The Wall is Weakening

I have created a scene of normality around me however I do not know what it is to actually be normal. Eventually everything is going to shatter around me, my children will turn their backs, my finance will walk away and with him, our friends. I don't know how much longer I can keep it all together. I feel the walls beginning to crack. Small imperfections that go unnoticed by everyone around me... I can not only see them, but feel them as well.

It's like a cancer, a growth that spreads from inside me to everyone around me. Only I can see it growing within them. Only I notice the changes.

I'm sorry. I just don't know what it is to be normal...

Date Night

I made an attempt to do something "normal" today. I suggested to my boyfriend that we go on a date. We live together however we have been leading separate lives lately. I with my illness and he with his work and love for technology. We seem to have lost touch.

I don't deal well with crowds at the moment. Perhaps a movie wasn't such a great idea. Especially when the movie we chose is still drawing people in droves. Avatar. We arrived late, well, five minutes before the show was set to begin. This in itself was anxiety provoking. The self serve machines weren't working properly which caused my heart to race. Despite all of this, we still found time to grab a popcorn combo (who in their right mind could go to the movies and not eat popcorn? Not I!) and found ourselves racing to theater number 10. It was packed. We stood there staring at a sea of people trying to force our eyes to adjust faster to the darkness. As I scanned the crowd I noticed right smack in the center of it all was two empty seats. I nudged B in an attempt to encourage him to take the lead. I was too afraid of the thought of asking all of those people to scrunch themselves up in their seats so that we could slip through. Now please understand that at this time I was holding a bag of popcorn, a giant drink, my cell phone (I had been texting), the ticket stubs and two pairs of 3D glasses. Over my shoulder was the newest addition to my purse collection, a very large cream colored Guess bag and of course I was wearing a coat.  B commented as we were sitting that I was spilling pop everywhere yet failed to notice that I was truly struggling and needed him to rescue me. Now any girl who loves a good hand bag knows that you Never, Ever put your pride and joy on the floor. This is why I chose to sit first...so that I could sling it over my left knee while shoving my cell inside of it simultaneously. My huge pop was being held between my forearm and my waist and pop was spilling all over my jacket. At this point I was losing my cool and had to demand that B help me out. My heart was jumping out of my chest.

Once we were finally seated and as comfortable as we were going to be for the next 162 minutes, things started to close in around me. The man next to me was wearing a very puffy coat which he decided to leave on. As the movie progressed he made himself more and more at home by leaning his head on his hand with his elbow hogging the entire arm rest. His puffy jacket encroaching my personal space. I began to panic. I felt as though everything was closing in around me. I attempted to use my DBT skills. Slowly, I eased myself into the movie, forgetting my surroundings.

Fast forward to the credits. Chaos. Everyone trying to leave at once. Puffy jacket guy not moving and in my way. Sticky coat, sticky floor. I couldn't breath. I felt as though I was gasping for air like one of the humans in the movie. I pushed my way out as quickly as I could. I stumbled into the light and turned to see if B was behind me. He gave me a funny look. Having BPD means that I don't deal well with funny looks. They are hostile to me. Cruel and insulting to my ego. I turned and pushed on.  I had tunnel vision. I just wanted to escape the crowd.

I'm not sure how but B ended up ahead of me and stepped off to the side close to the arcade and out of the crowd. That's when I noticed the unfamiliar jacket he was wearing. "where did that jacket come from?" I asked. I guess my body language told him that I was getting ready to criticize it. This is why he decided to answer my question with a question. "why do you want to know?" he asked. This is when I began to go ballistic inside. Why can the man not ever answer my questions with a direct answer. He always needs to know why I'm asking first. If I ask him when he is coming home from work, he needs to know why. If I ask him to go left instead of right, he needs to know why and goes the other way as I can't answer him quickly enough. I can't stand it. Just answer my freaking questions already!!! By the time we got to the car I was highly agitated, full of anxiety and was beginning to split. splitting is when someone with BPD goes from love to hate. There is no in between. B says when this happens, he can see it in my eyes. The hate. I love hard, I hate hard...there is not much of anything in the middle other than indifference. When I'm indifferent, I'm not really "there" anyhow. My therapist says that this is when I disassociate.

I have so much more to say about my relationship with B. Please know that I love him. Even when I hate him, I know it's temporary. I'll always come back to him. I just hope he knows that too. I'll save the rest for another post. Thanks for listening...oh and I highly recommend Avatar. It was beautiful.

Mish Mosh, Pish Posh

My illness is full of  hypocrisy.  When I'm in my dark place, I don't care about anything yet I worry about everything.  I want to die yet I am afraid of dying.  I want to be left alone yet I beg people not to leave me.  I hate everyone yet I am afraid that they hate me.

When I'm well It's not so bad.  I only fear that I will fall under again.  I am able to give off the impression of confidence.  I can trick people into believing that I am "normal".  I still have constant anxiety but I hide it well.  I continue to wrestle with my mind as it is always trying to "trick" me.  Now that I really think about it, as I type these words, I am realizing that I'm never really well.  There are just varied degrees of sickness.

I don't really know how I'm going to return to work.  My job is very stressful and demanding.  You always have to be "on".  I just don't feel like pushing myself anymore.  Not that hard anyway.  It's not that I've given up.  I hope I haven't given that impression.  I expect that I will do well...once I have figured out what it is I want to do.  I am not lazy.  Just uninspired.  I regret the courses I took in college as they got me no where.  I chose to get involved in retail instead.  Retail is a black hole.  It sucks you in.  Possibly forever?  I am REALLY good at my job.  I just don't have the strength to do it anymore.

It's too bad there wasn't a career in whining.  I would be rich!!

Reality T.V is one of my favorite guilty pleasures.  I love having a glimpse into other people's lives.  Sometimes it makes me feel really good about myself but...mostly I just enjoy being given the right to judge!  I also love, love, love wedding and decorating shows.  Since I have been off work for a couple of months now, I spend a lot of time with my new friends on the television.  Once I get my butt back to work I will have a beautifully decorated home AND have the wedding of my dreams.  Of course, you have to be engaged first to plan the latter...or do you?


This post is just a mish mosh of things on my mind.  It doesn't flow and it lacks consistency...just like me:)

Black Butterfly, her end will come, only when mine does

Writings from my journal during my last hospitalization in August '09

The black butterfly consumes me, controls me...she knows me.
She cannot  be killed with chemicals...for years we have tried yet she lives on, stronger this year, than the years before.
She loathes my happiness, despises any self control.
should  she discover a hint of either one, she gobbles them up and becomes more volatile by spitting them back out upon the world as anger, pain, sadness, hopelessness, hate, fear and paranoia.
Defeated, I recoil into myself, begging for someone to destroy her.
She is no ordinary, delicate, colorful butterfly.
Not like the beautiful ones living within children, tickling their fat,
little tummies, causing them to giggle with delight.
My butterfly  is black, wrought iron with razor sharp wings.
She cannot...will not be broken...
until...
I finally am.

Intro to Black Butterflies

From my journal while hospitalized in August '09

Black butterflies begin to stir in my belly,
they work their way up to my chest...
then my mind.
Their Razor sharp wings shred apart my insides causing everything to jumble and spin and ache.
Everything heats from the friction and begins to boil over until suddenly the explosion erupts from my brain, my belly, my chest.
Thousands of black butterflies spew from my body...from every pore...from every part of my being.
Unleashed upon it, the world gasps and is repulsed by my loyal pets.
They swarm around me for hours...days...and then return home to hide.


                                                                                       

Art work by Jasmine Becket-Griffith                                                        
"Dark Ribbon Fairy"
                                                                                            

In and Out

If you die you're completely happy and your soul somewhere lives on. I'm not afraid of dying. Total peace after death, becoming someone else is the best hope I've got.
- Kurt Cobain


 My mind plays tricks on me.  I can't decide if things are getting better or just staying the same or maybe becoming worse than ever.

My weeks have been peppered with good days.  Sometimes these days last two in a row!  What are "good days"?

A very good day would consist of the absence of sadness, pain, anxiety, shame and anger.  On these days I am able to smile and sometimes even laugh with those I love.  I have patience for my children (and others) and I feel competent.  I feel like I can really get things done.  I am able to look forward to the future and I am pretty optimistic.  I can be optimistic because I usually forget how bad it was when I was down.

I find it hard to remember how it feels to be in my emotions.  I am only reminded when I am in the thick of it.  I do however remember the "high" of happiness.  To me it has become a drug that I want more of.  I rarely get even a small dose but when I do experience it I truly put myself in the moment.  This is a DBT practice that I usually have to work very hard at unless I am having an exceptionally lovely emotion.  It is then that I soak it up rather than being soaked up by it.  I'm not too sure if that makes sense to anyone else but it does to me.

Today I am full of shame and anxiety.  DBT is teaching me the importance of labeling my emotions and then describing them.  It helps if you can figure out where they are coming from.  Two days ago I attended a wedding reception.  I drank a little more than I should have and now I worry that I said or did things to offend those around me. Possibley the bride and groom.   My boyfriend says I didn't but he wasn't with me all of the time.  I tend to misbehave more when he is absent.  Wedding's always bring up negative emotions for me.  When I pair them with alcohol it's never good.  I hurt myeself that night after everyone left the house.  Why do I do that?

Failure

Artwork by: Angelina Wrona  "Sakura"

One of the medications I'm taking is making my head feel fuzzy. I feel restless and cannot sleep without taking Seroquel. I used to sleep a lot so this is a huge change for me. I'm glad I'm not so tired anymore but I can't stand the feeling of fuzziness in my brain.

My son is not doing well in school. He says he doesn't care. He says he wants me to stop caring about what he does and that he hates coming home. He is complaining that I'm trying to make our family perfect by cooking meals and insisting that we eat together at the table. It's upsetting me. I am getting frantic and I am having drastic idea's of what I need to do next.

I keep telling myself that I need to sell the house and go back to where I started. It was safer in subsidised housing. If I got sick, my rent simply went down. Now I'm VERY sick and the mortgage just stays the same. My boyfriend cannot pick up the slack and I don't think I should expect him too. He entered this part of our relationship with the understanding that we would both be working and that I would pay my share. I cannot expect him to take all of the financial burden. I am going to be getting long term disability from work but it's not nearly as much as what I was earning. I feel sorry for him and have thoughts of running away to save him.

I believe that I set myself up for this. I set my goals high, wanting to prove to my family that I could be somebody. My dad died before he could see what I had accomplished however I felt proud of myself regardless. Now I fear that I took on too much. I fear that I'm about to lose everything. I think my mother and brother were just waiting for this to happen. They always expected me to fail.

As for my son, I think I messed up. My daughter is very smart but she is displaying signs of low self esteem and a negative attitude towards herself.

What have I done?

I don't deserve to have children.

I should let my boyfriend go. No one deserves this life. It's not his fault I have this sickness.

I am a monster.

Panic Time

Art Work By: Angelina Wrona "Dee Dees Hideout"


Do you ever have those smack yourself in the forehead moments?

I had one last night.

I have not told my employer or employees why I am off sick. All they know is ...I'm off sick.

I have been using Twitter as a means of meeting others with my illness. I have been posting my blog link there. I did this all under my real name. Anyone could look me up, ANYONE!

Last night this thought occurred to me and that's when I did it. I smacked myself in the forehead and under my breath muttered the words "what have I done"?

I mean really!? What was I thinking. I am now convinced that someone from work has looked me up and the "story of my life" has been spread throughout the store. This realization is not working so well with my BPD way of thinking. I am FREAKING out. I have now deleted my beloved Twitter account and started a new one under a new identity. It won't be easy rebuilding but it's all I could do.

I was not ready to go back to work as it is but now, I feel I just can't.

Perhaps I should request a transfer to another location?

I'm not really sure what to do at this point. Any suggestions?

3 Days of Hell

 Artwork by: Angelina Wrona  "Water Lily"



All I can say about the past few days is that I rode the storm hard and fast and seem to have made it out with little damage. Apart from some minor cutting ( just enough to get the edge off) I am unharmed.

By today I thought it was over. There was no way out of this horrible, shitty hand I've been dealt other than death.

What kept me here? My boyfriend is away on vacation. I have no one to turn to where we live as this is his city, not mine. Who would take care of my kids? Did I really want one of them to find me? What if I didn't finish what I started, end up in hospital and they take the kids away forever? No, I just couldn't deal with any of those options. It seems that I am still waiting for the perfect time. When all of the pieces are in the right places.

I will never escape BPD. All I can do is try to survive it everyday.

Tonight I did the housework while ranting and yelling. I managed to cook dinner and around that time I finally, after my 3 day "episode" began to feel the calm.

Now as I type this I am optimistic about tomorrow. Another DBT class. And who knows what else. I pray I will be content. I'm not even asking for happy anymore. Just to be content.

The Beginning of Something Bad

Artwork By: Angelina Wrona "Framed"



Empty. A shell of a person. That is who I am.

I just came home from my DBT group. I am broken after what happened at Thanksgiving dinner. I have decided to cut myself off from that part of the family. I no longer feel that I can trust my son. He is on their side now. I've lost him forever.

If my boyfriend was here, if I had anyone here to care for my daughter...I would be gone tonight.

Thanksgiving???

So I think I need to take a breath before I put what I'm feeling down in writing.

inhale.....exhale....inhale...exhale....(this is a DBT skill) :)

OK

I reluctantly went to my mother's (non-biological) house for Thanksgiving dinner tonight. I never enjoy attending these functions because they usually end up badly. Come to think of it, any event where my family gets together usually ends up with me running away in tears, pledging to myself that I will never, ever talk to any of them again.

I realize that I have irrational thoughts. Sometimes I realize that when I'm thinking them.

But that doesn't stop me from believing they are factual.

The slightest thing can trigger my emotions to go "off the wall". Once I'm there, there is no turning back. I say and do things that I will later regret and then have to suffer through the shame and self hate.

Tonight my family accused me of "looking for things to fight about". I NEVER search for a fight because it feels so awful to have those emotions. If they would only try to understand what is really going on in my head then maybe, just maybe things could be different.

Sometimes I resent them because I believe that I have BPD because of them. Is that even right? With all that I have read, it seems to me that there are many factors involved in someone becoming Borderline. Patients are born already overly sensitive. Then the environmental factors come in to play and determine how good or bad it's going to turn out.

Me? I'm a classic case. I was born in 1976 to my young married parents. Within about a year they were divorced. My father, being a very powerful person gained custody of me and quickly whisked me away from Canada to Scotland to live with my Grandparents. That was it I think. The first strike. I had lost my mother and father. I was too young to understand that at least my Dad would come back but by the time he did, my Granny tells me that I didn't remember him anymore. He took me away, back to Canada and there it was again, already before the age of two. My Grandparents whom I had come to be very attached to, were gone too. It's not that I never saw them again. I did see them about once a year when I was small. But they, in that short time had become my parents. When we got back he had a new woman to take my birth mother's place. They eventually got married and she adopted me. She raised me to the age of 14. I'll get into what happens after that another time.

Over the years my father became increasingly abusive both verbally and sometimes physically. While all of that was going on, I was being relentlessly teased in school. We moved almost every year as my father was a pilot trying to gain momentum in his career. I was always the new kid and I was always disliked. It got to the point where I did not have a "safe" place to go to. Both home and school were a bad place to be. The kids would follow me home from school, teasing me about this and that and then I would arrive home to be picked on some more. I think this is why I began to dissociate from the world.

I have only just discovered the world of blogging and at the moment I am using it as a form of therapy. It calms me (DBT says to distract yourself from the emotion) when I write. Whether or not I am good at it is a different story. I will perfect it as I go along. I logged on today, pleased to see that I had my first follower! And from the UK to boot! The place I love because I have the best memories there. Thank you for following me and for your comments:) It means a lot.

20 minutes ago I was considering the worst things imaginable. I now feel like I'm in a safer place where I can manage this safely. I do feel shame though. Everyone is upset with me and I left my son with my mother because I felt that he took her side.

I'm sure tomorrow everything will be back to the way it always is. Just pretend it never happened and "get on with it" as my Granddaddy always said.

"this too, shall pass"

xoxo Granddaddy, I miss you

Alone again, for the first time in a year

I stayed up too late last night. That's a big no no for me. I had a friend over. She's a new friend to me and I was having plenty of irrational thoughts. I am usually able to realize when I'm having irrational thoughts because of the Dialectical Behaviour Therapy group I have been attending 3 times a week. That being said, I still can't stop myself from believing them and worrying about them. All could think of was that I was boring her to tears and that she was never going to want to hang out with me again. At least not in a one on one situation. I couldn't fall asleep when I got to bed at 4am and was afraid to take my meds that help me sleep because I didn't want to be groggy all day today. The problem is that I can't fall asleep without my meds. It takes hours without them. I take Seroquel at night. It helps quiet the thoughts and worries that flood my head all of the time. It allowes me to stop thinking so much and fall asleep quickly.

Today I am feeling some anxiety for no reason at all. Other than that my emotions are pretty stable. The meds are starting to work I think. I take Wellbutrin during the day.

I was a single parent for most of my son's life. I met my boyfriend 5 yrs ago. My daughter was only 3yrs old so she has known him always as far as she is concerned. Since we moved in together a year ago, I have realized the relief of having another adult in the house to help out. I have lived with other men throughout my son's life but they were never helpful and really just made things worse. As this year has gone by, I have given up a lot of the duties I used to do on my own. I allowed my boyfriend to take over. I allowed him to take over everything. Slowly I have become co dependant. He left yesterday for a vacation that I just couldn't face going on. I am now alone again in this house with my two kids. I'm scared. I now have to do everything myself again and I'm not sure that I can do an effective job. I'm really going to try though. Wish me luck;) I'll keep you posted.