How Being Undiagnosed Is Like Captaining a Ship Lost at Sea

When you are the captain of your own ship…

You leave the dock and head into uncharted territory with crewmen and women who are going to help you navigate the rough waters… but slowly, one by one on the journey, they board a lifeboat… and leave you all alone.

All alone as you stop in 37 different ports, desperately seeking assistance, guidance. Presenting to them all of the baggage you have on board, begging them to make sense of the extra loads you are carrying, the loads that are making your destination that much more difficult to reach.

Instead, you are shunned away, charged with astronomical fees for docking there, even for just one night. You are confused, yet pushed back out to sea to brave the rough waters, all alone.

There is no lighthouse illuminating the darkness that has now become a scary and frustrating existence. It should have been a straightforward and uncomplicated crusade. And it seems, as you continue on, that the barnacles that attach themselves to your underbelly multiply. You are unable to detach them and throw them back out to sea, wishing they would attach themselves  to a different vessel, as this journey is proving difficult enough.

The storms come, crashing! The water overtakes the dock as you work endlessly to scoop it out, with a bucket that has too many holes. You do not want to drown in the ship that you are steering… all alone.

Bucket after bucket, exhaustion and fatigue and weakness overwhelm you and you feel like you’ll never be finished. You’ll never reach the next port, the one that will have all the answers and mend up your broken pieces and replace all that you have lost.

Instead, you will circle the ocean, being tossed by the waves, without ever hitting land.

You are lost at sea.

This is limbo.

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