Dear Internet,
Yesterday as I was leaving work, someone started calling after me I was walking away from the entrance of the library. As I walking and digging in my bag for my phone, it took me a few seconds to realize that someone was yelling my name. When I looked behind me, I saw a woman limping towards me and who, after my confirmation that I was who she was looking for, she began telling me she had lived at Throbbing Manor for nearly 25 years and is currently battling the bank to get repossession of the house. Taken slightly back (How do you talk to a crazy person?), we had a stilted conversation about the gardens, then she had this off-centered laugh about our battle with the ivy, and that she had also met my mother-in-law last year when TheHusband and mother-in-law were working in the gardens during the MIL’s visit. When I could think no more to say, I walked away from her with a twitchy smile on my lips and a what the fuck just happened in my heart.
Today is my 40th birthday.
I’m in my home office, still in my PJs at 1:30 3 in the afternoon. Wednesday is snoring on her pillow under the window fan. I have both windows open, the blinds are pulled down as far as they will go before they go over the lip of the opened window frame, shrouding the room in semi-darkness.
I am severely depressed.
This isn’t “JESUS FUCK, I’M 40!” depressed or even, “Christ. I’m fat” depressed or even a million things that would make us sad and blue on a daily basis. This is different. Far different. This is enveloping not only my heart, but my entire being, it’s physical as well as mental. When I walk, I feel like I’m moving in half-solidified Jello. When I am still, my skin feels like it’s being pushed on at all of its pores. I feel like I am of single mind and two bodies at once: one physical and one epheremal. I watch myself during the motions, a panel of Lisa judges on how well we passed (8.5! Work on your backflip, girl.) through the motion.
Even at my worst stages of BPD, even at the stages of when things were so bad that I felt like there was no way out, there was almost always some small thread of hope that would keep me from being incredibly stupid.
I don’t have that now. At least, not in the same form as before. I don’t have a desire to kill myself but I don’t feel like there is any hope. It seems that I’ve presented myself with a conundrum. Perhaps I am my own unreliable narrative for the second I had written the above, I knew it to be a lie: I want this to go away and I want to be happy.
On paper, everything looks great: I have a great husband, a lovely house, an awesome job. I have old and new friends who are incredible and supportive. I have a brother whose relationship I’m beginning to depend on and materialistically, I want for nothing. For the first time in over a decade, I do not need to calculate the price of an item down to a per hour working cost. But something is not right in Denmark, as all I want to do is do nothing and feel nothing. I just ate a bar of my favorite chocolate. It tasted good, because something tells me this is what I knew to be my favorite bar of chocolate, but it does not make me happy to have eaten it or treat it with joy or even acknowledge that it is good chocolate. It was a bar a chocolate, so I ate it. It’s boiled down to being that simple.
Food is not consumed because it tastes good but consumed because I know it is there for me to eat it. I drink to hydrate, not to enjoy. I watch television to block out hours, not to enrich. (Except for True Blood, because well, that’s True Blood.) I used to read 10-15 books a month, I have finished two books in the last six. When I read the news, of any kind, I have the same emotion for war pieces as I do for saving kittens from a tree. I can’t tell you the last time I felt sexy. Or when the last time I laughed because I was overjoyed. While I never particularly thought of myself as being vain, I did take care of my appearance and even that is slipping. When I do something that should fall into being beautiful, I find that I’ve placed a mask on my body instead. I’m miming what you think I should be doing because that is socially what people know Lisa to do so that is what I’ll do.
So far, over 50 people have wished me a happy birthday on my Facebook wall but I’m crying because no one has sent me a physical card, because I feel that if they really did care, they would spend the few bucks for the card and the stamp. Then I beat myself up over that bit of hypocritical wants since when is the last time I randomly bought someone a card and sent it (i.e. never). Again, a lie: Today’s post revealed a quick written post from my mother who jotted that she was far too young to have a 40 year old daughter.
I am told by people they care about me (see earlier remark about new and old friends being supportive), but I feel like they are just telling me this to soothe their own souls, even when they are being sincere and true. I have stopped engaging with most people locally because I do not know how to be a friend to them anymore as I don’t know how to react anymore to someone loving me, even platonically. When my husband says he loves me, my first reaction is that I feel like he loves me because it’s habit not because he genuinely does. Then I start to cry because I know that bit about my husband is a lie and I feel like an awful human being for even thinking this to be true. And if there is anyone in this world who loves me pure and true, it’s TheHusband.
I am an emotional mess of contradictions and fallacies, and I’m barely keeping my head above water. You were good to me years ago Internet for working things out (and cheaper then therapy). I hope you don’t mind me coming to you again.
x0x0,
Lisa
