Thank you!

My mind is strange. Not only do I struggle with DID and PTSD and sometimes OCD, I also struggle with this unnamed thought process issue. It's like I'm thinking a bunch of different thoughts at the same time and trying to figure out the origins, cause, and projections of things, and even their associations. I swear I have a thought disorder of some kind, but it felt like it just got worse around 2016. I can't explain it, but something about graduating as an undergrad crippled me. I felt super depressed after graduating. It was as though I knew there was no future for me, that my disability held me back, and that I had literally no support system to propel me forward. I was also retraumatized many different times toward the end of undergrad and during my post-bacc. I quit my post-bacc, but not before my mind kind of went crazy with all sorts of things. I wasn't treated kindly either.

I look around at all those I knew or worked with, and they are all super professionals - one even working at Harvard now, and another treating patients as a PA. I can't seem to face them or anyone. They knew me 10 years ago, when I was much thinner and smarter and quick to think. I can barely recall what I read or seen within a day. My summa cum laude and awards meant literally nothing.

I can barely function on an online support forum among other people with mental illnesses. I can speak - yes, but I'm all over the place. I can feel many of my alternate personalities, which is changing me. I'm scared of feeling these changes, and then going through many thought processes.

My T helps me to focus on safety, which really, really, REALLY helps me! I've never been able to feel safe before now. I've been able to ground myself, but not be safe. I'm still not feeling 100% safe, but at least I know how to redirect my thinking to safety things, when all my mind wants to do is hone in on all the dangers and threats in the world and around me.

I wish I could be the person I was 10 years ago. I had peers who said I truly helped them. The problem is, an alter helped them - not me. A few alters did the college work - not me. I can't remember much of what I learned as an undergrad anymore. I can't even remember the paper I published. I wasn't the one to do it. I sobbed on the phone with the professor who oversaw the department, and he even said for me to just focus on healing. I think I tried to contact him a few more times to tell him my laments, but then I was told not to contact him again - in kind of a stern yet polite way. He knew I was suffering from some sort of mental illnesses. I just couldn't do post-bacc work anymore. They allowed me to initially, but I quit and said I don't want my name on anything, and whatever work I did was minimal anyway, but someone else could take over and take credit. I remember just leaving.

I don't know what happened to me, or what is happening to me.

I feel like I'm not the same person.

I've changed during this pandemic, and I feel 1000 times more disabled than pre-pandemic times. And I was already deemed disabled by two governmental institutions - no appeals, no hardships - just for some reason I was deemed disabled. SSDI only took six months for me to get approved. Most people have to appeal and hire lawyers to win within 1 to 2 years or so. I didn't think I was that "far gone," but I'm realizing more than ever that I am.