My life has been a series of trauma, mishaps, medications, failures, attention-seeking ugliness, facades, lies, torture, and fear of the unknown. I can get unglued in any moment where my emotions are even slightly elevated for any reason. For example, crying my eyes out the other night, leaving my home after arguing with my husband, and going from 0-60 in a matter of minutes just because earlier that day I received bad news and it was festering deep inside of me until it ravaged through my blood, bones, and skin and took over my body. The sad part about this is that most of the time I know when I am overreacting; I know when I need to calm down. The truth of the matter is, most of the time, I cannot do so. Through meditation, reading, studying, trial and error, I have been able to "talk" myself out of coming unglued in many situations. Things that may seem like every day downfalls or sadness to you, become almost traumatic for me. That's the ugly part of BPD.
Another thing I struggle with is trying to figure out what is BPD and what is me. That's why I have to talk myself out of a lot of situations where I might get angry, or leave when I get over stimulated. I seem like a bitch when I do this, but it's the only self soothing tool of a non fatal or detrimental manner than I have come to acquire without the appropriate therapy/medications/assistance. Yes, I've seen counselors, psychiatrists, therapists, whoever, whenever, wherever; whether it be mandatory or by my own will. These people have never lasted very long in my book. Some outside factor may come into play, like a new job with hours that I don't have control over, or just that I don't have the balls to admit that I don't like them and I feel like they are generalizing my illnesses and undermining my feelings. I have done so much reading and evaluating of myself, that my mind moves too fast for my mouth to keep up. This is where the ADD diagnosis came from. But I'm not ADD, I know I'm not. I can concentrate, I can focus, I can be almost lethargic for weeks because of my depression and sleep schedule. These things just are not ADD. But the behaviours, like not being able to say what it is I am thinking in few enough words for my mouth to keep up, or being able to articulate at all because of so many thoughts in any given situation, are characteristics of the ever-popular ADD diagnosis. Because of this, I can't tell the therapists that I know they are wrong, there's much more than what they are seeing, I know exactly where their treatments are headed because I've 1) Done them 2) Know they don't work for me 3)I've researched, trained, and lived psychiatric classes and illnesses for my work and I know the tactics they have and 'hidden' agendas. I know how to get someone to admit something, or to get them to focus on their actions, to get down to the real emotions they are feeling. I know this, I apply it nearly every day in work and with myself. This is not to say, however, that I don't try. I try, damn hard, and when I can speak up, I am almost outspoken and too opinionated. It comes off as pretentious and rude.
It's the out of balance emotions that make it so difficult to articulate what it is I mean to say or how to say it. I try to get down to an even landing and tell myself I have BPD. It does not define me. I am an adult with goals, dreams, and skills that the world needs more of; I need to work at my coping skills and focus on the tasks at hand in order to BE BETTER and reach these goals.
You know that anxiety you get when you're taking a huge test? How about the dream where you are standing in a crowded room naked? Or that time that you had a piece of broccoli in your teeth and no one told you, only to figure out that is why everyone was laughing? Were you ever bullied, told you were things you just aren't? These anxieties plague my every day existence. These anxieties keep me holed up in a room for days and let the dishes pile up. These anxieties also send me out with self-destructive behaviour as well. These anxieties have paranoia attached to them, and a lot of the time, keep me from doing things I want to do because the fear of failure is so great.
Every week I have to fax my hours to work and sometimes, I don't have a chance to do it at the hospitals or facilities I'm working at; so I trek down to Kinkos. On this particular trip, I didn't have my badge with the fax number to send my sheets to. I turned to my razor sharp memory for the answers. I have a visual memory, and can recall faxing previous documents to this number. I enter the number, it doesn't work. Screeeeeeettchhhh from the fax machine. Shit. I was wrong, AGAIN. I yell at my husband to get his smart phone out and then get mad at him for doing it slowly or searching the wrong words. At this point, I feel everyone heard the dreadful sound of the fax and now thinks I'm incapable of such a small task. I try the other number. Same results. Another number, only this time there's a voice on the other end. Fuck! I'm boiling from the inside out, now and feeling nauseous. A clerk comes over to ask if I need help. Keeping my head down and feeling like a total failure, I mumble "No," and then start whispering profanities I've made up until I start to really get mad at my husband. Bless his heart. One last attempt with some sort of obscure search on the googs, I see the number I recognized. I knew it! I did know the number! I entered that number first! What the fuck?! Stupid machine! I fucking hate this shit. Because when things go wrong, we blame machines. I did know the number. I just didn't push one of the buttons hard enough. That entire time, I felt like I was dying. When I stepped outside, the fresh air couldn't have been cold enough. For this, Spokane, I love you. If I would have been living back home in southern California, I don't know if that air would have been as refreshing. I was a hot pan submerged under cold water at that moment. I was safe again.
But now, that feeling is associated with that place, and I try every route imaginable to avoid the dreaded Kinkos in the future.
That, my friends, is BPD.
