Alone

First part was written Friday 9/5/14

It's amazing how easily people will ignore when you are crying.  It doesn't matter how large or small the group, people will still chose to ignore when there are tears in your eyes. Or rolling down your face. 

You're all alone.

I cry alot for a person. Alot. Alot alot. It often gets ignored.

The second greatest gift I got from being with Ginger and the Professor was that I had to decide to take on my share, and maybe even a little bit more, if I wanted to be with them. I had always been in relationships where, at least at some point, my partner was gonna be able to shoulder the financial burdens, so I could let the crazy debilitate me if I wanted to and the bills would be paid. (I'm not particularly proud of that and it isn't fair, but it is honest.) But in this particular relationship, I was gonna have to keep my shit together to a certain extent and pull my weight. Once I decided to do that, even when I wasn't with them in that way anymore, and I was once again back to just having me to answer to, me who would be out on the street, I still kept that mindset.

But even more than that, I realized I was on my own. When I was with them, I was on my own to make enough to contribute. But also, they were already a couple. Maybe it was me that never fully let go enough to be three together. Maybe they are just too solitarily paired to be three. Either way, I was always still a bit on the outside. It had been my biggest fear going into the relationship and, self-fulfilling prophecy or not, I stayed a bit on the outside and I'm alone now. Looking around my apartment last night, my cute, safe, comfy, little hobbit hole, it hit me again how alone I was. That if I was gonna do this, I was gonna have to do this alone. The Professor and I might be lovers and/or play partners and I'll still be close friends with both of them. My folks will help out with money when needed or practical things when possible.  TyRoy helped me move. Moneypenny listens to me. But in the day to day, I am on my own. No Daddy or Master or boyfriend or girlfriend. Just me. 

Addendum written just before posting:

The day after I wrote this, I told the Professor about my very bad night and all these feelings I had about being alone. I hope that I was able to convey that I wasn't trying to make him feel bad or make him do anything, just that I was explaining to him how I felt. I've since had two realizations about this. 

First, doing this myself also has an upside, namely that it is ME that is doing this, that I can be proud of what I'm doing and what I've done, and that it is my fuck-ups that only effect me. 

Second, I'm not actually doing this alone, because I have the help and support of those people I listed, and then some, but I still feel alone. Maybe I'm always going to feel alone. While the point I was making was about it feels much more alone to be doing this without a partner, while many things might be easier if I had a partner to do this with, someone all in with me 24/7, maybe I would still feel alone on some level. 

Gonna Get An Apartment And Never Come Out

I think I'm going to get an apartment and never come out.

Ok, so that's an exaggeration.  Of course I'll come out to go to work. I mean, I'll have to in order to pay for the apartment. But I think I'll be doing a great deal of staying in. Read all my baglog of magazines.  Read all my books so I can get rid of the ones I don't think I'll reread. (Hahahahaha. Like I'm ever going to get rid of them. See, I haven't lost my sense of humor.) I'll keep my hulu queue down to one page. (Again, hahahaha.) I'll try to work on my Netflix queue too. I'll watch all the movies on the top 100 lists and all the movies that have won a best picture Oscar.

Notice what isn't in there? Dating or fucking or romance. That's because it isn't going to be. I've hit that point today where I feel like I'm never going to be able to change enough to have anything close to a functioning long-term romantic relationship. I can be the kindest, sweetest, compassionate,  most generous person I can possibly be and I can even be with people who I love and who truly do love me but I will never not be too much.  Find a sane person and they'll either never understand or I'll make them crazy. Find other crazy people and I'll make them crazier. I can try to hand the times that my feelings are unjustified on my own but I won't always be successful. I'm not sure I'll ever not be more upset by more things more often than most other people. I work hard for these times to be further apart and less intense and to take them out on the people in my life less often. But I will never be a normal person. I will probably always need more handholding, more reassuring, more sex and play, and more tolerance. And in the end, no amount of those good things about me is going to make up for that.

So I'm going to stop trying. I'm going to try to sublimate and forget.

Maybe I'll use all that energy to keep track of my calories,  down to the last one, eating healthier and smaller. Work out daily. Go for long walks in my new neighborhood, no matter how good or not good it is, refusing to be afraid to walk around my home again, but also not allowing myself to be vulnerable again. No skirts or heels for me. And no pink.  Even if I get thinner, I will try to make it so I am also stronger.

Or maybe I'll eat as much as I want of anything I want. No one looks twice at the disgusting fat chick, right? I'm still not seen as the first & easiest target. Well, except for a mugging, since it's not like I could run after you. But I won't have to worry about sex or romance then.

Maybe I'll go back to devoting much of my time to caregiving for my family. My step-father's parents will be moving here in August and his mother has dementia and lung cancer. I'm sure they'll need help. If I devote myself to that, I won't have time for romance. And no one really wants the baggage that comes with that situation anyway. I don't remember if I missed having sex while I cared for my uncle. I was usually able to get it with TyRoy when I was in his area, but it's hard for me to remember what I did or didn't feel, especially during the time I was on the Lithium.

Recently, I've told other people that what I appreciate about DBT is that it doesn't really ask you to focus on the bigger picture things because right now you are probably having a hard enough time just getting through this minute, this hour, this day. It seems to be if more use to me than other things I had learned. I remember when I was 15 the therapist my parents' sent me to asked me what I would want on a deserted island with me. Since no one told me it was a trick question,  I answered honestly. I wanted some books and some cds and my cd walkman and some batteries and a journal and some pens. (I didn't say it then but I had read Lord of the Flies and the book they made into the movie where a teenage Brooke Shields has sex with her brother because they are the only ones on the island. I know that you can find food and water on deserted islands.) He acted like I was the dumbest kid ever. He pulled out Maslovs Heirarchy of Needs and told me how I needed to focus on the bottom layers, Physological Needs (food & water) and Safety & Security Needs (shelter) before I focused on the top needs. This was entirely unhelpful at the time. I was 15 and my parents took care of my food and shelter needs.

But right now, I think I need to combine the two, DBT and Maslo. I need to work on getting a job and my own roof above my head, as the time I will be able to depend on others is quickly running out.  And when I get overwhelmed, I need to do whatever I can to get through the next minute, next hour, next day, until it is bearable again, at least bearable enough to work on getting those base needs met. Right now, that is venting here until I can go to a movie with my friend Marcy so I can stop crying for awhile. Then, it will be time to take my night pills, including a sleeping pill, then I'll try to get up early and work on those needs. Maybe I'm overeacting about the state of my current relationship or about my future relationship prospects, so don't hold me to it. But then again, maybe I'll get an apartment and never come out. Don't say you weren't warned.

Loose Associative Links

"I've been thinking about a problem." Moneypenny and I are sitting in his living room, while I'm on my visit to larger Midwest City from Smaller Midwest City. "If you are working from a many worlds theory, where everyone's life is their own world, then you basically create your own world. What do you think people would do differently if they realized that they created their own world?"  I wasn't sure if this was a poke at how I had been feeling all weekend, so mired in the lack of a clearly, overwhelmingly good decision that I feel unable to make any, or was coming from his own place of wanting to make a better life for himself. Either way, it still put me on the defensive and I went on a five minute rant about how no matter what changes in life or attitude people may make there would still be things in their life that they couldn't change and that would still suck anyway. Then I felt guilty for not being able to add anything to his conversation. I ended up leaving an hour earlier than I might have originally because I couldn't stand to sit there anymore as I fought both being angry and wanting to cry.

These kinds of thought experiments used to be fun for me. Even when I couldn't completely understand or envision them, the seemingly kooky ideas that pop up in quantum mechanics always blew me away and I loved thinking about the possibilities they presented. When I was studying Buddhism and how we create our own realities, I could easily get carried away in those possibilities as well, the ability to unravel so much of the suffering that we have created in our own lives. Stone-cold sober, he and I could have the kind of conversations that people are only supposed to be able to have when they are on some sort of mind-altering substance.

But in recent years, I've drifted further and further away from those kinds of discussions and, on the drive home, I was plagued by the question of why. I used to love those kinds of thought experiments, would come up with at least half of the places we would start on my own. Now it rubs me the wrong way to even things of them. I'm trying to work out why. I'm going to try to arrange my thoughts as best as I can, but I'm not sure how good of a job I'll do, so bare with me.

I think part of it is that with the stuff that has happened in my life, it has felt less important. Who cares about the possibilities of the multi-verse or unravelling the cycles of suffering in our lives when we're caring for ill and/or dying family members? Or even when we are just trying to get by, paycheck to paycheck? When you're spending all your time trying to figure out how to pay the next bills or how to afford to move out or you'd be able to someday go to school to be able to get a better job so you don't have to worry as much about paying the bills, you don't have as much, if any, room in your head for thinking about more esoteric things. Or at least I don't. We had all these conversations when I was 21 and in college. Yes, I only had a part-time job and I had to think about my schoolwork and being able to pay bills, but there were much fewer of them and I was convinced that soon I would have a decent enough job that I wouldn't have to worry as much about paying bills. I was convinced that my near future looked brighter so it wasn't as much of a chore to worry about the bills then. Now I'm 32 and I'm hitting this wall where my future doesn't look any brighter, where my best case scenario is having a future that is this same shade and not a shade darker. As much as I might want to, I just don't have it in me to give a shit about that stuff any more.

But I think that a big part of it is the crazy. I read this article last week from the Atlantic's website that was about the link between creativity and mental illness. Near the end of the article, she writes about talking to another colleague about creativity and schizophrenia (emphasis is mine): "Heston and I discussed whether some particularly creative people owe their gifts to a subclinical variant of schizophrenia that loosens their associative links sufficiently to enhance their creativity but not enough to make them mentally ill." Her end conclusion in the article is : "Some people see things others cannot, and they are right, and we call them creative geniuses. Some people see things others cannot, and they are wrong, and we call them mentally ill. And some people, like John Nash, are both." This really hit home with me. Now, I do not have schizophrenia, or a family history of it, nor have I ever been a creative genius, but I do think that the ways in which I think of things that many others might not come from a different way of associating things. But I think that that much of this is tied to letting the crazy drive the train more. Now that I am not letting her drive the train as much, the less I have that. It is not as bad as I had hoped that it would be when I first started down this road of improving my mental health, but it is there and it is enough of a difference that i notice it. I also have to deal with the long-term side effects of psychiatric medications. My memory has never been the same after I took lithium. Being on a mood-stabilizing medication that wards against the brain chemically induced suicidality as well as bringing up the low parts of the low side and down the up side of the ups means that I don't have those periods of creative hyper-energy anymore. (You know, mania.) As we speak, I'm also having weird things happen which I'm not sure are mental illness or medication related (or neither), like spacing out and losing time, and increased light sensitivity and black floating spots in my vision occasionally. But if you take this and add it up what you get is less memory to cull from, less energy to make associations, and a quieter and more orderly brain with less loose associations. And a woman who is very sad and more than a little angry that she has to make the decision between living life at all and having an interesting brain, though she is pretty sure what decision she will keep making day after day, even though it means she doesn't get to have those conversations anymore.

What I Wish I Could Tell Work

I really don't want to have to look for a job right now. What I want is to be looking for an apartment, to be applying for housing assistance on the off chance that I qualify, and/or to be looking for a roommate situation for awhile. What I want is to find a cheap but airy studio or one bedroom apartment that is just mine, where my cats and my stuff can live, where I can settle in, where I don't have to be anything to or for anyone.

But to keep my job, you want me to be able to tell you a designated person who I will be able to tell when I'm starting to not do very well, so that they can call you and tell you "Hey, she needs a bit of a break, even if she isn't in a place to ask for it herself." I get it. You want to make sure that the clients are taken care of, that I don't no-call no-show and leave everyone wondering what happened to me. And I even understand that you do care for me and you want me to take active steps in dealing with my mental illness, in making sure that I go through an easier time next time that I go through a difficult time.

Just two things.

One: You don't know what I already do for my mental illness and I don't really feel like it is any of your business. While the manager who has dealt with mental illness in her family is sympathetic, the boss ended up throwing out a bunch of the stigmas about mental illness in our conversation and I don't really feel like talking about it with her. Shit, sometimes I have a hard time talking about it with people I am close to, people I love, people I am living with. I sure as hell am not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you that I've been on medications for 13 years. I'm not going to tell you that I picked out my health insurance plan, which you contribute nothing to by the way, specificially so that I could go to the mental health in-patient hospital that I liked the best of the three I've been to. I'm not going to tell you that I go see a psychiatrist every couple of months to tweak my meds, except that until recently I couldn't afford to think about adding another one because I didn't have health insurance to help me afford anything other than barebones generic medications. I'm not going to tell you that I've been in a therapy program for over two years where I see my therapist once a week and go to an educational therapy group once a week. I'm not going to tell you that my girlfriend, who I live with, works in mental health, understands my illness, and I still couldn't tell her. I'm not going to tell you that I didn't tell my therapist how bad it was because I didn't realize it was that bad until everything blew up because I was trying so hard to keep everything under control that I almost thought I would be able to keep it all under control long enough for things to settle down again. I'm not going to tell you these things because I'm not sure that I think it's any of your fucking business. I'm also not going to tell you these things because I worry that you'll think "Well, damn, if she's this bad with all this help, how bad is she really?"

Two: It never works like what you are wanting. It is not like I don't know that this is a chronic illness I have. It's not like I don't say the same things to other people about mental illness, that it is like any other chronic illness, like say diabetes, that must be managed and evaluated in a realistic light. But when I am bad, I am lucky when I can express to someone else that I want to hurt myself, that I have hurt myself, when I'm starting to feel suicidal, when I'm feeling full on suicidal, when I've already attempted. Hell, I had one attempt that no one knew about at the time, that no one knew about until months or maybe a year later when I was joking about it. It doesn't work like that for me. You are right that maybe it should. But guess what? That's something I don't have the head space to change right now. Right now, all I can manage to do is to keep moving, to keep getting up each day, to keep doing chores around the house, to keep going to appointments, to keep taking my meds, to keep eating, to not just decide to fall into a bottle until the money runs out, to keep applying for jobs since it doesn't look like I'm going to be going back to this one. Right now, there are moments when it is all I can do not to harm myself or start drawing up plans, so I can't really promise that I'll  make this thing that I've never been able to do in the 13 years that I've been dealing with this mental illness happen.

I have until Friday to figure out if I'm gonna lie and say that I can do it and name a person or be unemployed.

"Every Love Story is a Ghost Story"-DFW

This is not a love story. At least not in the way that this term is taken today. At the end, the girl doesn't get the boy (or girl, in this modern age.) At this point, it is a little early to tell what the girl does get. (And she's not a girl either. She's a woman. She's over 30. Not only is she older than her mother was when she had her, but she's older than her mother was when she remarried and did her 'happily ever after,' even though we should all know by now that 'happily ever after' is only the start of all the real hard work. Though of course we always forget that.)

But maybe it is a love story. Because the girl, wait, scratch that, woman has found love. Lots of love. Love she didn't think she'd find again. She found two people to love at the same time. On the same date that was supposed to just be for a side fling D/s relationship. (She was supposed to marry a lawyer and start having kids, but that didn't exactly work out like the fairy tale it was on paper.) So she did find love and people who wanted to commit to her and start a family, though not the traditional kind of family but a family nonetheless. She moved in and they started making plans for getting a bigger place, one to fit the three of them, allowing them each space and privacy and give the visiting child a place of his own too.

But this is not a love story because it doesn't end there. Love stories always end there, at the happily ever after. The woman has two major shortcomings. One is that she doesn't work a job that allows for her to work enough hours to pay (what she feels is) her fair share, at least not without working so much that she has a nervous breakdown. Which leads us to her second and larger shortcoming- she's crazy. I'm trying not to put this in a derogatory way, but just the facts. She is bipolar and has borderline personality disorder. To say the least, she has a low tolerance for distress and doesn't have as good of an ability to bounce back as the average person. She's doing better than she has in the past and she tries to work on being better but things are as they are right now and she will probably always be this person to some extent.

This is also not a love story because her lovers also have shortcomings. Not cute ones that resolve themselves by the time they decide to be together or ones that the lover is miraculously able to change by the time they coming running through the airport to stop their lover from leaving. Nope. These people are who they are as well. She knows this and loves them because they are who they are, though, like everyone, sometimes she'd like them to do something(s) differently. She tries for unconditional but she's not perfect. Mostly she just tries to not be one of those types who wants to change a person. But as things got closer to moving day, everyone was stressed and had turned inward and away from each other. "This is just how they are," she told herself. "It will cycle back and everything will be fine after the move."

This is not a love story because they didn't move. The apartment complex was gonna screw them and they decided not to sign the lease. They were a week away from moving, half packed. While they felt triumphant in not getting screwed and working as a family, they were now further away from their goal of living together in a larger place. And the woman was still just as worried as she had been before about being able to afford her share of any place they got that was big enough. Hell, if anything she was more worried. The place that they thought they could afford was only that way because they screw people out of money. Everyone else was still stressed and turned inward. She was so lonely. Every night she went to bed alone. There was very little physical or sexual contact in the household, which was what she craved to keep her head straight, to feel loved and wanted. It's not that they didn't show her or tell her that they loved or wanted her, just that it wasn't in a way that she could take in. That first week after she had a heavier schedule because she had told her work she needed more hours to afford the new apartment. She caved under all the pressure. By Friday, she missed a shift, no call no show. Only a compassionate coworker who's son has bipolar saved her job, or so she is hoping. She started to spiral into that suicidal depression she had struggled with all her life, blocking everyone out herself.

This is not a love story because the woman is leaving. It's not unreasonable for her to ask for the things she asks for. (At least for the most part.) And it's not unreasonable for them to say that they can't give her those things, at least not right now, at least not at the level she needs them. But that leaves her feeling lonely and unloved by people who are just in the next room. Which will leave her resentful and angry before too long. The woman has a friend who has space to rent out in her house for pretty cheap and, though it is her friend, if she can't pull her weight there, it will only be her who eats ramen noodles every night and her credit that gets fucked up. (Update: the woman's friend's therapist doesn't think it's good for two crazy chicks to live together so she's not really sure what she's going to do. )

This is not a love story because the woman knows that leaving could mean the end to their story. Though they cry together and reassure each other that they are still together and it will actually be more special when she comes to visit because they won't have seen each other for awhile and they'll be all over each other as soon as she walks through the door and they are making plans for how to actually shore up their relationship, she knows this could be the beginning of the end, the slow death of what they had but could not sustain. The woman has seen lots of movies and love stories don't end with the heroine alone with her two cats in a two room mother-in-law apartment on the other side of town. But the woman knows she'll kill herself if she stays, that she is killing herself with each night that she masturbates and then cries herself to sleep when the people she want to have sex with are just twenty feet away. The woman knows that it is killing them too. That there isn't enough for them to care for her hurt in the ways they do and care for themselves and/or each other too.

So this is not a love story.

Do You Even Want To Move? With Me?

Want to cry. Want to spend all afternoon crying until there are no more tears or until I fall asleep from sheer exhaustion.

But There are things to be done. It feels much like high school finals times. I guess not as bad or as pressing but the same sort of feeling. I want to cry. I want to just wallow in my sadness until I figure it out "I know how to nurse a bad heartache and i can make it worse when I wanna feel the pain." But I can't because there are thsse these things to be done. All the Decembers when I had to wrap up the semester, papers and finals, as well as wrap presents, and budget for and buy them. Not to mention cleaning the house for company or pack for trips out of town. Never enough time or energy or room to breath when I really just wanted to be sad because I felt so alone at the time of year when people are supposed to feel so connected.

We're searching for places to move to, a place that is all of ours and not just theirs, and I can feel myself start to unravel. I am super worried about money, contemplating desperate measures to ensure that I can contribute as much as I need to, as much as I'd like to. I am searching for a new job, with no luck and alot of worry that it will make me less happy than this one does but I will be stuck because I need the money so badly. We aren't have very much luck even finding places we'd like to look at, since it's hard to find a 3 or 4 bedroom place with a dishwasher and washer & dryer hookup that is within our limited budget. I found zero that the Professor didn't say were in bad neighborhoods. Except for the one that was a scam.

And I'm not the only one stressed about it. Though he had hid it well enough from me, Ginger noticed that the Professor was stressed, biting his nails and chewing on his lip. He moved often as a child and moving stresses him out, though rationally he knows we need a bigger space and that after the move itself things feel fresh and new and full of possibilities. 

We went and looked at the only possibly acceptable place that Ginger had found (the others had been struck down.) They thought it was ok but wanted to look at more places. I felt like the Professor was too dismissive, especially when he had not tried to make any appointments with or add to our viewings places he said only today he wanted to look at. I know that unlike their previous moves, as a couple and individually, we do not need to find a place right fucking now because we aren't moving right now. Since we want to give 30 days notice, we wouldn't even be leaving until the end of April, though we can go for quite awhile month to month with just a little extra fee. But I want a space that is mine,  where all my stuff lives, not just this little bit, with 80% still at my parents' house.

But with all this stress there's a quiet tension oozing through our lives, threatening to bubble up and catch on fire at any moment. (Or maybe that's just me. Gods know it's usually me holding the fire.) I feel like every time I get excited about something or think we should have something, it feels like they are dismissive. Every time we actually attempt to do something concrete,  like lookong online at apartments together or looking at the place today, it feels tense and uncomfortable and I end up with my feelings hurt. (Oh hey, well, there are those tears. I had been planning on writing that I wasn't sure that they would even come out right now, but there they are.) Moving into a place that is ours, the three of uses, with all our names on the lease, is this big symbol of the relationship.  Several weeks ago, Ginger told me that to her, as well as in reality, it is just saying that we'll be together a year, this year that we have signed the lease for. Of course to me, it's much bigger. Right now, I can leave or they can kick me out at any time.  We are committed to each other but there are no tangible, legal or contractual ties holding me to them or them to me. This will be the first thing like that. But our difficulty in working on this together, especially without one or all of us wanting to kill one or both of the other people, doesn't exact bode well for us creating a family together. Well, then again, it kinda seems like most large scale things my family did, so maybe it's not so un-family-like. But it doesn't make me feel very secure about continuing,  about our ability to make this work, about if we should be working to make this family at all. Sometimes I just want to say "fuck it, you two got along fine without me, just stay where you are and I'll go..." well, ok so other than back to my parents' basement, I'm not sure where I'll go and I do love them and want what we've talked about but I just don't know how or when to know if that is enough when the things we have to do as a unit to move forward make us all crazy or homicidal.

I feel like I should ask my mom if this is how she felt every move with my dad. I was on the outside of the decision-making. They would ask me what I thought, what I liked or didn't, but I know that the real decision making was dobe between the two of them, behind closed doors. I was just tagging along. But I know the bickering and squabbles got worse the closer we got to the actual moving day. The day itself was always hell. Nothing we ever did was done right for my dad. Most of the time I hoped they'd just leave me and my stuff wherever we were. (If I can't make it through the hours after feeling slighted about looking at the apartment without crying, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to make it through moving day without having a nervous breakdown. Maybe I should schedule a "mental health vacation" in the nearest psych ward the couple days after moving day.) If we can't even get an apartment,  if I can't even make it through the apartment hunting process with them, does that mean I'm not supposed to be with them?

They are asleep now. The Professor adjusted his sleep schedule so he could be up when we went to look at the townhome, staying up all last night, so he and Ginger went to bed about 2:30. I have a list longer than my arm of stuff I should do and I can sit here on the couch with the laptop, watch hulu, and do them. Should do them. Should have done some of them last night. Or I could finish this romance novel I borrowed from Ginger and then move on to other books I want  to read. After a long spell of not really reading that much, I finished two books in the last seven days with the kindle app on my phone. It feels good to read books again. But I really want to sleep until I stop feeling shitty or until this process magically becomes easier. Or at the very least, until I start to feel like it sucks now but it is just temporary suck, not a sign that this isn't to be, not a sign that I can't handle doing the things grownups do together in a relationship. 

Oh, by the way, I liked the townhome we looked at quite well, though it isn't exactly the one we would get if we got one. The one we looked at has a main level, 3 bedrooms and 1 & 3/4 bathrooms upstairs with a completely unfinished basement. The one we'd want is all the same except half of the basement is finished, with a bathroom,  and we'd use that as another bedroom. The Professor keeps saying that he doesn't want a bedroom but an office with a bed in it. That seems like a distinction without a difference to me, except that it would have a ton more computer stuff in it than one might think of a bedroom as having.  But everyone could have their own room, whatever they called it, and no one would be forced to sleep with anyone else if they didn't want to, and everyone could escape when and if they needed it. You can walk around it and there are a ton of bus stops, so the Professor could get around without us. And there are some places that aren't too too far of a walk, though no grocery stores or convenience stores that I saw. It might not be a big step up in neighborhood,  it isn't bad. I could definitely live there. Though we may have a fight over who gets the master bedroom.

"That I know more of the stars and sea than I do of what's in your head"

It's Beginning to Get to Me- Snow Patrol
I want something
That's purer than the water
Like we were

It's not there now
Ineloquence and anger
Are all we have

Like Saturn's rings
An icy loop around me
Too hard to hold

Lash out first
At all the things we don't like
Or understand

And it's beginning to get to me
That I know more of the stars and sea
Than I do of what's in your head
Barely touching in our cold bed

Are you beginning to get get my point
That all this fighting with aching joints
It's doing nothing but tire us out
No one knows what this fight's about

The answer phone
The lonely sound of your voice
Frozen in time

I only need
The compass that you gave me
To guide me on

And it's beginning to get to me
That I know more of the stars and sea
Than I do of what's in your head
Barely touching in our cold bed

Are you beginning to get get my point
That all this fighting with aching joints
It's doing nothing but tire us out
No one knows what this fight's about

It's so thrilling but also wrong
Don't have to prove that you are so strong
'Cause I can carry you on my back
After our enemies attack

I tried to tell you before I left
But I was screaming under my breath
You are the only thing that makes sense
Just ignore all this present tense

We need to feel breathless with love
And not collapse under its weight
I'm gasping for the air to fill
My lungs with everything I've lost

We need to feel breathless with love
And not collapse under its weight
I'm gasping for the air to fill
My lungs with everything I've lost


I know it's the crazy and yet I often can't stop it. If you'll believe it, this is actually the best that I've ever been in a relationship. If you thought me walking out without saying anything last week was playing games then....you really wouldn't have been able to deal with me even a couple of years ago. Just ask Moneypenny. Of course, one of the most common complaints from people in relationships with borderlines- that we are manipulative, that we play games. But I don't mean to. I wasn't trying to play games. I just knew that if I said one single word I would start to cry and my experience is that that is also seen as being manipulative or playing games, or just completely ignored because I'm too emotional to even talk to at that point. You know, because dismissing me will make me less emotional. 

It's not like you are the only one who has mood swings. It's not like you are the only one who deals with things that I don't see. Except I might tell you those things. I have no idea what is going on with you. Just as you, you have to be strong, don't really have access to emotions in the same way that I might, or even that Ginger might. Then it gets piled on that you are a man, that you are Dom, that you are Daddy, and now that you are Master. All that pressure must be overwhelming. I would imagine it doesn't leave you much room to breath sometimes. Fuck, most of the time. As if your asthma wasn't enough, the literal manifestation of all the things that leave you gasping for air. 

It can feel that way for me sometimes too. Monday, on a day when I was already suicidal, I spent hours looking for houses or duplexes with enough bedrooms, with the features that we wanted, and in the price range. But I don't know this side of town and so most of the ones that were in our price range got shot down. I mean, of course they did. Our price range is not very big. While my work has been saying that I might get more hours on a client after a meeting with the family this weekend, it is just as likely that I'll lose that client altogether. I've been sending out applications for real full-time jobs but with little luck. I've spent the last two days freaking out over how I'm ever going to possibly pay my way. Then work this morning was frantic and crazy-making. 

So it should come as no surprise that when I teased you about not watching shows without me, that I wasn't going to give you the password unless you promised on pain of hairbrush, and you replied Just tell me or don't, that my response was....full of curse words? over the top? dismissive? passive aggressive? Hell, I think the only thing surprising should have been that it hasn't happened sooner. I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner. Usually, I crumple. But today I couldn't. I still have another work shift. I still have more shit to do. And when I get home, I'll still have more shit to do. 

I'm thankful and grateful that you apologized. And, in a minute, I'm gonna apologize for blowing up. Text is just a shitty medium to convey tone in and I'm sure that you didn't get that I was trying to be playful. We've both been on the other end of this particular dust-up. And just like you've been before, I'm tired and spent but I still have to go on. Even when I don't want to. Even when I don't know how to. Sometimes that means that my mood swings wildly or I'm a complete bitch or that I'm completely fucking borderline batshit crazy. Or all three at the same time. Sometimes I can see the train barrelling towards me and I still can't stop it. Hell, sometimes I don't want to stop it. But at least I'm telling you this. I hope that someday you'll be able to tell me something as well. Even if it is at what you think is the exact worse time possible. 

Replaceable (updated)

I was gonna stay in there until the water turned cold but the hot water heater is either better or bigger than I had imagined. Or the water pressure worse. I was still sitting in the tub 40 minutes after I had gotten in the shower, the water from the shower head still trying to rinse out all the red hair dye. Fucking red dye.

The only thing he has said to me all day was good-bye when they left and I think Ginger probably reminded him of that. Over the course of the morning, I had asked him a couple of questions, if he was feeling better today than when he went to bed last night, if he wanted some scrambled eggs, but I got no response. He responded to Ginger's questions and not even in a horribly grumpy way.

I'm not sure if it's really my intuition or if the BPD is blowing everything out of proportion and I'm just seeing things in completely black and white terms, or a combination of the two as well as something else that happened recently, but, sitting there at the bottom of the tub, I feel how utterly replaceable I am, and that I soon may be. While it may be difficult to find someone who gets along as well with Ginger as I do, I know that it would take very little effort for him to find some other submissive woman to come over and play with him, have sex with him, serve him, even if Ginger doesn't like her and doesn't want the other woman around while she's home and awake. It would probably be better since he could just kick that woman out when he was done with her, only call her over when he wanted her. He wouldn't have to deal with her whining about wanting sex when he didn't or nagging him about all the things that she wanted him to do, like taking better care of himself or signing up for health insurance. He wouldn't have to battle with himself when he wanted to do better for her, because he cared about her and realized that things he did or didn't do effected her negatively, but being too depressed or ambivalent to do or not do those things. (Though I'm not actually sure that he feels that last one.) He wouldn't have to confront his ambivalence about having a child just because she wanted one and was getting older. He has a partner in Ginger. Why should he have the pains in the ass that come with another woman if he can just call one in for the fun stuff whenever he pleases?

It isn't that he's said any of this to me. Like I said, I can't tell if it's intuition or crazy. Given my past experience, though, sometimes the crazy is it's own intuition. Maybe it's just wishful thinking because it feels like it would be easier if he discarded me than for me to have to tell him that I don't know how to be with him if he continues to refuse to help himself, especially with the signing of a lease coming ever closer.

The crazy is being exacerbated by something else though. I found my biological father on Facebook last Thursday. It was quite by accident. Some fake person had sent me a friend request which lead me to delete the other friend requests that I had denied. Most of them were people that I knew but didn't want to friend, to share things with. But there was one that I didn't know at all. She lived in the same town as I had last known my bio father to live in. So I went to her page and then her friends page. There he was. When I went to his page, in his "about" section, he listed her as his stepdaughter. He claims someone else's child but not his own. And I'm guessing that if he abuses her mom like he abused mine, she probably wouldn't list him as a friend. Those of you who have been reading the blog for a couple years know that when his current wife tried to friend me, with no personal message or anything, I told her that her and her husband could fuck off, so I do get why he might not be trying to contact me right now. On the other hand, I'd like to think that if it was my child, I would have tried a little harder and on my own. I think the worst part is that I look in his face and I can see my own, but I would not know him if I passed him on the street.

I didn't tell anyone but Moneypenny until today when I told Ginger. Her and the Professor have both been feeling shitty, physically and mentally, for a couple of weeks. I was really looking forward to having people for Valentine's Day and getting to do things, even though I tried to keep it low-key and inexpensive, but I really wanted it to be good. So I tried really hard to put it to the back of my mind and work on giving us all a good time for the holiday. I might not have even told her today but she mentioned having seen an old friend/ sex partner on FB, that he lives in this metro area now, and that she had sent him a message asking him if he and his wife might like to go out to dinner with her and her people.

I think part of the reason that this notion is stuck in my head is that if I'm so replaceable to my own father, how can I not be completely replaceable to any and every one else? I grew up feeling like there must be something defective about me, if my own father didn't want anything to do with me. Not something that I had consciously done wrong, because I was too young when he stopped being a part of my life for me to have consciously done something. But something inherent in me. I had the balls to tell him and his wife to fuck off because I had had the epiphany several months before her friend request that he had only tried to get custody of me and not return me from visitation once to fuck with my mom, not because he wanted me or a daughter or even a child at all. Hell, he wasn't even fucking with my mom because he wanted her but just so he could have someone to fuck with, someone to have power over, someone who's life he could make miserable. And I don't honestly think I want him in my life. As petty as it may be, I want him to want to be in my life and it is infuriating that he raised some other girl but couldn't take any time to be a part of my life for the last 25 years. It sends my crazy brain back to that idea that maybe he saw something wrong with me back then, something he didn't want anything to do with, even if it was his child.

So, when I do know that it would be easy for the Professor to have someone else on standby, when I feel so unable to bridge the distance that is caused by I'm not really sure what, when I feel like he doesn't care enough about me or about the three of us together to help himself, how am I supposed to not feel like I am replaceable, like I could be dismissed at any moment?

**Update**
(Original post was around 1:30pm, updated at 7:15pm)
Maybe it was just the crazy talking. The Professor is all sweetness and attentiveness now and we've been playing catch-up on tv shows ever since I got home around 4pm. It doesn't change how strongly I felt this at the time, but that is part of the bpd that I am still having a hard time managing. And it doesn't change the stuff with my bio father or how all that makes me feel.

I am done with my graceless heart. Tonight I'm going to cut it out and then restart. ...And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't, so here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road. And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope. It's a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat. 'Cause looking for heaven, found the devil in me. Looking for heaven, found the devil in me. Well what the hell I'm gonna let it happen to me. -Florence + the Machine

"Stand back and watch it crash and burn and turn into ash"

I think it was the first time I've ever heard her call me her girlfriend before. I'd said it several times in her presence, but I don't think I'd ever heard her use say it. We talked for hours, while I did that light touch thing on her back. I felt a little better. I felt like she had heard me and she could see where I was coming from, what some of my concerns were in going forward in what is, for her and I, unexplored territory. Is it a triad? Is it her and him, and then me? Of course, though she validated my concerns, she's fine with it developing organically. The crazy doesn't even know what that word means. But I felt better.

He was still asleep and I went to lay down with him for 15 minutes before I had to go to work. I already didn't want to leave. Half asleep still, he apologized for sleeping in so long, rolled over, pulling me to him to spoon him. And I started to cry all over again. I thought I had finished that in the shower earlier that morning, hours and hours ago by now. The only reason he didn't hear me was because he was having his own issues, breathing issues. I closed myself in 'my bedroom' long enough to get it together, then splash cold water on my face, before saying goodbye for the day. For the week actually. I hate leaving and can't wait until we actually have a place of our own.

But I'm scared and I am realizing that I have no good way of expressing how scared to anyone. When you are reading the literature about borderline personality disorder, they use words like "attention-seeking" and "manipulative." When looking at it from an outsider's perspective, I see how it is viewed that way. But from my perspective, I have always had a hard time feeling like people heard me or took me seriously, like people understood how important something was or how intensely I felt something. When I was 11 and 12, I went through an aggressive phase, especially at school, where I punched and hit things, thinking that the outward display would make people care about the inward problem, but it didn't. I retreated into myself. By the time I was 13, just about the time we moved 2 states away, the depression had settled in and I rarely tried to tell or show anyone how wrong things were. The times I got so angry or frustrated that I cried were just the times that I couldn't hold it in anymore, though I still wanted to. Though, to be honest, sometimes I wasn't even aware that things were wrong, just that they hurt, all the time. By then, of course, I thought that was normal. At least normal for me. I don't think it was really until after high school that I started freaking out on people so that they would understand how serious I was about how I felt. Just as quickly as I had learned as a preteen that no one thought anything was really wrong when I cried, I learned that, when it got too much, if I could make it big and over the top, the people who cared about me would pay attention. And yep, I see how that's attention-seeking and manipulative from the other side, but from my side, I was doing the only thing I knew how to do to get any kind of help or validation or love.

I'm doing so much better and being so much more effective. Gods bless Marsha Linahan and her dbt. But romantic relationships seem to really be the test of all that new-found effectiveness. I feel all these things and I feel them so intensely. They can change so fast and they are so confusing sometimes. Not to mention that I'm in a situation that doesn't have a guide book and I don't have many people who can show me the path they walked because we aren't even in the same forest. Everytime I get scared or freaked out or unsure, I feel like I'm hitting the same wall. I try to tell him, but I don't feel like he hears me. Then I do something stupid and make some bad decisions that actually are clearly against the rules. The times that this has happened, in the correction of the transgression, I've worked through the fear or the uncertainty. Driving to work after the incident today, I realized that I don't know how to feel like I'm getting people to hear me, to take me seriously, to understand how intense this is for me, without acting out. I don't even know what that looks like. But I'd rather not let the crazy out. So I try to deal with it myself, internally. Then, I panic a little, do some not very effective, but still minor things- like crying alot, smoking a bit more, drinking a bit more often or a bit more than I should. Usually, after a bit of this, I'll work up the nerve to express that I'm worried or scared or freaked out, which is usually met by "Don't be worried/scared/freaked out. It will be ok." This does not assuage the crazy. It makes her mad and defiant and we end up acting out. I don't want to do that, especially now that I'm fully grasping how far back this pattern goes, but I don't know how to feel like I'm heard without the acting out, especially since the acting out is just so fucking effective.

So, what's the problem, you ask?

First, let me say this. It's been a long time since I've had a relationship that felt like it was going someplace from an early stage. Within weeks, maybe even less, it felt like this was going to be something more. Not only that, but the other person wanted that too. (It took a little bit longer for her to get on board, but it wasn't that much longer.) It took much less time for the other person to want something more in this than it did with TyRoy or my ex-husband or Moneypenny. And it probably hasn't been since my ex-husband that I've had a relationship where we talked about living together and kids and living a life together, where the other person brought up how that looked to them, not just me bringing up how it looked to me. (Yes, TyRoy and I lived together and we did talk about those things, but I still always felt like there was an expiration date on our playing house, even when I did want more.) In addition to this not being a traditional situation, which can be scary, or the situation I envisioned, which is scary, but it's the first time in a long time that I've really been thinking about a long-term situation. So every step along the way, I freak out about something different. Yes, I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't freaking out about something. I know.

They just came back from a four day trip to bumfuck Midwest tiny town for her friend's wedding. Before they left, we had a practical talk about moving in together, like it can't be until March when their lease is up but we want a three bedroom place, we want to save for movers, if I bring my cats he has to have at least one room where no cats are allowed, and we want a king-size bed for puppy-piles. My unfounded and unrealized anxiety about their trip away was that they would change their mind about me and the whole situation while they were away. Of course, what actually happened was that they missed me terribly and came up with more ideas for how we could spend time together, the three of us. But they were wiped out. Her sleep schedule is completely messed up and I barely saw her in the past three days because she was either sleeping or at work. He needed time to do his own thing since he hadn't gotten much alone time in the past three weeks, so he was geeking out on his game. His allergies and asthma were also bothering him. My reasonable mind understood this. Part of this being home, not sexy-visit-sex-play, is that we aren't always on, aren't always having sexy visit sex play time. There are going to be times when, though I am there, I want to be left alone, to read, to talk to someone else on the phone, to do whatever it is I want to do. But it felt like they were in their own worlds and I still felt shut out, which is something that has been bothering me more and more lately. When I came into this situation, I had it in my head that they were a them and I was just something on the outside. It made it much easier to respect the boundaries made and their relationship in general. But as we three have started to become the we, or at least as he's expressed that that is what the two of them want, I'm trying to adjust my framework and I keep seeing the ways that it's not the three of us, but them and me. The past few days, I've felt that acutely, but didn't have a way to say it. So I smoked and I drank and I shoved it down. And when an interesting guy sent me an interesting message on a dating site, I talked to him. And when he said that he wanted to take me out on a date, I said ok, after getting permission, of course. What can I say, it stroked my ego. But as the anxiety of the idea of a date sank in, so did the reality that I didn't really want to go on a date with anyone else. They want me to, so my world doesn't shrink to just them. But what I really wanted to to feel more connected to them, to feel more like an us, and I realized that going on a date with someone else probably wasn't going to make me feel that way. When I finally got the courage to say that to him, I feel like he waved it away. Sometimes I think he forgets that I'm not her, that we don't have their four years of hard won trust and decade of friendship. I think he forgets that I don't have that kind of trust with anyone, where they can just say that it will be ok and I will believe them. When he got up after tucking me in, I cried until I fell asleep. And I cried when I woke up all by myself. Because when I don't feel like I'm taken seriously, there is only about 2 minutes of negative self talk before I get to a place where I feel like this person doesn't care about me, because I'm not the kind of person that people care for and no one is ever going to care for me and I'm always going to be on the outside, a sock without a mate in a world where no one has three feet. And in that place is where the dragons live, folks. Sigh. I've been seeing alot of the dragons lately. I can't seem to destroy that old tape.

And I'm writing this now because I can't not express it, but I don't know how else to say all this. I just want to have a way to tell people, not just him, not just them, but anyone, that something is bothering me, really bothering me, and have them really take me seriously, have them see how intensely I am feeling this, without going out and doing something stupid. I can only hope that this is heard.

All In

A few Saturdays ago, when I wrote this, I have to admit that there was also something else that happened on my way to work. My uncle was in the car with me, riding in the passenger seat with me on my way from my night of sex and play to work. Yes, I know how this sounds. And I'm not necessarily saying that it was his ghost or that I actually saw him. Maybe it was just the part of me that came from him that manifested itself in my passenger seat that morning. At the time, I felt like he was there because he didn't want me to feel any emotional dissonance over the really amazing night and how strongly I was feeling for this guy, even though it wasn't the way I had thought things were going to go. I became less sure of that when I found out some news about people in his circle and it stirred up a bunch of feelings about his loss. Now I'm sure it was the former because he showed up again in my car this morning, as I left the same apartment and that same person, after an even longer and more intense time period. When all I wanted to do was to run away, my uncle was sitting there telling me not to run. 

In this dating thing, I had some specific ideas about what I wanted and, by gods, I was not going to settle for less. I wanted a primary romantic long-term relationship partner, who was also more dominant in bed, and hopefully who was also into the idea of a monogam-ish relationship. And, somehow, he managed to find me. Just at that wrong time. Someone else also found me, a real Dom in a long-term polyamorous relationship, who seemed more than happy to just play with a fairly inexperienced submissive while she found her white picket fence. Of course, that isn't what happened either. We got along well over lunch and I melted the first time he touched me. Not only has he been a good Dom to me so far, but we get along like gangbusters outside of the sex and the play. And I really like his girlfriend. After my last experience with a couple, I wasn't at all interested in having a triad, or larger poly, relationship. When the option came up with someone else that I really liked, because it would have started different, I thought I might as well at least talk with the other person in the proposed relationship. But I wasn't interested in coming into an established couple. Then I met his girlfriend. 

I have only two emotions

Careful fear and dead devotion

I can't get the balance right

Throw my marbles into the fight

Each time I am there, I stay a little longer and things become more intense. I start to have deeper feelings for both of them, though obviously more for him because we are together longer and share a physical relationship. I love being there. I love being with them. How I feel about them, but especially about him, seems completely out of proportion to the short amount of time we've spent together. But they want me back.I text What do you want with me?  When I want to own you comes back as a response, I stop breathing. In the dark, he whispers to me that, if things were all the way he wanted, I wouldn't leave there. How can that not be appealing after all the men in my life who tell me how great I am but that they don't want to be with me. Especially when I think he and her are so great.

And this freaks me the fuck out. When I really like someone and they like me back, I rush in head first. Then, the push-pull, fight or flight, only made worse by the borderline, kicks in and I feel the need to poke it with a stick to see if they overcome my push, thereby proving that they really want me. 

The temptation 

To take the precious things we have apart

To see how they work

Must be resisted for they never fit together again

So there was my uncle, sitting there, telling me not to run, to see this through, despite the situation not being the one that I had originally envisioned, reminding me of all the love he had in his life by accepting what came into it. 

I just wish not running wasn't so hard.

Dating Makes Me Crazier

Ok, so things have turned around with the guy I was seeing. The "things in common" part was already there, in spades. But I was worried about the physical, sexual part. I needn't have worried. Though it took longer than I'm used to, once we finally got an open-ended bit of time with privacy, things fell into place. And now he even has his own pseudonym - "Sweetie." It's a Doctor Who joke. He likes it.

No, now the problem is back to being what is usually is - me. All this dating stuff is making me feel crazier than usual. BPD is a disorder of emotional dysregulation, leading to, among other things, unstable interpersonal relationships. I've been doing pretty good, with the therapy and everything. Work is going well. My family relationships are going well. My friendships are mostly going well. But I haven't really had to deal with a 'real' romantic relationship, which are what have given me the biggest opportunity to create a hot mess. So what are some of my biggest problem areas and how am I already creating a hot mess of things?

Disclosure - I think it probably going without saying that I don't really know how to keep anything to myself. I mean, come on, just read this blog. I'm also not so good knowing when is the right time to tell somebody something. Being culturally trained by romantic comedies, I believe that our relationships would all work, or at least get started, if we'd be uber-honest. So I go out on that limb, in case the other person is holding back. Of course, most of the time I end up with my ass flapping in the wind up there all by myself, with the other person thinking that I came on too strong or am going too fast or just generally freaked the fuck out. 

Yep, already did this one. Though I was fine with leaving things non-exclusive, non-facebook'd til he was ready the first night we were together, particularly because I was planning on taking advantage of the non-exclusive while I still could. But after therapy and a weird meditation, I felt I shouldn't be taking advantage of the non-exclusivity (more on that later) and, even further, that I wanted to at least "have the talk." And after several drinks, I told him so. Obviously, that didn't go so great. He's still around, but he's not my boyfriend. 

Cheating - So all my faithful readers know that I've been less than faithful in past relationships, which is why I started pursuing open relationships. Of course, prefer their LTRRs to be monogamous, so eventually I'm going to run into that problem again. Part of what complicates it even more is that most of my friends are exes and, with some of them at least, being physical in some way, whether that's cuddling while watching tv or sleeping together, is the biggest way I know how to show and receive their caring.

This has already come up as well. After Sweetie said he didn't feel being intimate meant we needed to "have the talk," I brought up my problems with fidelity and that I have bigger problems when it comes to exes. And that Moneypenny is coming into town next weekend and staying with me. Also, that there was a slim possibility TyRoy might need a break from his girlfriend and be coming over this weekend. He seemed fine with it, but he's pretty affable all around. Of course, my therapist had a different take on it and now I feel completely confused about the whole thing. I don't believe that "doing something romantic/sexual with someone else" equals "hurting the primary partner." Of course, a big part of that depends on if you actually hurt your partner. Except he hasn't actually tried to lay claim to that, kinda turned away the offer, and I can't for the life of me get him to answer whether or not it would hurt him if I was with someone else. Maybe he doesn't even know himself, but either way, I can't get him to really say anything. And, despite what my therapist (and everyone else) thinks, I don't really see a good reason to not be romantic or sexual with someone else if it's not hurting anyone. 

Taking things slow - I honestly don't even know what this means. Whenever anyone says this, I just think one or both of those people must not like each other very much or very strongly, because if you like each other and strongly, then you'd be spending a bunch of time together and you'd be together. "Taking things slow" just feels like people think there should be arbitrary limits placed on the relationship, no matter what the people in the relationship feel like doing. Also, i always thought that it was sorta assumed that people disappeared for awhile when they got into a relationship. Yes, I do feel like I probably got a bit too lost in the beginning of previous relationships, but I feel like some level of disappearing into the other person is bound to happen.

I've already explained some of the problems I've run into with this. I was frustrated that the physical/sexual part of the relationship took longer than I was used to getting started. I'm now feeling more in the place to "have the talk" because ....well, I feel like I know enough to be in something more settled with him, not what "non-exclusive, non-facebook'd" means to me, while still getting to know him more. I'm also wrestling with trying not to spend too much time together, but we have very little time where we are both free and can hang out together so I naturally want to spend as much of that time as possible having sex with him, er, I mean, hanging out with him and getting to know him. I just feel like I got this shiny new toy and I want to play with him as much as possible when I have the opportunity. I mean, he doesn't even require batteries. But us BPD people tend to get more lost in relationships than most, to the extent of losing ourselves completely, and then when shit gets real we suddenly switch over from thinking the person is amaz-balls to thinking they are the worst person in the history of bad people. I would also be really easy to let everything else I've worked for fall by the wayside to spend more time with someone I really like, but I don't want to lose that progress.

So right now I'm just massively conflicted and most of what I do or want to do is making me feel more crazy and more dysregulated than usual. A part of me misses fucking when I wasn't going to have a LTRR with that person.

"I'm not a 'good man.' But I'm prepared to be an honorable one."

No I can't change my mind. I knew all the time that she'd go. That's a choice that I made long ago.*

Peeking through the blinds, I just wished he would drive away already so I could start my crying. I'm not sure if it's harder on me when he or I leave after we've had a good visit or when we part after we've been fighting. No, actually, I'm sure that it's harder when we've had a good visit, because I'm sad that we can't have that whenever we want. 

In the last two weeks, I had to say goodbye to my two bestfriends after our official holiday visits. It sucks. Of course, anytime I get to see Moneypenny or TyRoy I know that I'm going to going to have to say goodbye to them, not just "see ya later" to your friend who lives across town, but "goodbye" to someone who is hours or half a country away, who you won't see for a month or several months. Yeah, I know that this is part of the package. And, yes, I'd rather have them in my life in some capacity than not at all. But it sucks. 

It sucks especially when there was a time that you spent all your free time with this person. Because they were your significant other. But you fucked it up. There is nothing you can do about that now. No amount of acceptance makes that sting less. Especially when you're finally back in a place where you would like to be in a romantic relationship again. 

I gave in to the loneliness, but I didn't give up nothing else.**

With every step of the therapy process, I have a little mini-meltdown about the changes I'm about to make, what they might mean for me. I always started questioning if I would still be "me" if I changed this thing or if I will be becoming someone I never wanted to be. My latest meltdown was about how uncomfortable I am with each step I take closer to being an adult. I'm finally at a place where I feel I'm ready to start working a full 40 hour work week at this job and I want to so I can start saving up to get a bit more education and so I can get my car repaired or get a new-to-me car when the time comes. But I never wanted to be an adult, at least not like the adults around me, who were all trapped by the things that they did to be adults. Of course, it's silly. Just because many (most, all) adults I've known have been like that doesn't mean I will be. More importantly, my experience has been that, despite my anxiety to the contrary, I always feel better when I make these positive changes and feel like I've become more myself, with fewer encumbrances and obstacles. 

Another thing I'm working on, after months (years?) of letting my actively ignoring how unhappy I was with it or making rationalizations for why I shouldn't even try, it getting my weight and body under more of my control. I've started off by setting a small goal, hoping that when I achieve it, I'll feel more motivated to keep going and set another goal. But that is life, right? You keep setting new goal posts. With any luck, the goal posts are achievable and you are motivated to keep working. Sometimes the area the goal post is in will change. Maybe at first your goal posts will be in your career, then it will be in your personal life. But when you stop having goal posts, I would think life would become really shitty really fast because all you're doing is struggling with no light at the end of the tunnel, even if the thought of working towards something more or changing your current situation scares the crap out of you. 

My reflection, in the window when I ride, could not save us, but I swear to god I tried.**

In my DBT notebook, at the very beginning of the book, which gives the newbie an outline of what the therapy is trying to do, it lists "Assumptions about Clients with BPD and Therapy." Number 1 is that clients are doing the best they can. Number 3 is that clients need to do better, try harder, and be more motivated to change. That these things are both true at the same time, that we are doing the best we can and we need to try harder, exemplifies what this therapy is all about. With each marker I hit, I still have more to go. 

The real thing behind my mini-meltdowns is that the resulting change is in direct conflict with the story I've told myself my whole life about who I am, what I want, what I can do. Though it's getting better daily, I've always believed that I was this really shitty person, so of course I'd do really shitty things. But reading this quote below by Ta-Nehisi Coates really flipped the script for me. Though it is in a follow-up post to one about guns, it is really about who we are versus what we do (emphasis mine): 

I've been with my spouse for almost 15 years. In those years, I've never been with anyone but the mother of my son. But that's not because I am an especially good and true person. In fact, I am wholly in possession of an unimaginably filthy and mongrel mind. But I am also a dude who believes in guard-rails, as a buddy of mine once put it. I don't believe in getting "in the moment" and then exercising will-power. I believe in avoiding "the moment." I believe in being absolutely clear with myself about why I am having a second drink, and why I am not; why I am going to a party, and why I am not. I believe that the battle is lost at Happy Hour, not at the hotel. I am not a "good man." But I am prepared to be an honorable one.
This is not just true of infidelity, it's true of virtually anything I've ever done in my life. I did not lose 70 pounds through strength of character, goodness or willpower. My character and will angles toward cheesecake, fried chicken and beer -- in no particular order. I lost that weight by not fighting the battle on desire's terms, but fighting before desire can take effect.
These are compacts I have made with myself and with my family. There are other compact we make with our country and society. I tend to think those compacts work best when we do not flatter ourselves, when we are fully aware of the animal in us. 

That one line just kills me: "I am not a "good man." But I am prepared to be an honorable one." For a long time, I've told myself that who we are is what we do, that I can ignore or work past my own feeling that I'm a shitty person if I just do good things. I suppose this is in that same vein except that it doesn't say that doing good makes you good. It seems to imply that being good is not the point, in fact we aren't good, but that we rise above not being good by being aware of what we are doing and truthful with ourselves about why we are doing it. 

Of course, that means trying. Maybe I'm not prepared to be honorable quite yet, but I am prepared to keep trying. 

Where there is desire there is gonna be a flame. Where there is a flame someone's bound to get burned, but just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die. You've gotta get up and try, try, try***

*Mandolin Rain, Bruce Hornsby and the Range

**Almost Honest, Josh Kelley

***Try, Pink

Crossed Wires

I'm not exactly a stranger to my emotional reaction being completely inappropriate or not what one would expect, but it often still surprises me. I'm getting a better handle on it, but nothing exemplifies it like the last couple of days.

I guess I should go back and first talk about what my DBT educational group is working on right now is Wise Mind (a place that is not ruled by your emotional mind or your reasonable mind, but uses both sides) and the how and what skills. The How Skills are Observe, Describe, and Participate and the What Skills are One-Mindfully, Non-judgmentally, and Effectively. Last week, our homework for group was to observe what frame of mind you were in. This week, it's to observe and describe how you are feeling and to participate as fully as possible in your daily life. Though this can be a problem for anyone, BPD people, who have a particularly difficult time with emotional regulation, often just get taken on a ride by our emotions without ever observing exactly what those emotions are or what spurred it. Sometimes you are feeling what is actually a secondary emotion, without ever realizing the primary emotion behind it or the instigating incident. (For example: you might be feeling and expressing extreme anger but it might actually be propelled by a deep fear.) I'll come back to how this is applicable in a minute.

So you all know that I love my job, right? I have complaints, like everyone does, but I really do find it rewarding and I feel like I'm good at it. I have some evidence to back that up as well. But sometimes I still dread going to work. I have a main client and then one that I help out with. With the other client, at least half of my shifts are 5pm to 8pm, most often on Sundays. Usually I putter around the house all day and I feel generally Sunday-y. By the time 3pm rolls around and I have to start getting ready, I am filled with dread about the coming shift, sure that something will go wrong, wanting more than anything to go back to bed. Until recently, I often had the same feelings about hanging out with friends most of the time, which is why most of my friends have been cancelled on multiple times. But with work, as with hanging out with my friends, it was never as bad as I had made it out to be in my head. If I just did it, I usually had a good time. While I think that working evening shifts when I've been up all day and just want to relax makes it more difficult to get going, I have no idea where all that dread comes from. Maybe I need to start observing it more or better, so that I can describe it more fully.

So back in November, I agreed to fill in for that client's regular caregiver over the holiday, starting today (Saturday) til Wednesday morning. It is split shifts, 8am-11am and then 5pm-8pm. My parents can't leave town because my step-dad is on call at his job, so it wasn't like we were going out of town. They agreed to work our festivities around when I was working. Then, Friday the regular caregiver called me around 2pm, just as I was going to settle in at home to do nothing for the rest of the day, and asked if I'd work his evening shift. He sounded really upset about something that he was going through and I wasn't really doing anything, so I agreed. As soon as I hung up, I regretted it. I just wanted to lay down and veg out. Then I just wanted to cry. But I sucked it up, listened to some funny Christmas songs on the way there, and it was fine. Not just "fine, I made it through the shift" but I actually enjoyed it.

One of the only things I can cook well is lasagna. Originally this client and his wife were going to have Christmas together, not with the rest of their larger family, who they spent Thanksgiving with. I decided I'd make them a lasagna on my own time, as a little Christmas gift, so they'd have food and leftovers. Of course, their plans changed and they'll be having their traditional family Christmas dinner. Of course, I'd already promised them a lasagna. We decided that they'd have it tonight. Their son and his wife came in town today and had dinner with them, my lasagna. Despite my worries that they might not think I'm doing a good job or that they wouldn't like my lasagna, everything went well. Actually, it went great. They are so nice and they really seemed to appreciate what I was doing, thought I was doing a good job at it. Even better, they really liked my lasagna.

Because dinner lasted longer than usual, I was there an hour later than normal, getting him into bed. His daughter-in-law hugged me before I left, thanking me so much. I got in my car smiling. Then, thinking about how thankful they seemed and about how good of a job I'd obviously done, I felt the tears welling up in my eyes.

What the fuck is going on? Why am I crying? I'm happy. Not just I should be happy, but I actually am happy. I not only do I have a job that I'm good at, but I have one that matters, that adds a great deal to these people's lives, lets my clients live with as much dignity and comfort as possible. And it's not just that I feel like I am doing a good job, but they think I'm doing a good job. I am happy. Why the fuck am I crying?!?

These are happy tears.

I know that I'm supposed to be observing and describing, but this all feels so weird and not like it is what is supposed to be happening at all that I am just throwing up my hands at the moment. Plus, if I'm actually sad about something, I don't actually want to participate in that sadness at all right now. I just want to try to enjoy my holiday. Fuck sadness, fuck crying. I'm going to be happy this year. Or at least tonight. 

So My Therapist Says, Vol. 4, Very Special "Thank You" Edition

As you might know from the last post, a young woman that I met last year in hospital killed herself the Saturday before last. When I talked to my therapist the day after I wrote the post, we talked a good deal about suicide and about how other people, often people who have never had mental health issues much less ever felt suicidal, feel obligated to offer their opinions about suicide. (And, oh man, did that problem with people's opinions about suicide not get better after the events of this weekend.) We talked about how I feel that it's not my place to say that someone must suffer for the sake of others, even if that suffering is psychological. Yes, I am pro-choice, even to the point of being pro-abortion if that is the woman's choice. I am pro-euthanasia, pro-assisted suicide. I'm thankful for the time that I got with grandfather and with my uncle, but I would like to think that I would have abided by their wishes if they wanted less medical intervention or decided to end their life rather than suffer, especially once they knew they were going to die. On the other hand, as I said in the last post, I am eternally grateful my attempts were not successful. My therapist offered some of her opinions as well, including that she understands that some people might be suffering so much that they feel that is their only choice. As a therapist, she feels it's her duty to never say that a person is beyond treatment. In fact, many of us BPD people have been told that we are beyond treatment before we find DBT. She talked about having the conversation with suicidal people or self-harming people where they push back against her assertions that they shouldn't do it, that they assert that it's their life and they have a right to do what they want with it, even if it's a negative thing. She said that she can't say that they don't have that right, just that everyone's life is worth trying to make it worth living in as skillful of a way as possible.

As for everyone expressing their opinions, particularly those who say things like "How could s/he do this to his/her family/friends/loved ones?" or that suicide is cowardly or whatever other bullshit people say, she gave me a great comeback,"You just say to them,'I'm glad that you are fortunate enough to have never felt like that, but we can't know how this person was feeling. Let's just mourn for the loss and the loss of the family." Then she shared something extremely personal experience with suicide and dealing with those kinds of opinions. She told me that very few people there knew about this. But obviously she felt both that I could benefit from what she shared and that she could trust me enough to tell me.

And I wanted to write this post to express how grateful I am that she told me. Overall, I'm always thankful just to have a caring therapist who is always available, but I'm thankful that I have her as my therapist as well. This, however, was such a special experience. Many mental health professionals don't share anything about their own personal lives. Some don't even have pictures of their loved ones on their desk or any personal touches in their office. I really like that the people at the place where I receive therapy feel that sharing some personal info and experiences creates more of a connection with their clients as well as allows them to use their own lives to draw examples from. Even so, my therapist didn't have to do what she did. She didn't have to show an open-mindedness about how suicidal and self-injuring people feel. She didn't have to trust that I would not twist it. And she definitely didn't have to tell me the specifics of her own experiences. She didn't have to trust me with her personal knowledge. But I am so grateful that she did.

I realize that it must be a really hard job to do. There are so many fine lines to walk, especially when it comes to discussing suicide with someone you know has had multiple suicide attempts in their past. For example, on the one hand, you don't want to discourage our bodily autonomy, a feeling that this body we live in is ours. Many people getting treatment where I do, at the level that I am, have felt like we were forced into taking medications or forced into a "voluntary" hospitalization. We have hostility towards medical professionals who tell us that we have to do, or not do, something, so you're not going to help our therapeutic relationship by telling us that we can't do what we want with our body. I think this probably goes doubly for those of us with BPD. Another thing that BPD people deal with more often than the general population is trauma and abuse. When you've experienced a traumatic event or lived in an abusive situation, you start to internalize that your body is not your own, that it exists to serve others' prerogatives. Many of us disassociate from our bodies, our feelings, or both so we don't have to deal with this problem. The last thing we need is another person, specifically the person who is supposed to be helping us heal, telling us that our body is for someone else.

On the other hand, you're not going to tell us that self-harm or suicide is ok. You're the person trying to find the best way to get us to stop doing that shit. Even if I'm in a place where I'm not self-harming, haven't thought of self-harming or suicide for quite a while, you don't want to leave me with an idea that I might later use to rationalize self-harm or suicide. You do want us to leave continuing to feel that those are not positive, helpful coping mechanisms. You want us to feel like our bodies and our selves should not be hurt, that we have value and worth.

So I wanted to give a very public "thank you" to my amazing therapist. I'm so grateful for all your help and for this specifically.

Where I'm The Doctor & you're Amy, get it?

Bonds

When I turned 15, as we walked around our local mall, my friend handed me an object wrapped in a plastic bag. My birthday present was a vhs tape, Goldfinger. "It's the best one and I wanted to start you out right," he said. I rolled my eyes. What a waste of a present, I thought. There was no way I was going to watch a movie centered on an egotistical male chauvinist. But I had a huge crush on my friend, Mike, so I didn't act too serious when I teased him about his obsession with James Bond. By the next time my birthday rolled around, not only would I have seen all the James Bond films, but I had copies I'd made of his movies and could recite the names of all the movies, in order, along with the actor who starred as Bond in each other them. Most of us, to some extent or another, will attempt to get interested in things that the people we are close to like, especially when we are crushing hard on them. I already liked movies and, what can I say, his enthusiasm helped me to see more in the movies than just some egotistical male chauvinist.

We aren't friends anymore. After high school, we drifted a bit, but it wasn't until the last time I moved back home that he stopped returning my calls and emails. I didn't realize it until just recently, but I think that all my crazy got too much for him. I understand. At least now I do. When I try to put myself in his shoes, I wouldn't want to be friends with me either, especially the me I was back then. Also, I think that our bond was probably one of proximity and lack of connection to other people as much as anything else. We didn't really fit into other groups at school. We were in honors classes together and shared some interests, like movies. I'm sure that we both wanted friends and to feel like we fit somewhere. It might have fizzled out more quickly if I hadn't been so persistent, which I only was because I thought we might get together romantically. Of course, we never did. He is gay, came out our freshman year of college. It is probably better that he ended our friendship. We had less and less in common as time went along after high school. I truly do hope he's happy and has the life that he wants. Every time I see a Bond film, I think about him. Every time a new Bond film comes out, I wonder what he thinks of it.

TyRoy is the first person I've met since him that was so into James Bond. When we were 15, Mike presented James Bond movies as the ultimate in male wish fulfillment, the toys, the cars, and most especially the women. Of course, I've since wondered how much Mike's talk functioned as a beard and how much he watched Goldfinger to see Sean Connery with his shirt off. TyRoy, however, really does love James Bond for those things, just like he pines to live Don Draper's life.

I saw the last James Bond movie with him. Because of our shared love for Bond, I was sad that we wouldn't get to see it in the theater together, as he's now on the West Coast and wouldn't be back for a trip long enough to see me until Christmastime. But as his girlfriend still lives here, he does come out here to steal some time with her whenever he has long weekends, like Thanksgiving.

And this weekend. It didn't occur to me until, on the way to the movie theater, I saw the field of flags for Veteran's Day that he'd have a long weekend this weekend, which is why he warned me that it would be hit or miss to contact him this weekend. Just before the movie started, I got an email confirming what I had suspected. He's here in this city, probably seeing it right now in fact, with his current girlfriend.

I can't say that I am not a little bit sad. In earlier emails, we'd both said that we wished we could go see it together. I thought that ours was a problem of geography, but I see now that it wasn't. It is a question of time and priorities. But it is not that I do not understand. They do not get much time together, which means that he does not get much time in which to be very happy.

During a recent conversation, TyRoy had asked me the difference between BPD people and regular people. In thinking about this, I had to frame it in terms of how I was before I had my BPD under control and now. I am sad. I miss him. That is as it should be. But I am not mad at him. I do not feel like he abandoned me. I am not crushed. My day isn't ruined. The movie isn't ruined. I do not feel like our relationship is ruined, like our bond is anything less than what it is. I know that in his shoes I'd be watching that movie cuddled up with the my significant other, my lover, taking advantage of every moment that I could get with her. I am just a little sad.

And regretful. I recently told my own Moneypenny that I would never go back in time to change anything because I know what I have now and I can't bring myself to say that I wouldn't want them, which is what that amounts to in my mind. I still wouldn't change anything. The ways in which I'm messed up are what brought me to TyRoy, so saying that I wished I had been better in the ways that might have kept us together would probably have also erased that we ever were together. And it might erase his happiness now. But I regret that I wasn't those things enough that it makes continuing to improve all the more important. You never change for the one who left. I don't want to be in the same spot, several years from now, saying that I could be watching the next Bond movie with my bestfriend, if only s/he wasn't with someone else because I was too much of a burden as a partner or a friend.

We Are What You Say by Dead Sara

You gotta sink to learn to swim
These are the rules that they teach and they want you to live
Apologies will never do and I know that way too well
Brought down by somebody else's lack of education
Shouldn't be you that it hurts
But I took all the advice that I could take
Before I thought to give up

I bet you thought I'd give up

And this is what they told me…

These are the lies you gotta believe
They'll give you everything to lose if you disagree
Apologies are over used and I'd be cutting the line way too thin
I'm aware of this bitter behavior
I lost myself somewhere I never wanted to beNow it's time to start all over - we were held to the light
But we never went blind

Oh Oh Oh...Oh Oh Oh...Oh Oh
You can't back down kid, back down kid
Oh Oh Oh...Oh Oh Oh...Oh Oh
You can't back out now, back out now
We are what you say
We are not what you think

Too lonely to survive the loss that was staring back with bloodshot eyes
I almost fell below the ground that I was standing on
Oh no, you said it yourself, you're disappointed
And I'm ashamed and embarrassed to say that
I was a failure, a failure
But not matter how low

Oh Oh Oh...Oh Oh

You can't back down kid...back down kid
Oh Oh Oh...Oh Oh

You can't back out now

Oh Oh Oh...Oh Oh Oh...Oh Oh
You can't back down kid...back down kid
Oh Oh Oh...Oh Oh Oh...Oh Oh
You can't back out now...back out now
We are what you say