So I have a light version of a sinus infection again, starting when I woke up (at fucking 4 pm, after sleeping probably a total of 12 hrs). I had a really bad sinus infection a couple of weeks ago and it knocked me out for essentially an entire week, where I spent like 4 of those days just in bed watching TV shows on my laptop non-stop, and living off toast with jelly for the most part. I got better at the end of that week but then for this past week my boyfriend has been really sick with some sort of cold type thing and I’ve been seeing him every night still, starting really late at night most of the time. He’s generally been working till 11:30 pm again, so I generally go pick him up when he gets out and then we hang out until about 4 or 5 am. Then I drive home and don’t end up going to bed until 5:30 or 6 am. And then sleep moderately deeply until like 2 pm, but I’m often woken up a few times by some noise or whatnot.

This sinus infection thing isn’t as bad as the other one and it’s a little different but regardless it’s irritating and it’s been a long time since I’ve had sinus infections back to back like that, normally as long as I use my nasal spray every day I just have the chronic sinus issues but don’t get complete infections. I suppose this time the whole sleeping shitty hours and going to bed too late combined with hanging out/swapping germs with my sick boyfriend every day, is probably why it turned to an infection. The weather has been so erratic too, one day it’s like 50 or warmer and really sunny, another it’s 20 degrees and snow/raining, then there are days in a row that are one way and then suddenly change to something else. It’s totally unpredictable and definitely making it nearly impossible to adjust to.

Anywho so what I wanted to get into are not these details on being physically sick. I wanted to talk about more psychologically related stuff (surprise, surprise, right?)

I’ve been reading this blog on Borderline Personality Disorder nearly every day and for awhile every time I read it, I think I stumbled upon it via adding a FB page on the topic, and basically I’ve been reading it so much because I can relate so much to like everything I read on it. I started reading the blog more often because I had a serious meltdown like last week and my boyfriend and I got in a massive fight that spanned across a few days. We both said really hurtful things to each other and of course as usual it eventually resulted in me balling my eyes out and feeling like absolute shit, feeling totally alone and misunderstood, feeling like nothing but a burden, feeling like I don’t deserve him because in my mind he’s much better to me than I am to him, etc. Basically I couldn’t turn those thoughts off and during the midst of this two day bullshit I kept switching back and forth between feeling like he wasn’t considering or noticing how torn up I was about the whole thing, and between thinking that the whole thing happened just because of me and my issues, because of me and my undiagnosed but obvious Borderline.

I definitely believe that for every disorder there is a spectrum from low to high severity, and different forms in which the disorder expresses itself. I have only technically been diagnosed with Mood Disorder Not Otherwise Specified…but I believe that is because there is so much of my psychological problems that are not seen, and mostly felt just within my own head. Unfortunately it seems that these supposed specialists are not so good at seeing beyond what is readily obvious to them in terms of behavior, and they are not so good at digging deeper to try to get to how the person really feels on a regular basis. I don’t feel enough questions are asked, and I know therapy is more about getting to talk through all of your feelings without feeling like you are being judged or misunderstood, but I feel current psychology could use a little bit more of an active approach.

Ugh again so I haven’t gotten to my main point ha. What I’m getting to is that the more I read about Borderline and the more I read the blogs of other people who have it, the more I feel like for once there is a place that I belong psychologically. I have a few close friends that I believe also have low-grade versions of it, but they too are undiagnosed. They are the only other people I can relate to to that deep of a degree, outside of that I can only really relate to the blogs and people I have found on the internet that have it.

Now I’m aware that I’m not a psychiatrist but I think I have been in my own head for long enough now, I have paid an insane amount of attention to how my mind works and how my close relationships work, and I went to college for psychology, as well as had a life’s worth of personal experience with serious disorders. On the Borderline spectrum, I believe I am somewhere between low functioning and high functioning. I’m very good at putting on a mask to the outside world, the one that doesn’t know my true self, and I’m very good at acting like I’m really confident and really put together, as if I’m not afraid of anything. This is apparent at places like school/college or at work. This side of myself is only half of the picture, and it’s not a total facade, it’s just exaggerated and I don’t even consciously chose to do this, it just happens. Of course in hind sight it’s easier to recognize.

Then on the spectrum of Borderline that goes from Introverted to Extroverted Borderline, I’m somewhere right in the middle, although maybe a little more towards the Introverted side. Meaning that I internalize a lot of my experience in life, and more than anything else I experience within myself by reflecting and reacting to my true feelings when I’m alone. This includes holding in the urge to cry many times over when I’m around other people, then eventually getting by myself, usually after like a month of this happening, and then letting myself ball my eyes out for hours. Until I have nothing left and I finally feel relieved, I finally feel lighter.

So even on the Borderline Spectrum and even within the subtypes of it, even then I’m on the borderline. Meh. No wonder I feel like I expend so much energy on a regular basis just to function never mind what it requires to do basic or what would be considered ordinary responsibilities to the average person.

So yeah still haven’t gotten to the main thought/realization that lead to the creation of this post. So even though I’ve only been awake for like 3.5 hrs now with this sickness, I’ve already gone through some mental shit. I texted my boyfriend about being sick and all and he said sorry that he got me sick and I said that wasn’t the only reason it happened, then I proceeded to send a few more texts about how shitty I felt and all my thoughts behind it and how I needed to fix my sleep schedule and shit. He didn’t reply for a little, then I started feeling guilty that I was talking so much about me and so I sent him a text asking how he was feeling today. My mom had called me earlier asking me to do a bunch of stuff for her/to help her with various things, and I had told her I had a sinus infection again. She said I’m sorry you’re sick, but then proceeded to ask the same things of me, as if it didn’t make a difference.

Basically these two interactions made me feel guilty about being sick and made me feel like yet again I’m being selfish because I’m focusing on how I feel and what I need rather than focusing on how they feel and on what they need. I constantly feel guilty when I’m trying to just take care of me, because it does take a lot of time and it’s not easy for me to even take care of me, so then other people end up trying to help and they can’t really do much either, so then I just feel more guilty. And feel like more of a burden. They help me out a lot financially and with physical things but nobody can truly help me in the ways I need most except Zak from time to time. But even then I can tell it takes a lot of energy out of him and he has a hard time understanding even when I describe everything as best as I can. And I understand this, because my psychological workings and my types of disorders are so fucking complicated and contradictory/impossible, so of course it’d just come off as one big clusterfuck.

I know I should be doing more, I should be trying harder to do regular every day things like normal people do, I know I should contribute more to other people and express my appreciation more outwardly, I know I need to be more proactive. It’s just really hard to make big changes like that when you wake up feeling totally exhausted and unmotivated every day, even though you aren’t even working a job or going to school, and have next to no responsibilities other than to walk your dogs and do some chores from time to time.

What makes it even more hard is that it seems that *every* time I finally get more motivated and active and I start to think a lot about *how* I’m going to change things and *how* I’m going to try harder, I seem to get sick or knocked down right after that. It’s like as soon as I’m coming up a little bit, I’m knocked right back down, and generally lower than before.

I know I need therapy again, I know I need to find another psychiatrist and psychologist since I can’t keep the ones I had that were through umass now that I’m done with umass. I only have like 10 or less of my psych meds left and I’ve still yet to do the work to find a psychiatrist just so that I can have a new script written out for me. I just struggle so much with basic things like fucking making a phone call to any one or any place that isn’t something or someone I know extremely well, and I always feel like I’m going to fuck up my words and sound stupid as well as fail at the simple thing that I’m trying to achieve. I have this belief that if I seek out a new psychiatrist I’m going to have to go through *all* of the same beginning bullshit again just for them to write me a new script for a medication that I’ve been on for a year and eight months, and I don’t wanna have to describe my life story all over again to someone who utterly sucks at understanding that stuff (psychiatrists generally have no “bedside manner” as they call it). Basically they are really skilled with Neuroscience and the like but they have next to no people skills, yet they frequently try to also play the role of therapist too, and generally just make me wanna knock them out and steal their script pad thing.

I just don’t see why I should need to go through this BS. I wish that a regular doctor could just write on a fuckin piece of paper for me to get that new script, since at this point there isn’t any more thinking that needs to be done in this department, I just need to be able to keep getting my meds. And I don’t want to have to pay a fucking $20 copay for one useless visit when I only have like $80 to my name. It’s just fucking ridiculous. And why does the US have to be so difficult with providing mental and physical resources to its citizens when essentially every other country has UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. Why does it seem the US cannot figure out the same shit that other countries have, the other countries that have citizens that are much happier and who are sick a lot less often, and citizens that don’t have a ridiculously hard time just getting their physical/safety needs fulfilled?

I just feel like the things that people REALLY need, the support that people REALLY need, are the things that are so difficult to get, and are the things this society and culture try to make you feel ashamed or weak for needing. It’s fucked. I could use a “life coach” probably beyond anything else, because atleast then I could have assistance and support from someone who knows what the fuck they’re doing and knows how to help and WANTS to help, someone who could help me get my own two feet on the ground and learn how to support myself financially and whatnot. But of course that costs money that I don’t have too.

I’m not trying to blame the US or this society/culture for everything because there are things that involve me not being responsible enough, but I do feel like living here certainly helps to continue feeling helpless, lost, alone, like a burden, like I’m totally on my own even though technically I’m not. This Individualist society is fucked, and Collectivist societies work much better together *and* help the individual as a result…but what would be better than both of those things would be a society that lies BETWEEN Individualist and Collectivist. The problem is definitely related to how much our culture encourages dividing people on the whole into one category or the other, when the exact opposite should be the concern/focus. We should be focused on UNIFYING our society and doing what is best to benefit THE WHOLE, not just the individual.

Now I know she has been through some shit in her life but none of it started until she was about 20. She lost her mother right around that age. But before that she had a picture perfect life, she was a fucking cheerleader who dated a jock and lived in a happy go fucking lucky family with happily married parents and two older sisters. She was able to grow up in a healthy way and without constant chaos to make her split into several different fucked up selves. She hasn’t a clue as to the degree to which I have been damaged by this family and how it has never stopped since I was about 9 or 10 years old. NOT AT ALL. I mean that the trauma and fucked up shit never stopped. Now I don’t think it takes a genius to think about how much that can fuck someone up to see your brother go through a major breakdown when you are 12, to constantly witness the huge fights between your Bipolar brother and your totally fucking insane Bipolar father. To see him grabbing my brother by the throat, to see my brother paint himself up like a member of Mudvayne because he lost it, to see him taken away in an ambulance and to see him in the psych ward. That wasn’t even all of it.

I can’t even begin to explain the depth to which I have experienced trauma from that point on, because it would take like 10 really long posts. I was there hearing and seeing it all from the point my brother started breaking down till the point he fully broke down, including my father trying to scream him out of it and tried to control him so much and make him into what he wanted him to be like. It got physical at times, I saw him throw my brother down the stairs around that same time, but above all me and my two brothers were verbally abused non-stop for a very long time, starting since we were very young. My Dad was like a crazier version of a drill sergeant and we were forced to start running around age 8. And we forced to run and do exercise shit and tasks for him that whole fucking time. And we were not allowed to get jobs. Literally not allowed. Because if we got jobs we’d couldn’t get straight A’s in high school, we couldn’t be elitist athletes, we couldn’t be excellent at everything, in his mind. He expected this. Not only expected but forced it down our throats all the time. And because we could not get jobs to make money to eventually buy a car, we could not get out of the house, and oftentimes he would physically blockade us from leaving if we didn’t do what he wanted. He has literally acted as a door many times.

Again lots of details and not getting to the full core. My mom will not try to be understanding or validating about my upbringing and is the same way towards my oldest brother too, the one who had the breakdown(s). He is really depressed right now because he lost his job of almost 2 years and lost his girlfriend of almost 2 years right around the same time. He has been coming over a lot out of what seems like desperation to talk to us, to get support and companionship. I totally understand it because he spends too much time alone, as do I. As we always did growing up too because our father essentially wouldn’t allow us to have our own lives so when we weren’t doing family shit we were totally alone in our rooms, isolated in fucking Granby where nothing ever happens.

Anyways so one of the last times he came over he was really really upset and started crying and talking about how he didn’t even want to be around anymore and how he just wanted to have a normal life and whatnot. I felt so badly as I overheard some of this because it takes a lot for him to cry too. I immediately had my typical panic reaction of needing to go take care of him. Needing to be there for him and help him especially because my mother is possibly the worst person to talk to when you are that depressed. She essentially gets this super annoying high pitched and anxious half-yelling type talk going and she just keeps saying unhelpful shit that makes people feel guilty for feeling depressed and makes them feel like they have to get over it right now and that it’s so simple if you just do this and this and this. I had to interfere. She’s damaging.

I went downstairs and sat down next to him at the table where him and my mom were. I just asked him some questions about a panic attack he mentioned to me the night before, asked him if anything had triggered it or if something happened to lead to it, and I listened to him. I consoled him, I told him that depression makes you feel like you are a shitty person and makes everything look grim and that the thoughts and feelings he’s having are not entirely true to reality. Meaning they are made much more critical and dark because of the depression. Meaning don’t be hard on yourself, you have the right to feel the way you do, and it is not your fault. I told him about my experience with panic attacks, about how I figured out after a long time that generally they are the result of a lot of very strong emotions that have been repressed. I told him that it helps to let yourself feel whatever way you do, if you need to cry, do it, if you need to yell, do it. We talked about a lot of similar topics and I feel I helped him. My mom kept trying to say random unhelpful shit and I essentially cut her off and kept with what I was saying. He noticeably improved.

I don’t understand why some people have no idea how to help someone that is depressed or emotionally struggling. I don’t understand how some people don’t seem to have Empathy, or have buried it away. What people need is to be heard, to be validated, to be supported, to be accepted and unconditionally loved, to not be judged, to be genuinely cared for and to hear things that make them realize they are not alone in how they feel and that it is OK, more than OK to feel the ways that they do.

Ok so I flipped out pretty hard earlier on today. What happened is that the past like five days or more my mom has managed to wake me up in one way or the other early in the morning, after I only got a few hours of sleep. She’s getting a major house renovation thing done and the dudes have been working on it many days in a row starting early in the morning. And luckily for me the drilling and nailing and generally loud fucking noises have been happening *right* below my bedroom. I have had a fucked up sleep schedule for a long time now and I have for most of my life. Tends to happen when you’re crazy and hypersensitive to everything. I used to be a really deep sleeper when I was younger (but then it was because I was so fucking depressed that I could sleep for 12-14 hrs straight, and would have non-stop vivid dreams). This was before I was on any medications too, and before even worse crazy shit had happened in my life. It was really bad then but as life progressed it only got more complicated and more varieties of traumatic shit were happening, and life was getting more demanding as I was finishing high school and starting college.

So anyways I’m certainly not explaining myself in order, but go figure. I’m never in order…

So what happened this morning is that yet a-fuckin-gain I was woken up by my mom making tons of noise at like 10 am…which OK I know that’s not really early but it is when you couldn’t fall asleep until 7 am…and then only slept lightly for those 3 hours. What pisses me the fuck off is that she does this EVERY time she’s home. She is incapable and unwilling to be quiet once she’s awake. I don’t even know what the hell she’s doing most of the time she’s just such a busy body that she manages to make like every sound under the sun, and she frequently talks loudly on the phone in the mornings. The house is really small with paper thin walls so the only way I wouldn’t hear her would be if she cared enough to go in the basement or if she fucking went outside. But again she’s too focused on herself to even think about doing something like that.

And I know she thinks that I and all people SHOULD be awake in the morning hours so she doesn’t care if she wakes me up. She has no understanding of what it’s like to be a night owl and to how it is to deal with insomnia for long periods of time. She’s such an anxious mess and such an early bird that she passes out starting at probably between 9-10 PM (Of course because she drinks herself to a near coma every night), and she stays there asleep (on the couch, with the TV blasting), for hours on end, until she eventually gets up and goes to sleep in her bed till 5 AM. And she is IMMEDIATELY wide awake.

So this morning when I was woken up yet again by her when I was looking forward to sleeping a whole night through because she was supposed to *stay* at work, I lost my shit. I stopped trying to pass out anyways, because then the house work drilling shit started too and I jumped out of bed and start throwing shit all over my room and slamming everything around. As easy as it is for me to get angry, it takes a fucking lot for me to get to this degree of basically uncontrollable rage. It takes a long time of me just putting up with shit and being out of control and being sleep deprived and whatnot before I get to this point. Normally when I’m pissed I just rant to myself or to someone else but I don’t do anything physical. At this point I just wanted to break shit because I am so fed up with her, with living here, with being broke, with not being able to easily correct that because I’m too different to easily keep a “normal person” job, with being in the same fucking house and room for 23 years, with having to be stone cold sober the past like four days, and with being sleep deprived and overstimulated for too long.

Generally I am VERY good at appearing stable but I think a lot of people know I’m not. The thing is I just don’t cause scenes so it’s not really obvious. But sometimes I just can’t keep my cool anymore and I can’t just keep being the passive, overly nice person that just deals and deals and deals with bullshit and irritation without freaking out. Sometimes one of the three main sides of my personality comes out and I am very different. I clearly express my rage, I stop giving a shit about keeping cool for other people’s sake, I start moving around a lot faster and I start talking and thinking with A LOT more aggression. You REALLY don’t want to cross me at this point because I will fucking lay you out or atleast scare the shit out of you (mostly mentally, I won’t actually physically attack someone). Some asshole tried to pass me at the last minute when I was driving up The Notch road right after this rage incident (well actually it was still in motion but), and I shot my fucking head around to look right at the person and was saying out loud “Are you fucking kidding me?” and I know they couldn’t hear me but they knew what was going on, and they immediately stopped trying to pass me and slowed way, way, down.

Anyways I chilled out a bit after I went to pick Zak up to help him with a ride to work since he didn’t have one and wouldn’t have time to make it there via walking. He calms me so much and he’s so fucking understanding and patient and just lets me rant when I need to. And he totally validates my emotional state this way even if he doesn’t say much. He doesn’t try to talk me out of it, he doesn’t try to tell me I’m wrong for flipping out, and he isn’t scared by how I act at this time. He’s just unconditionally there for me. I felt good that I was able to help him out with a ride and that I was also able to get the fuck out of the house and away from what was making me so livid, and he gave me some gas money, then we went to get some breakfast at DD because we had some time before he had to go in. We talked a bunch and after I dropped him off I realized I changed my IPOD music from Tool to Reggae music, and I was genuinely happy. Such a huge turn around. God I love him.

Anyways as usual I described everything in too much detail and haven’t gotten to the gist of what I wanted to write about yet. I hope some of you have the patience to read this all the way through ha.

When I got home my mom almost immediately asked me if I had any luck with my job search and then I said no, then she said I should work at Cumby’s then I said How about No then she said Well sometimes you have to work at a place outside of your field and I said Yeah but I’m not going to just go right for the shitty jobs, then she said something stupid that was invalidating as usual and I walked away.

She’s certainly one of those “normal” people that loves to just say “Why don’t you just get a job?” or “If you get a job things will get better”, and a variety of other super condescending and presumptions statements. For her she is best at working an insane ER job nearly every day and making a lot of money. For her working a 7-3:30 PM job is perfect, because she has an ordinary sleep schedule and an ordinary way of thinking and functioning. I get so fucking pissed because she never seems to think about how fucking chaotic and insane my upbringing has been, and she never seems to take that into consideration or to notice that that’s a huge reason why I have trouble functioning on a regular basis and why I can’t hold a regular people type job. She thinks everything can be solved with one quick fix and then life will be all Joly. She’s a simpleton and cannot even realize that if that were the case I WOULD ALREADY HAVE BEEN WORKING FOR A LONG TIME WITHOUT PROBLEMS. I would never have even been fired from the other jobs I had. She seems to think that I’m the idiot and that I don’t even think about what I need to do or where I’m fucking up or how badly I function in comparison to other people when it comes to fitting into this society. She assumes I need her beyond repetitive and simple advice or I would be totally lost. As if I had not a fucking clue what to do without her. Can you say absolutely invalidating behavior??

*Continued in Next Post*