First Post

And this is my first post. This will be about my thoughts, mostly about things pertaining to my diagnosis. I was diagnosed about two years ago with a whole list of mental illness. That wasn't unusual especially anxiety and depression which was mine along with depersonalization disorder and PTSD. I was surprised to find out that a lot of people with mental illness had more then one diagnosis. There was also one shocker in the list that was obvious to the therapist. That one was Asperger's syndrome. Then my second therapist said she thought I might fit high fuctioning autism better. Either way, it was a shock.

I have spent the past two years thinking about my diagnosis and how it affects me. So this blog will be the recipient of my thoughts on mental illness and disability. For that is what I am in certain respects.

My  first brush with disability was with vision. I had myopia since I was little. I had to wear glasses since I was 2 or 3. Each year, my glasses got thicker and thicker and my vision grew worse. Eventually, I couldn't see the big E without glasses. At that point, I had LASIK and my vision is better.

Before it, though is a change. Before, I had thought my vision would get worse to the point I would be blind. I was a teenager at the time and I didn't knew a lot about myopia. I did know that I had thicker glasses and therefor, worse vision then anybody I knew. The kids at school mad that very clear. I was never told that I was disabled and would not be considered disabled but I thought I would become disabled. My thoughts at the time about disability was colored by that fact. I suppose they still are compared to other people.

Later, in college, I liked genetics and read about it. That led me to reading about eugenics and ableism. Ableism is prejudice against disabled people. What was strange was that I would have encounters with ableism but I had no word for what was going on. I was just left to think about it. It wasn't until my diagnosis that I really got reading about the topic. So this blog will be the repository of my thoughts on ableism, disability, and mental illness.