I struggle with identity. Being off work has forced me to face who I am without it. I still think of myself as a paramedic but at the same time I fight feeling like a fraud for saying it. I shouldn’t claim to be something whose standards I cannot live up to. I’m incapable of performing the duties of my job. I couldn’t cope with being one so I don’t get to say I am one. I would never think these things of a peer in my situation but I’ll think them of myself. I have called myself crazy. I have put myself down for having a ‘disorder’. I have mocked myself for having anxiety. I have judged myself inferior for no longer meeting my standards for myself. I have scolded myself for being lazy when the depression set in. I have told myself I was weak for every panic attack. That I was weak for being an alcoholic. That I had failed my profession. That I had also failed my family. I was pathetic in my eyes. For a while that’s how I saw myself. Nothing but stigma that I would never dream of placing on anyone else having mental health struggles. I have worked hard to start to change the dialogue in my head. Being diagnosed with mental health problems was a huge blow to my ego. I was devastated. It was more than just stress. My mind wasn’t as rock solid as I had believed it to be. I wasn’t immune. I was vulnerable and raw. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I only knew who I wasn’t. I spent a long time hating myself over the person I thought I had ceased to be. The strong, confident and proud paramedic mask had cracked and fallen off. I cried a lot. I dwelled in the dark corners of my mind, believing what I was telling myself and fearing what would become of me. I was ashamed. I didn’t want to be a broken toy. In the end all I could do was learn to accept the diagnosis. I began telling myself that I was still a paramedic but with mental illnesses and disorders. That way I could ultimately keep my original comfortable identity albeit with a couple of asterisks. There was still an undertone of mockery to it though. Nowadays I’m slowly coming around to being an injured paramedic. It might just be different words for the same thing, a candy coating, but each progression in language is worlds apart in attitude for me.