’s all shared humanity.
not everyone will understand.
some will say we’re overreacting, that we’re drama queens and kings.
but hey, the new medication has some bohemian calligraphy and a zinc feel for an aftertaste.
as iron sharpens iron, we’ll be here to remind each other that we got we.
and we’ll cut sharp the lies with our tongues through words from Isaiah 43,
basking in a voice that says, “I have called you by name, you are mine…”