Disabled Baddie Finding Independence in Independence Day—Happy Fuckin’ B-day, USA

It’s nearly 10 am on the 250th anniversary of the US of fucking A, and honestly, I couldn’t give a fuck. This country hasn’t afforded me the rights and freedoms I am entitled to as an American. I have the news playing in the background as I manage typing up this blog, communicating with my kids, where our voices echo down the hallway, and I am thinking about the million-things-to-do list. I know it’s supposed to be a “holiday,” but it just feels like a regular weekend day to me. Maybe because I live in a barrio that blasts fireworks off almost nightly, routinely, and I’ve grown desensitized to the explosions just steps away. I feel bad for the pets, furbabies, and veterans because I could totally see how that could be trigger-inducing.

So, let me start this by introducing myself and explaining what this website is for and how to utilize it.

Hello, New Friends and Hopeful Followers! I am Patricia Fernandez. I am a 41-year-old, disabled, divorced mother of 5, second-year university student at the University of Phoenix. I was married for 22 years. I got married at 18, and together we have 2 adult children, 2 teenagers, and a spunky 9-year-old. As I mentioned, I am a second-year sophomore, and I am majoring in Applied Psychology, Neuroscience/Neurobiology, and minoring in Education and Technology and Media. I am proud to say that my GPA keeps hovering around 3.84! I am also a dog mom; I have 2 dogs, named after characters in my favorite show, Dexter, whose namesake goes to my 8-year-old orange and white Siberian Husky, and Brian, my hypoallergenic poodle puppy who’s about 18 months. We also have my 16-year-old son’s 2 cats; sibling runts, a girl named Stinky, and a boy named Fart—the kids totally named them, and I had absolutely no assistance with that lol.

I was married for 22 years and recently finalized my divorce on April 22 of this year! Yay! I am free of the chains that have restrained me most of my life. I was 14 when I first had contact with my ex-husband. He was an 18-year-old DJ employee of my childhood skating rink I frequented throughout my preteen and teen years. It wasn’t until I was 15 and he was 19 that we formally met through mutual best-friends who were dating each other at the time, and they arranged a blind date for us because I didn’t know it was the guy I had met the previous year. Long story short, we began dating and became inseparable—he moved in with me when I was 15, and by my 16th birthday, we were in love, and he proposed with a ring during our first official couple’s photograph done at the mall.

Now for the loooooooooong paragraph of my disabilities and chronic conditions.

I’ve technically been disabled all my life, but it wasn’t until my 14th year of life that I finally started getting an actual diagnosis from my doctors. I had been depressed most of my life, due to a very traumatic childhood and adolescence, but I wasn’t officially diagnosed with it until I was 19, and it was considered antepartum and postpartum depression. But it never left and never got better. As I grew older and older, the depression got worse and worse, and the suicidal ideation and ruminating thoughts were so loud, louder than anyone outside myself. Now, at 41, it’s called Treatment-Resistant Depression—thus the website’s name: ResistantAF (AF = as fuck, for those who didn’t know). I’ve tried everything from therapy to psychiatry to hospitalization to outpatient programs to Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation therapy (36 brain shocking 20-minute treatments where it LITERALLY feels like a woodpecker is trying to create a home inside my left temple) to all types of EMDR to sensory deprivation chambers to happy lamps to CBT, DBT, and everything else you can think of—and I am still deeply depressed and still struggle with suicidal ideation and ruminating thoughts.

I am debating whether I should explain every disability and condition, or list them and cover them in future posts…

I think I’m just going to list everything I’ve been diagnosed with, and I will highlight each in future posts because this post is already getting kind of long.

I have a benign (meningioma) brain tumor that causes me symptoms, fibromyalgia, hypertension stage 1 (high blood pressure that requires both medicine and a special diet), stage 4 osteoarthritis with 0% cartlige in my right hip, asthma, allergies, uterine fibroids, polycystic ovarian syndrome, vasovagal syncope, burst and aura migraines, perimenopause (irregular EVERYTHING ugh!), endometriosis, liver issues, chronic bronchitis and pneumonia, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, chronic stress, obseity due to medications and lack of ability to do calorie-burning cardio, vision issues and I wear bifocals and contacts, tardive dyskinesia due to psychotropic medications, hip dysplasia, neuropathy/nerve issues, bad circulation and poor bodily temperture regulation (poor emotional regulation too, ha), I have a bad back that required a lower lumbar spinal fusion, which was botched but I was required to keep it in for 18 months. I had it removed this past November because one screw was incredibly loose and causing so much pain.

I am probably missing some things, but I’ll probably cover whatever I missed in future posts—but to be honest, it’s either brain fog, memory-retention issues, or a sensory processing disorder—but I don’t always recall everything in one go, like my list of medications, vitamins, and supplements.

I’m going to write another post explaining why I started this blog and its purpose. But let’s just say, I had a change of heart about this life I am living, and I found my purpose. I don’t want to be bound to my bed with the occasional breach of prison to visit a doctor, specialist, therapy, or run necessary errands such as paying bills. So, I made a plan, a life-goal map of how I can have the life I have always dreamed about. I want to share this journey to show how a disabled woman, living in poverty, can achieve her dreams.

I’ll be damn if I’ll let depression take me before I make a legacy.