“Anger. Grief. Despair. I hate this. I hate everything. I hate me. I have nothing to give. There’s no point. No point in anything. Nothing matters. Why bother? Shut up. You are so annoying. You feel so sorry for yourself. You’re so spoiled. Such an attention seeker. You want everyone to feel sorry for you. Poor you. So manipulative.
I just want to escape. Everything is heavy.
I feel better today. I feel grateful for a new day. Everything feels lighter, brighter. I’m going to make today a good day. I’ll see the good in everything and be grateful for this lovely life that I’ve got. I’m so lucky, and I’m going to make every day count from now on. I can, and I will.
Imagine being in an abusive relationship with yourself – that’s PMDD (aka premenstrual dysphoric disorder). PMDD is an extreme sensitivity to hormonal changes in the body, which have a huge psychological and physical impact.
I was diagnosed with PMDD last year at the age of 29, but the reality is I have been fighting it every single month since I was about fourteen. 15 years of winning – so far.
The thing about PMDD is, there’s no cure. No magic pill, or healthy lifestyle that can take the mental torture away. You put up with it, and just wait for the black, suffocating fog to lift. And it does. It always does. After a few weeks of feeling like it’s too much and life will never be good again, the symptoms begin to fade away. Life starts to feel brighter again, and maybe it’s not so bad after all.
With this new opportunity to seize the day, I tell myself I’m going to hold on to this good feeling with both hands and never let go. But eventually I do let go, and the lighter, brighter days slip out of my grip, being replaced with blame and self-loathing – I should have tried harder to hold on to those good days. No matter how hard I try to claw back to keep hold of the good days, it’s no use. Down I go.
But I refuse to let this condition beat me. I have PMDD, but it doesn’t have me – at least not all of the time. I like to think that the harder days make me more grateful for the better days, and I believe that we need to live a life of hope, and keep facing forward. And when those better days come to you, grab them, love them and when they do slip out of your hands (which they always do!), just remember, you’ll soon be able to take them back.
You can follow my journey on Instagram: My Hormones My Health, and listen to my podcast of the same name, which aims to inform and assure, and most importantly inspire hope – that a life with health or hormones issues can still be compatible with a life of joy.”
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