Every 28 days #PMDD takes 18 days.

40% of the year is spent being me.
Don't be fooled into thinking that being me is filled happily dancing around, singing, holding hands, filled with the joys of spring, drinking in those good moments.

Being me means spending time picking up the destruction left behind after each episode, trying to piece my life back together, trying to hold my family together once again from the damage thats been caused.

It means the exhausting cycle of putting old plans in place & figuring out new plans to try and minimise the damage that the impending next episode is going to cause closest to me.

It means forever living with crippling guilt, shame, embarrassment because of things I've said, ways I've acted & a gut wrenching fear that one day I won't ever be able to claw myself out of that hole of continous thoughts and feelings of wanting to be unalive that each #PremenstrualDysphoricDisorder episode brings.

It means plastering in on a smile for my family while really I'm still crying inside for the days, hours, minutes, I missed with them, whilst a rising anxiety lurks inside me as I know what is coming.

The rest of my time is spent living as my alter ego, in #PMDDhell .
Angry, depressed, withdrawn, fatigued, in pain, disassociated from the world around me, in a constant state of self loathing & planning my own demise.

Even when PMDD is not present, it makes its presence known.

If you know someone with PMDD, please don't ever tell them it's just #PMS .