#40 Identity-Loss

I was most like my Dad. We loved animals, had the same sense of humour; we even looked alike. Tommy and I were closest in age and were best friends, especially after we moved out into the country. We explored the fields and woods, rode our bikes, tobogganed and skated in the winter, fished the creeks together in the summer. I felt special to these two people.

When they died, I lost a very important part of myself.

I was still someone’s sister and someone’s child but I was not somebody. (For many reasons I had never been close to my mother or my two older sisters.)

Overnight I went from
being somebody who was important to somebody
to nobody who was important to anybody.

I have struggled with this feeling all of my life. This loss of self.

I am convinced that I am not, nor ever will be, important to anyone ever again.
I know people care about me. I know people like me. I know that I have done good work. I know that I have helped people. I also know that I will never be special in anyone’s life.

That was taken from me when I was just 16 years old. When Tommy and my Dad died they tore such an important part of me away that a great gaping wound remained.
I guess the sight of it scares people off.

#39 Promotion

Within an hour of my father’s death I was given an assignment. The family doctor handed my mother and my older sister tranquilizers; and he gave me a job. He told me that I had to be strong now, because I needed to look after my mother and sister. I was a 16 year old and not a very mature one at that.

It is amazing to me, now, that he would say this to the youngest member of this dysfunctional family. Maybe it was because he had not seen or heard much from me; no breaking down; no blowing up.
I do remember, at the time, being shocked by his laying all this on me and then thinking it wasn’t fair. (My older brother had just died a few months earlier.)

Nonetheless, every day of every year since, I have worried and fretted over their well-being and their financial security. Whenever something was going wrong in their lives, I took it as a certainty that I must step in and solve the problem for them. Many people in my life have been baffled by why I was making these sacrifices but I couldn’t adequately explain. It is my responsibility; their needs come first; they can‘t take care of themselves.

It isn’t often that I think about this man I hardly knew. Before my father’s body was removed from our house, this obedient child was elevated from vulnerable teenager to head of household, thanks to him.

#38 I Am So-Not-Here Right Now

I am so not here right now. Somewhere on a shelf, in the back of my mind, is the knowledge that I am dissociated.

I have that thousand-yard stare. (That’s when it seems like the sight from my two eyes travel parallel out to infinity without ever converging to land on anything or anyone.) All sounds are muffled and anyone who could be talking at me is just making unintelligible noise. If it feels like they are waiting for a response, I can manage to shake my head or mumble “I don’t know”. If it wasn’t a question, I guess that’s confusing but it isn’t about them.

It’s about me…
I don’t know where I have gone or what I am thinking or what I am feeling. I don’t have a clue about anything.
I am not in here.
I have had to leave my body. I no longer remember why.

Somewhere on that shelf in the back of my mind, is the suspicion that I am not depressed.
Even though I would like to curl up in a ball in the middle of a busy highway, I am not depressed.

I probably have been feeling too much for too long. There are some residual clues, like dust mites of the original scary feelings, they float around me. But nothing I can get a hold of, or want to, for that matter. No doubt whatever has been happening has overwhelmed my limited resources and the lights have had to be turned out.

#37 God Must Be Mad!

At my brother’s funeral, I sit frozen to a chair. But as they are lowering the casket lid, in my mind, I am streaking across the room to get inside before it is closed. “Please don’t shut him up in there all by himself. Please, I can’t stay out here alone."
I am terrified for him and for me.
Within a month, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer and, in our collective numbness, we watch helplessly when he dies 4 months later.
In some bizarre cosmic cruelness my sister’s baby, born one month after my brother’s death and named for him, dies in his sleep one month after my father’s death.
God must be truly mad! I thought.
My sisters, my mother and I retreat farther into our family tradition of silence and isolation. Our only connection to one another is our connection to this trinity of bereavement.
We are lost to one another.
I am very alone. Decades pass. I am still alone.

#36 It Must Have Been Awful for Your Parents

Yes, yes it was awful for my parents. They say that the worst pain in the world is to lose a child. Decades ago, a drunk driver murdered my parent’s only son. He was a healthy, well-adjusted 19 year old, about to start a grand new adventure and he was killed.

What I remember most about those days and weeks was how distraught my mom and dad were;
people asking me: how are your parents?
and the terrible silence in the house.
(In fact I wasn’t sure they wanted to go on living; what would happen to me then? I wondered)

But God Damn it! He was my big brother! I was 16 years old and Tommy was my best friend. He had been my only friend in the world and the one person I could trust in our house.
I wanted to be like him. I wanted to be him!

Six months later my father died.
I was still sixteen. In some ways, I still am.

#35 Anxiety Running-a-Muck

I can’t believe the things that are making me anxious these days.
I have this permanent knot in my stomach.

The weather scares me; the passage of time worries me.
I got upset because the garbage can was full.
I had a meltdown because the price of cat food went up.
I grow frightened when the bus doesn’t come right away.

I guess it is a free-floating anxiety that will attach itself to anything in my environment.
I will be almost asleep and suddenly I am kicked in the gut by some random thought…
“What if…”

There seem to be a thousand calamities just waiting to befall me or someone I care about. Everywhere there are accidents waiting to happen. There are catastrophes lining up in front of me.

I need for this fear to stop before it becomes a firestorm and I end up injuring myself.
But even more important, I really wish this panic would subside because it is starting to annoy other people.

#34 PUSH - PULL

I push people away so that my craziness doesn’t bother them, but, then I want to do crazy things to pull them back.

Uppermost in my mind, for most of my life, is that I must avoid doing or saying anything irksome to other people. One part of that is the fear of getting anyone mad at me, and the other part is a constant worry about bothering others. This is a more subtle anxiety, that, if I allow people to inconvenience themselves on my behalf, eventually they will resent me for it! It all boils down to avoiding and pushing people away so they don’t get the chance to reject me.

They other side of the coin is the isolation box that I have constructed for myself from this reasoning. It gets more and more unhappy and lonely in the box so that I have to imagine extreme ways to get anyone to notice me. Sickness or self-injury would probably work, at least temporarily. Letting some of my crazy mixed-up feelings spill over gets attention. Crying over every little thing causes people to come over and look into the box.

Unfortunately, the next day, I am horrified at my desperate actions or words and I immediately return to the push-away scenario as the only way to live.

#33 It Keeps the Pigeons Away

#32 I Am Not Just My BPD

Today I want to say that I am not just my Borderline Personality Disorder. I want to write that I am also an intelligent, mature, creative human being.

I want to but I can’t. Maybe I just picked the wrong day.

Because today I am feeling overwhelmed and confused.
I am frustrated but I don’t know what about.
I am anxious for no specific reason.
I am sad but I can’t figure out why.
I am mad but I am not sure who at.
I am ashamed for feeling like a 5 year old.

And it feels like it has been like this forever.
I have never been intelligent, mature, creative or fun to be around.
Maybe, I have had, and will have, good days, again but, having BPD is like falling into a dark hole.
I cannot see backwards and I cannot see forward. There is only the hole and I am drowning in oversized, inappropriate, very scary feelings.

#31 Is it All in My Mind?

Is it all in my mind or all in my body?
Whenever I feel unexplained pain or sickness, I jump to the conclusion that it is the beginning of the end. I can’t stop worrying that I am deep into some catastrophic illness. It takes some time before I worry my way into my doctor’s office, but nine times out of ten, the thing goes away before I get there. Thank God for that because it means that I don‘t show off my hypochondria and embarrass myself too often.

It is a weird situation for someone who self-injures. When I burn myself, it is an ending. The worrying, the anxiety, the panic stops. I feel in control again and because the pain strips away the fear, I can tolerate it. In fact, it calms me. It actually makes me feel safe again.

But, I guess, the unexplained weakness, pain, and bruising turn out to be all in my mind; perhaps suppressed emotions, a childhood fear of dying. It frightens me to think that they are also all in my body, a different kind of remembering the past. Perhaps, a drawing attention to, or a re-enactment of, some past experience that is impacting my daily life.

Apparently, my body has a mind of its own. It has its own feelings and it holds its own memories. But I don’t know how to listen to it.

#30 My Body is Not My Friend

#29 The Biggest Lie

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”

A wise woman called this the biggest lie that we were told as children.

We all know that words can hurt but, for some of us, they were soul-destroying. Little kids called useless, stupid and hopeless will spend a lifetime scanning their surroundings for confirmation of this. We will find words, looks and gestures that bring back the pain and humiliation. We will continue to think of ourselves this way.

My mother used to say that, “that which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”
I disagree. Words, used as weapons, are not a way to make a child stronger. They break hearts and minds and lives. The words change all of us, for sure, but they cripple some and annihilate others.

#28 Voices From the Past

Today I heard myself say, "But if the bruises are gone, no one will believe me!" I was referring to a situation in the here and now.
But, a few minutes later, I realized that it was also a voice from the past. It even sounded like a six year old on the verge of tears.
It is a very strange phenomenon...
I hear things come out of my mouth that I just did not know or I did not know that I knew.
And I hear things come out of my mouth that only seem to be about the here and now but, on reflection, they are more applicable to some thing or some one from my past.
So much of my life these days, how I think and feel about stuff, is not just about the here and now but it is also about the there and then.

#27 Shattered!

#26 The Real Me?

I hear a faint cracking sound. I ignore it.
I’m too busy thinking that people don’t like me anymore. People are mad at me for something that I have said or done. Every thing that I say is embarrassingly stupid. I know I have been making a fool of myself for some time. Every kind of art I do is garbage. Every word I write is juvenile and amateurish.
It just happens. One day I wake up and I sincerely believe that all of this is reality.

I keep it to myself because no one takes me seriously. They think I am being ridiculous. They see no evidence to support any of it.
Sometimes it lasts for days or weeks. It makes me want to avoid people or at least not talk to them. It keeps me from attempting any creative tasks. It makes me very sad.
Its disappearance is a great relief. But I’m not so sure that the replacement is really me.


Am I the one who feels just good enough? Or am I the useless, hopeless, borderline crazy one?

#25 My Fragile Self

my self
is a fragile self
sometimes
i feel it weakening
i hear it cracking

there is no warning
but there must be reason
a thousand reasons
each one different
a look a word a feeling

my self
my fragile self
collapses into itself

rejection stalks me
fear overwhelms me
despair crushes me

i wish i could fix this flaw in me
i am tired of breaking so easily

my self
my fragile self
deserts me
yet again

i have to chase after it
gather up the pieces
stick them together again
the best way i can

and go on

until i hear that cracking sound again

and I know
my self
my fragile self
is about to
destroy me
all over again.

#24 What's That Clanging Noise???

#23 The Helpless Observer

During my countless meltdowns, I always have a sense of someone, or some part of me, watching the-goings-on.

But she wasn’t inside me (#15 Watching My Brain Work) but remaining at a safe distance somewhere outside. She is as baffled, as any bystander would be, at why I am doing the things I am doing. Throughout my life, whether I was banging my head, or I was doing something far more dangerous, she just watched.

She held onto the belief that I would be dead within hours if I was not allowed to do what I needed to do.

She did not intervene.

Now I don’t know how to feel about her. She stood by and let me take extreme risks. Was she really powerless to help? Did she just not care? Where and when did she learn this trick of stepping outside and just watching?

She is my witness.

These days, as I acquire the ability to feel my feelings without acting on them,
I think of her…the Helpless Observer and I thank her.

#22 FIRESTORMS - An Attempt to Explain

A Firestorm follows weeks of tension, gallons of worry, tons of fear, acres of frustration and a simmering under-the-radar rage.

Attempts to shut it all off and dissociate inevitably bring disaster.

What I experience in a firestorm is nearly impossible to remember, let alone to describe.
It feels like I’m disintegrating, breaking into a zillion pieces.
Time stands still. I am suffocating. My brain is on fire.

I AM GOING TO DIE!

It is so terrifying that I sometimes, literally, try to outrun it - racing up and down in my apartment. I’ve smacked my head against a wall to stun it into submission. I’ve decided, time and time again, that the only thing that will bring relief from it, is suicide.

When I can‘t do it anymore, I will hurt myself.

I sometimes require medical intervention but mostly I have managed the injuries myself. The second the physical pain bursts onto the scene, the firestorm stops.

All is calm. My mind can breathe again.

I dress my wounds, if necessary. I put away anything that I have written during the storm. I try to swallow the shame and embarrassment. When morning comes I want to be able to pretend everything is OK.

I HAVE SURVIVED ONE MORE TIME!