Vachon Imagined

A diagnosis begins with observation. Someone takes a sample of your experience, looks for patterns, weighs the evidence, and gives it a name.

I know this because I worked in criminal justice. I saw it. I taught it. I participated in it.

I’ve also lived it.

Anxiety. Depression. A family history of schizophrenia and suicide. Looking at my history, someone might say I had it coming. But knowing the diagnosis doesn’t make surviving it any easier. Too often, you find yourself trying to prove your humanity to someone who has already decided who you are. In their mind, you have become a finished picture.

The diagnosis becomes the person.

That is why the word seem matters so much to me.

Things seem hopeless. A person seems dangerous. Someone seems arrogant, broken, healed, beyond saving. Seem leaves room for perception without mistaking it for certainty. It keeps the conversation open. It refuses to close the casket before life has finished speaking.

At the same time, I would never dismiss the value of diagnosis.

When my son was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a door opened. We found understanding instead of confusion. We found tools like Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). More importantly, we found people who loved my son on his hardest days and kept showing up because they believed in his capacity to grow. Even now, years after he no longer needs private therapy, I remain deeply grateful for the therapist who saw more than a diagnosis.

A diagnosis can illuminate. It can guide treatment, open resources, and offer language for experiences that once felt impossible to explain.

But it should never become a prison.

Nothing living is permanent. Not you. Not me. Not the stories we tell about ourselves.

And not even our diagnosis.