A story about labels, lazy professionals, and the power of naming yourself instead.
They didn’t ask what happened.
They asked what was wrong with me.
And when I didn’t answer fast enough,
they filled in the blank.
Borderline.
Bipolar.
Histrionic.
Disruptive.
Treatment-resistant.
Personality disordered.
Too emotional.
Too articulate.
Too much.
I wasn’t too much.
I was too real.
And they couldn’t stand the reflection.
They didn’t want to hear my story.
They wanted to sort me.
File me.
Pathologize me until I fit on a chart.
Because a chart doesn’t ask for accountability.
A diagnosis can be billed.
A code can be justified.
But my truth?
My truth didn’t look good on paper.
So they called it something clinical.
Gave me a pill for the part of me that screamed too loud.
A sedative for the girl who remembered too much.
A seduction into silence that they labeled “stabilizing.”
But I didn’t feel stable.
I felt erased.
I wasn’t seen.
I was translated into something safer for them to ignore.
They didn’t name me to help me.
They named me to sleep at night.
To check the box.
To feel like they did their job.
But I wasn’t a job.
I was a person.
And I already had a name.
🧠 Emotional Takeaway:
A diagnosis can be a tool—or a trap.
It’s not always clarity.
Sometimes it’s control.
And healing might mean peeling off labels they glued on you
just to avoid facing your pain.
You are not their paperwork.
You are not a billing code.
You are not broken just because they couldn’t understand you.
🪞 Reflection Box:
For years I asked myself, “Am I really that unstable?”
But what I should’ve been asking was:
“Why do they need me to be?”
Because if they called me “traumatized,”
they’d have to ask who did it.
If they called me “truthful,”
they’d have to believe me.
If they called me “self-aware,”
they’d have to shut the f*ck up and listen.
But if they call me disordered—
they stay in control.
Not anymore.
🎤 They handed me labels I didn’t request,
And wore their concern like a badge on their chest.
Told me my pain was a symptom to treat—
But never once asked why I couldn’t eat.They charted my grief. They boxed in my rage.
Then locked me inside a behavioral cage.
But I climbed out, name still intact—
Not as a patient—
But as the whole damn fact.
