Diagnosis

Well! It certainly helps to have names to the gremlins that have been following you for years:

Depression
Anxiety
ADHD

Seeing the gradual way in which my life was increasingly controlled by these sinkholes (and thinking on the ways in which I was always controlled by them my whole life) does provide some amount of relief. 

Does it mean that I'm no longer harried by them? Absolutely not. 

I still have days where I am viscerally, brutally trapped in my own mind and it's all I can do to keep myself from breaking down into a sobbing mess, if the emotions would ever come. 

I get hit with anxiety that wakes me up in the night feeling dizzy and like my heart is going to explode, like hot glass across that part of me that regulates stress.

I am periodically blindsided by nostalgia so strong that it cores the very essence of me, leaving me feeling numb and like every good day is behind me forever.

I occasionally find myself standing on the precipice of existential dread, staring down into a yawning abyss of all-consuming nothingness.

But, on a certain level, it all matters less. A diagnosis does mean that I'm no longer listening to the voice that is telling me that everybody around me pities me and that I'm a failure to everyone I love, and that feels like a massive victory. A diagnosis provides more detail on the picture of me, while allowing me to move beyond it and keep it from being my whole self. A diagnosis allows me to be kinder to those around me when I am in the depths of my own problems. A diagnosis better allows me to see the paint and cardboard that my demons are actually made of.

It doesn't keep my breathing from turning shallow unbidden, but it does allow me to step back and to remember to breathe, instead of always letting the alarm bells take over.

Whenever you can grab a victory, you can and should. This is a reminder for me in the future.