Life in December

I suck at keeping up with this.

I live in Portland Maine.
I don’t want to.
I’m a freelance artist, like most people Portland.
I’m fucked up from my childhood and various traumas, like we all are.
I see a psychologist.  I’ve been diagnosed with a slew of disorders.
The ones that stuck are Borderline personality disorder with comorbid generalized anxiety and major depressive disorders.  I also have PTSD.
Every day is a battle.

I’m here to vent, to write about how every day situations affect me.  To advocate for mental health issues. To tell secrets and blunt truths.

 

     My mind is never quiet.  Lately I’ve been exceedingly preoccupied with my mistakes.  Yeah, this seems normal, but not really for me. I never used to give a shit about my mistakes.  I figured that if I learned something from it, how could it really be a mistake?  Oh right because ALL of your decisions control your life and where you end up and who’s still around.  I can’t stop beating up on myself.  I’m done learning new shit, can’t I just be happy instead?

 I smoke a lot of weed right now.  I used to drink a lot. Shit gets complicated when you’re on medication though.  But right now my anxiety meds are seriously lacking.  The weed helps my insomnia, my nightmares and panic attacks.  It calms the voices in my head that are screaming at me, telling me over and over that no ones loves me.  Telling me over and over that I am nothing, that I’ll never amount to anything.
These voices….they narrate my day, they tell me what you’re thinking too.  They are just other mes, the worst of me.  Fighting them is the hardest thing I do. I’ve been sexually assaulted a few times and molested at 14 by someone I thought of as a father figure.  My mother neglected me, abandoned me, verbally, emotionally, and physically abused me.  I know things I shouldn’t, I had to grow up way too fast.  I’ve feared for my life a few times. Because of this shit, I don’t know how to relate to people.  I don’t know how to trust anyone of anything.  I’m not even sure I understand what love is.  I often flinch at other’s touch and I can have a flashback to abuse at any time it seems.

This is all just an introduction to what I’m about.  I hope to write more, I plan to write more.  Til next time.

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Having BPD as a Hopeless Romantic

Being prone to extreme mood swings, impulsivity, and rage fits, relationships are often a catastrophe for people with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Paranoia gives way to jealousy which then eats away at my soul.  Extreme and persistent trusts issues make me seek reassurance constantly.  This usually ends up making my boyfriend very irritated and impatient, which serves as confirmation for my fears.  I am also possessive, if you have the pleasure of being mine then you are MINE.  I don’t mean that I need to control you but that no other woman gets to enjoy a single intimate moment because those are mine, as mine are yours.

But having BPD gives way to awesome traits as well.  I don’t leave the honey moon phase.  I will always want to make you food and do special things.  I will spend the last dollar I have if I see something you might like.  Your birthday and Christmas will be ridiculously awesome.  I want to have sex constantly.

As a hopeless romantic, I become completely infatuated with people and push them away and start again with someone else. I risk everything for the opportunity to find that really deep connection with someone and give everything I have to them.  Then, within a day sometimes, I can become so bored and tired with them.  Or maybe my mind gets fucked up if they don’t want to have sex often and I reject them.  I can be so broken up and make myself believe that he was more special than the rest. I bawl my eyes out, I break everything, and then…..I just do it again.  I will never stop ruining myself until there’s nothing to ruin because its worth it.

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Object Permanence

One of my most annoying BPD symptoms is my inability to hold onto emotions or the fact that someone in my life will come back to me after they physically leave.  I could never explain this as well as psychologists can so Im going to post some excepts from a good article I found:

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Lack of object constancy in BPD is a direct result of the core wound of abandonment.

In terms of the answer to the question  “what is object constancy as it relates to BPD?” Borderlines do not have object constancy. They lack object constancy. They do not relate in any consistent way. That’s why you see the swing between all-good to all-bad, then back to all-good until they shift back to all-bad etc. Borderlines do not have the inter-personal skills to relate to “self” or “other” in any consistent or lasting way.

Lack of object constancy isn’t so much about emotional amnesia or a forgetting as it is about dissociation and splitting in which there are dual realities in operation at the same time or that shift back and forth, if you will. “Out of sight, out of mind, isn’t so much an inability to remember certain things about a person as it is more about abandonment fear that drives borderline defense mechanisms like splitting and devaluation to kick in because the state of being left alone isn’t tolerable when a borderline doesn’t know how to soothe him/herself.

Just as the young child in the playpen starts to cry when mother goes to work, for example, and experiences a discomfort with separation, not yet having the ability to understand they will come back, borderlines experience a triggering back to abandonment fear, abandonment trauma  which they do not have the inter-personal skills to cope with – thus the maladaptive pathological defenses kick in. Often also those with BPD will punish “other” for leaving or being busy because when “other” isn’t immediately available to provide the soothing and reassurance the borderline needs, the borderline experiences feelings (related to original core wound of abandonment trauma which is often repressed – dissociated from) which is more about intra-psychic trauma and unresolved abandonment trauma from the borderline’s past than it is about actual “memory issues”. Borderlines cannot hold the experience of “other” or any connection to “other” when “other” isn’t right there.

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Me, again.
All of this, is 100% how I feel and relate to the world.  I absolutely feel a kind of discomfort in the back of my mind when people are away, like a small itch.  Of course I know and have experienced that the more you try to control someone or take away the their own hobbies or alone time, the less time they want to spend time with you, they become unhappy and lose a bit of themselves.  Because this has happened to me and I’ve seen it happen to others is why I fight so hard to ignore this itch.
I replay scenarios in my head over and over again of the people I love reading something or getting bad advice from someone and deciding not to be in my life anymore.  I make thoughts up in other people heads when they are away like, “wow look at that woman, Marie will never be that beautiful”, “she really is fat”, “She is fucked up and really is not worth the effort.”

I can’t hold in my head that the people I love will come back to me because theres been so many times in my life that they actually haven’t.

 

 

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“You scare me.”

This is something I’ve heard repeatedly since I was 15.

About my art, my writing.
I’ve heard it through managers from employees I’m training.
I hear it constantly about my strong personality.  Women aren’t supposed to know what they want.

But mostly I hear it about my mood swings.
“You’re overwhelming”, “You intimidate me.”

Besides being extremely hurtful, this is also very insulting.  Mood swings are not something I can control.  I am on medication, I am taking Dialectal Behavioral Therapy classes, I am trying, okay?  Theres nothing else I can do.  Saying these things to someone with a disorder like Borderline Personality or Bipolar is on par with telling a cancer patient they are ugly without their hair.  I am struggling with an illness, just because I don’t have an xray to show you the parts of my brain that are not working right doesn’t mean that its not real.

These mood swings are something I have to deal with every single day.  And it terrifies me.  I scare you? I scare myself a thousand times more.  I am desperate to reach out to people, to participate in activities, but I avoid  a lot of situations because I am terrified of having a mood swing and becoming enraged or incredibly depressed.  I lose friends this way simply because they don’t understand.  I feel trapped by the anxiety of anticipating my next episode.  I can’t truly enjoy happiness when I feel it because I know it will end,  no matter how happy I am, I am still filled with a sense of dread and foreboding.   After every episode I feel exhausted and ashamed.

I am extremely sick of everyone thinking that THEY have it tough because they have to deal with me.
You feel overwhelmed by me? Wah, get over it.  If you want me to be in your life, become strong enough to deal with it.  If I can do it then so can you.

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No, I am not fine.

No, I am not fine.  What evidence does anyone have that I am fine.  I am sick of saying I am when I am not just because it makes you uncomfortable.  I am constantly updating people on all of the shitty turns my life has taken, why the fuck would anyone think I am fine?

The meds I keep being put on are fucking with my hormones, fucking up my period and making me gain weight.  No thats not fucking fine.

I am broke and I spend all day just trying to keep my shit together that I can barely find the strength to do anything that might possibly earn me money.  No that is NOT fucking fine.

Most of my family wants nothing to do with me, probably rightfully so, and everytime I make any goddamn connection or friendship with anyone they drop off the face of the earth due to selfishness or because they’d rather focus on getting laid.  No, thats notg fine.

Today my psychiatrist suggested I go into a facility with inpatient care.  Does that sound like everything is fucking fine???

I get that people are just trying to care, but stop trying and start actually doing it, Im sick of lieing to your faces just to comfort you.

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Hopeless and Hopeful at the Same Time.

I’ve always been mad about the stigma surrounding mental illness and the fact that its not taken seriously, but all of my recent involvement with NAMI and doing my own research has opened my eyes and heart a little more.  I just finished watching this documentary called, Bellevue Inside Out and it left me in tears.

We know so much more about mental health than we ever have before but, dammit, we have SO FAR to go.  The fact that people would still rather kill themselves than come out about their depression breaks my heart.  The shame people afflict on those suffering is appalling.  Psychiatric institutions are still underfunded, understaffed.  A part of me feels lost, like there will never be a way out or a solution to mental illness and another part of me is hopeful and dreams of the day that mental disorders are talked about and recognized at an early stage and treated effectively, the day people can say, “I sometimes think about killing myself” without shame and are REALLY heard and taken seriously.

The most depressing part, I think, is that a lot of mental disorders can be prevented if treated early.  Which means that if people were just more educated or if children had annual psychological checkups, like they do with their dentist or pediatrician then, maybe these disorders wouldn’t even evolve!  In many cases, including my own, if I had gotten help earlier my anxiety, depression, borderline symptoms and distorted thought processes wouldn’t have evolved and become so ingrained in my psyche.  The longer these symptoms persist the harder it is to get help and react to treatment.   

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so passionately about anything in my life.  I wish I could help others more, I wish my own issues didn’t get in the way of reaching out to others.  All I can do right now is to continue to raise awareness the best I can, talk openly about my problems so that I might encourage others to do the same, so that I might show people that it is NOT something to be ashamed of, that it is NOT something we can just “get over”. 

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A Disclaimer:

Before I get really into posting blogs and talking about insights I have about myself and humanity, I thought people should know I have Borderline Personality Disorder.  You’ll see me refer to it just as BPD.  Now, I have never been formally diagnosed with BPD, although I have been formally diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Depression, and Reactive Attachment Disorder.  Because I have been studying BPD since I was 16 yrs old, I’ve decided I don’t need a doctor to tell me I have it.  Just like you don’t need a doctor to tell you that your arm is broken when you can see the bone sticking out.  This isn’t something I came to lightly or easily.  When I was 15/16 my personality completely changed, this is when I believe it surfaced.   I chalked it up to puberty and like any teenager I went to my friends for help, thinking they had been experiencing the same thoughts and emotions as I was.  I was wrong.  Over and over again my friends kept telling me I was weird and they didn’t understand how I felt or what the hell I was talking about.
So I started studying psychology, I wanted to find any explanation that would help me.  I had never even heard of BPD before this and it wasn’t even the first or second or third thing I looked up.  Over the years, reading self help books for BPD sufferers and learning about how they think and why they do the things the do has been the only thing that has ever helped me manage my distorted thought process, moods swings, and self destructive behaviors.  Acknowledging that I have it and taking it seriously is something that has kept Josh and I together because he has also educated himself about it and is therefore able to understand me 1000 times better than anyone else.  If you follow me across websites you can see that I have been talking about BPD for years.  I’ve even been given a bad review at work because of “mood swings”.
I consider myself to be in a sort of a remission as I’ve learned to manage my symptoms very well and avoid situations where I know they could flair up, on occasion they still do and I become extremely violent, manipulative, impulsive, and hurtful.  I am extremely good at holding things in until later, you wouldn’t think so by how obnoxiously opinionated I can be, but the things I hold in tend to be a lot more personal, also my mother ingrained in me that crying is a sign of weakness, so that’s not something I do in public.  A lot of people have probably seen the impulsive and manipulative side of me (sorry ex boyfriends) most people have not seen the violent side of me, especially not in the past 5 years.  Actually these events haunt me so I can name the ones who have- my step sister Amber, my friend Sandy, and Josh.  Josh has seen the worst of it with most of the episodes being directed towards him.  I don’t really know how he wakes up in the morning and still loves me. ( That’s sort of a joke)  Maybe one day Ill be honest about what happens during these episodes, but not today.  I wrote this mostly as a disclaimer, a little bit of insight, and hopefully it will help anyone who is still in my life understand me a little better.  (If you wanna borrow a self help book let me know!)  But mostly I expect you to not take me seriously and forget that I even said this, because that’s what tends to happen, we all have our own battles to fight.

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