to clarify –

I have complex post traumatic stress disorder due to many, many (still ongoing) traumatic experiences I have been living with my entire life due to never being diagnosed with ADHD and autism.

I will be sharing much more detailed information later but for sake of a quick explanation, it’s like my entire life I thought we were all playing the game of life on the same level. Except this entire time, I’ve been playing on Expert, while everyone else has been playing on Easy. And I didn’t get the tutorial mode everyone else somehow got unbeknownst to me…So I’ve been struggling this whole time, wondering why the fuck no one else seemed to be having the same struggles as me – and I kept my mouth shut up about it my entire life.

I love and miss my family and friends. I love my job and miss my coworkers. I have never been assaulted. nobody has physical abused me. there wasn’t one specific traumatic event that happened to me. I’ve just been fighting a lot of internal demons, feeling very alone and severely misunderstood, wondering what the fuck has been wrong with me for the last 30 years.

My mind and body have been faced with near constant stress, anxiety, depression, shame, and just a general feeling that nobody around me ever actually sees/hears/understands what I am saying (hence why I am even having to make this post in the first place 😉). I have regular nightmares in which I am trying to talk/scream so someone can help me but not a sound comes out, because that’s what my entire life has felt like. I’ve bounced from friends to friends, destroyed nearly every one of my relationships (family, friend, or otherwise), moved 8 times in the last decade (including across the country and back), thrown myself into a million different interests and hobbies, traveled the country, blown hundreds of thousands of dollars, visited several psychiatric specialists, poured over so SO many medically/scientifically-backed books and research, and I still don’t feel like anybody actually understands me, including myself. I don’t know where I belong or who I belong with, I have yet to find my place.

I have been rejected, ghosted, denied, told I’m wrong, insulted, doubted, questioned, by so many people, so many times in my life. It’s like the second a piece of me slips out that someone doesn’t like, I lose them from my life. I thought I had finally found a place (& a few people) which is why I moved to New Hampshire in the first place. But unfortunately I was very wrong and it eventually got to a point where I felt backed into a corner, completely beaten down, entirely isolated and alone and I had no where and no one to turn to, so I fell into a really, really dark place mentally – which is then when the seizures started. being entire alone for months on end during a really bad, dark, and medically-scary time eroded my trust and sense of safety in literally all people (lol)

right now I genuinely only feel 100% safe and comfortable being fully open and myself around my mom. she’s the only person I know for a fact I can rely on to be there and understand me (without judgement). I am working on changing that – and it’s not even like I don’t trust each one of you specially, it’s like I just can’t trust ANYONE at all because my hands have been bitten too many times now that my brain/body feel like all people are unsafe (welcome to the nuances of post traumatic stress disorder!)

I genuinely envy you if you don’t understand or can’t remotely relate to my struggles. I’ve spent my entire life just trying to fix all of the bad/wrong things about me so I would finally be the perfect friend/daughter/coworker/etc I was supposed to be that I never actually finished figuring out who I’m supposed to be in the first place. it almost feels like I am back at square one.

as I said, I will be providing much more detailed information regarding my various diagnoses and how they manifest in me specifically – but that’s a project for another day. in the meantime, I highly advise against Googling or ChatGPTing anything about my conditions, because you’ll most definitely NOT get the 100% entirely correct, factual, megan-related answers to your questions.

in the meantime, I highly suggest supporting your local library or bookstore and cracking open one of the following books that are very great at explaining how trauma and stress can really fuck up a person – both physically and mentally 😌