Dear Internet,
Of the three of my main mental issues, Borderline Personality Disorder is the one I least talk about. BPD is behavioral and not chemical, but it does underscore a lot of my bipolarism so I don’t write about it too much. I also went through fairly extensive training using dialectical behavior therapy in the past and I’ve been fairly successful in controlling it.
These days it tends to rear its ugly head when I’m under extreme stress and that’s when my world starts to fall apart. The bipolar mania? I have been super awesome on controlling the triggers and impulsivity. The anxiety? I can self-care and if it’s bad, I can take a klonopin. But the BPD? This is the end game boss. I need all my hearts to wage this war.
The linchpin with BPD is that it is a relationship destroyer, because at its core it’s about abandonment issues as well as self-preservation. I could be in the most stable platonic or romantic relationship ever and I will be utterly convinced of a myriad of things are happening even if there has not been a word said or a hand raised. Attempting to verbalize it was hard then, because I sounded like a needy, jealous harpy. Because I knew, KNEW there was no reason to think these things. But I continued to let whatever those thoughts eat at me until I felt so rotten, I’d be the one who would do the lashing out and destroy the relationship. But after I got into treatment, and started working on it, I could verbalize it and thus, reign the fucker in.
Except, apparently, this week.
With BPD, I’m always looking for protection and backup plans. Never you fear, in any relationship I’ve been in (platonic or romantic), I am always making sure I have a way out. Because you lot are all going to leave me one day and I need to protect myself. I get why some of my ex-lovers accused me of being duplicitous about some things, they weren’t far off but never in the ways they assumed.
In 14.5 hours, the car service is picking me up to take me to the airport so I can fly east to start building the foundation of my new life. There is a lot of apartment hunting, friend seeing, and other things happening. So it would seem pretty awesome for my brain NOW to decide to revolt and lead me down this trail with the following thoughts in my head:
- TheSoonToBeExHusband whose never raised a hand to me, even in jest, is going to harm me in my sleep
- This is later underscored when putting dishes away earlier this evening, I placed a chef’s knife in the butchers block and wondered which of our knives he would stab me with
- TheSoonToBeExHusband, who does not have access or authority to any of my bank accounts or credit cards, will take what last of the cash I have
- TheSoonToBeExHusband will hide/destroy my passport and immigration papers so I can’t leave the country or him (I’ve been seriously looking for a place to store my stuff that he can’t easily find it for the last four days.)
- TheSoonToBeExHusband will lock me out of the house when I get back and leave me without a home or a car
- The gracious host who is putting up with me for the next 3.5 days will ditch me at the airport
- The gracious host, and everyone else I had plans to see this weekend, will ditch me en mass and I’ll be stuck in a hotel room, miserable, and broken hearted
Rationally, I know the likelihood of any of this happening is minute; I have a better chance of winning the lotto. Obviously I can’t fix number 1. Number 2 is illogical because he does not have access to any of what remains of my riches. Number 3 is also illogical because my name is on the title for both things, AND I have options to stay elsewhere if that did happen and I could rent a car. (And the proceed to hire the shark of a divorce lawyer I have spoken to and take him for everything.) Numbers 4 and 5, well, again illogical but again, I have cash on reserve to bail myself out.
See. Backup plans.
BPD is not rational or logical, it is a destroyer and gives no fucks about backup plans. It cares not for your puny logic or rational. All it know is that I’ve been abandoned before, thus it will happen again. With anyone, at anytime. Anywhere. With BPD thinking, I cannot make anyone happy. I cannot be happy. I cannot find joy.
It is so persuasive, that my heart feels like stone right now. It feels like I’m being ripped into shards because all that is coming that could be good, I do not deserve. I have never deserved. I will never be accepted or loved for me.
I, thankfully, kept my old notebooks from DBT training program. Thus this feeling is not permanent. This is an emotional state. Emotions are fleeting. I got myself here and it’s my responsibility to get myself out.
With that, I go take a bath.
xoxo,
Lisa
This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013