PMDD is tricky, because what works for someone... may not even work for someone else.

Wow many people benefit from SSRIs or birth control or even a combination of both, I was one of the weirdos it simply just didn't work on.

After trying for different versions of each with horrendous results, I was ready to give up.

I spent years in that mindset, hanging on by a thread.

I started accept that this was my fate.

It wasn't until another series of symptoms came along that I started to change the way that I looked at PMDD.

At first, I started paying attention the pattern of changes in my body. Every ache. Every joint pain. Every ounce of irritability and rage. Then I started connecting those responses, those symptoms ...to histamine and really began to notice how it impacts my body.

Eventually, after months of logging my symptoms and establishing a clear pattern... it became very clear that histamines impacted my symptoms quite a bit. So I adjusted my diet accordingly, removing all of the high histamine items that I possibly could. Including things that I didn't normally think of when it came to histamine. Including processed food, perfumes, and lotions. To my dismay, my symptoms started improving.

But something especially strange happened once I removed gluten from my diet.

One by one, the sentence began to disappear completely.

Rage? Gone.

The anxiety that had me crawling out of my skin for decades? Also gone.

My monthly dance with self hatred? Gone too.

My lifelong battle with depression? You guessed it. Gone. 

But the one that really struck me by surprise? I no longer wanted to die.

The treacherous tango of suicidal ideation is something I had battled my entire life and now it too...is gone. 

The sadness that had somehow ingrained itself into my own identity, had vanished. 

First, it was nearly uncanny and rather unsettling.

After all, I'm an artist. Who even am I without my melancholy? 

As PMDD is left me in the dust of the bridges that I burned, I started to get to know who I am. The real me. Beneath the PMDD. Beneath the sadness. Beneath the hostility. Beneath the rage. Beneath all the walls I'd built around me to keep me safe. 

And as I've gotten to know her...it turns out...that I rather like her.