Warning: thread creep!

As long as I'm in an "outing" frame of mind, more and more I'm leaning toward calling my particular Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) an illness. Not any particular type of illness, just an illness. Perhaps like asthma or Crohn's disease or arthritis or depression, sometimes I'm too much under the weather to carry on with what I had planned for my life. Sometimes I'm sick for a day, a week, a month. Medication helps to a point, but there are triggers that can do an end run around the meanest meds.

In my experience, only one thing generally makes people more uncomfortable than mental illness, and that is prison. Everyone in my life holds at least some of the typical fears and misconceptions about mental illness or emotional challenges or whatever term works for you. I've found that by just being "sick" sometimes, going to "the doctor" etc., a lot of fears don't get triggered and I am treated less like a weirdo and more like a person. This isn't any 100% solution, but it helps a lot in my circles.

Right now I'm too sick to be able to cook for myself, so tomorrow a friend is delivering Beef Palak and Achari Chicken and some soft onion nan. Just as one would do for a friend recovering from surgery, for example. Just "sick" works well for me. I guess it somehow places the emphasis on the need for support and takes emphasis away from the stereotype of some mental deficit. When it stops working so well I'll be on the hunt for a new approach!

End thread creep.