I think being open with some people about it will help. If it is easy to talk to a family member, then that’s a good thing. If you’ve got a friend who you can talk to, that is a good thing but you’re very young: your friends may not be considerate enough to help you. If you find it easiest, talk here. Get used to talking openly somewhere.
I think the therapy may well be important, so that will definitely be a good thing. There are a number of people here who would say that they have PTSD – post-traumatic stress disorder – from their experience of a bleed or of surgery or something going amiss with surgery perhaps.
This feels like your PTSD thing:
It’s not something to be surprised by: your life took a very unusual turn and it took a long time for the doctors to get to a conclusion. That is bound to undermine your confidence in the world.
So see where the therapy leads. I hope you will find it helpful but it may be something you need to be patient with, it may take longer than you’d like to get to a better place.
I also hope that simply finding a bunch of people here who have been through similar things will mean that you feel less isolated, less alone in this. I hope between these things you can see that it isn’t _you_, it isn’t something you’ve done wrong it is just an unwelcome turn in the road.
I have a favourite poem for this point in life(!)
It is a poem about not being able to see the future and reaching one of the millions of routes forwards in life where we want to be able to see further into the future, whether to take the road to the left or the one to the right.
And then thinking about the good choices that we might have, that it would be good to go left this time and then come back and try the right-hand path but that in reality, I might never come back to this point because life always moves onwards.
The author chooses to take the road less travelled and part of his reflection is that by doing so, that route will probably shape all of the other routes that he takes.
In our case, in this community, we’ve suddenly found ourselves hoodwinked into travelling along that road less travelled. We didn’t choose it. But it will come out somewhere, we will go on to other things. And life will be different from what it was, however hard this diversion hits us. I think it always changes us.
I’ve been incredibly lucky so far. I frightened myself with my AVM diagnosis. It shook me completely. And I’m incredibly fortunate because I’ve had treatment for it and mixing my metaphors, I’ve been out of that dark and dangerous valley for 7 years now. But it was a dark valley that I couldn’t see where things were heading. Even so, that journey through the unexpected and unwelcome path has changed my view of the world, it stopped me getting a job that would have been amazing but my reflection on it overall is that it has come out in a wholly a positive way. I wouldn’t be here sharing poetry with you if either of us hadn’t gone through this.
It is easy for me as one who is well to reflect in this way.
I hope that as you get better, as you get more comfortable that there is much in life to enjoy. This diversion will shape you but you’ll join with the poet in recognising that the things that we learn from these diversions make all the difference.
I hope this line of thinking helps. If you ever find that I say something that is unhelpful, please ignore it. I always read about people here and try to find inspiration as to what to say, not repeating the same thoughts to everyone but trying to find something pertinent to say for each. However, whether that will always be the right thing to say seems unlikely. I’m bound to say something that doesn’t work for someone from time to time.
Use it if it helps. Ignore it if it doesn’t help.
Lots of love,
Richard