I constantly have to put tons of effort into being more positive and into getting closer to staying with those emotions once they do come around. It’s not enough that I’m on anti-depressant, the only one that has ever worked for me. I haven’t been in therapy for a few years now, also partially because of the issues I have. I have a phone phobia and trust issues, so it’s insanely hard for me to even pick up the phone and call different therapists. I like to think that I don’t need a therapist anymore, that I have shit until control now, but I don’t. I need to admit to myself that I am still a damaged person, and that no matter what I do I will never fully be “healed” from the emotionally abusive and controlling childhood I grew up in. I can work on it, I can try to get help in various ways and try to help myself in various ways, but it’s never going to just disappear. It’s something I have to live with. When I started to have panic attacks in my early college years, I was driven towards meditation/spirituality. I sought out books on meditation, and I started to do these meditations fairly often. I started to eat healthier. I did get a lot of help from doing this. I was able to significantly reduce my panic attacks from this. It wasn’t until years later that I finally got on the anti-depressant that got rid of my panic attacks, and significantly improved the other psychological issues I had that lead to me functioning very poorly.

I haven’t lived with my whole dysfunctional family for years. My dad did the most damage on me psychologically by far. My mom did too, but in a pretty different way. After years and years of constant and frightening verbal arguments between my two parents, and years and years of being controlled in every way by my drill-sergeant-esq father, I got pretty fucked up. I also had to watch my oldest brother go through a few different mental breakdowns, as a result of our crazy upbringing. When I was 12 years old I went downstairs in the basement to find my dad holding my brother up against a wall by his throat. My brother had his face all painted up in Mudvayne-esq style. He hadn’t slept in days. My brother was having his first Bi-polar mental breakdown and my insane father thought he could fix him. The problem was that my dad was the one who needed fixing, and no amount of therapy and medications ever really did fix him, or get him anywhere near normal functioning.

I remember seeing my brother taken away by an ambulance. I remember visiting him in the hospital and my dad crying when he told me how my brother said “I’m sorry” to him when he got his first Haldol injection, to take him out of his psychotic episode. I remember feeling such intense sadness and sympathy for the both of them. They were both and still are such damaged people. I tried for so many years to make things better for them, to be there for them, to try to psychologically support and care for them in a way that most people couldn’t. What I did and what they fostered was mostly just a really unhealthy and psychologically dependent relationship with the two of them. I’d like to try to “re-frame” my upbringing but it’s really no use. The damage was done and all I can do now is try to heal. All I feel I can really do is try to learn how to cope in a healthy way. But at 25 years old I have still yet to learn how to do that.

I’m not the same exact person I was as a moody 13 year old. I don’t spend my time feeling sorry for myself or being depressed all the time. I don’t feel hopeless about everything like I used to. I’m free from the bonds of my family that lead to fuck me up so badly. But like I said before the damage was done, and it will last me a lifetime.

I believe I was born a Highly Sensitive Person and an Empath. Then I grew up in a household that was terrible for someone like me. My upbringing would fuck up people who are minimally sensitive, never mind someone as sensitive as I was/am. My parents were/are both really sensitive people as well. But something tells me they aren’t as sensitive as I am. I felt everything that happened between the two of them, between me and each of them separately, between my two brothers, between my brothers and my parents, all so strongly. I felt the impact of all of it. I’d rather view myself as a survivor than a victim but at the same time I don’t think I’ve loved myself enough to validate the fact that I was a victim. I

feel like no one truly understands me. I have felt like that for most of my life. Every time I get anywhere near close to feeling like someone understands me, I find out in one way or another that they don’t. They have no idea what my mind is like, they have no idea just how emotional I am. I know I can’t use this as an excuse for me to treat anyone any particular way, but I feel like I put so much fucking effort into treating everyone really well. I feel like I’m generally super caring towards most people, and I generally love people. I see the best in everyone, much more than most people I know. Because I have such a deep understanding of psychology though and of emotional sickness though as well, I can clearly see other people’s issues too. Because I am so empathetic and highly aware of how people can be emotionally affected by others’ words though, I refrain from criticizing people as much as I can. It’s really hard for me to be open and honest with people when it comes to their faults, even though I try so hard to be.

I hold so much in. Since I have taken the Myers’ Briggs Personality Test, and got the result of INFP, things make even more sense. I’m mostly introverted and also very much driven by my emotions, I internalize my emotions. I have *so* many emotions too, and I know the whole spectrum of them very well. There’s so much that I don’t verbalize to other people, for the sake of not bringing them down. I also don’t open up about these things either, because the last thing I want to do is be the way I used to be. I used to be so unraveled that I couldn’t help but talk in depth and way too often about my problems and what I’ve been through. I lost many friends and boyfriends for this reason. I had a close friend tell me that I needed professional help, and then he stopped being my friend. I’ve had many people abandon me. I understand why. Now I shut down more than ever when I’m emotionally upset or stressed. It’s been so rare that people would actually be empathetic when I did open about these things, and it’s also been so rare that I have not been judged or criticized for being as sensitive as I am. I learned not to trust people. I learned to put their needs and their emotions ahead of my own.

I am so tired of having to explain myself, and then that not even helping matters. I’m so tired of trying so hard not to hurt other people, and chose to hurt myself instead by bottling things up and being hard on myself. I have one close friend now who is the person I have felt the most similar to in my entire life. I don’t get to spend time with her very often though. She has yet to be confused by my reactions to things. She has understood where I was coming from every time, and has been more than empathetic and supportive. We’re so much alike. I think she has been through more trauma that I have though, and as of right now her life is much worse than mine. She tells me to contact her whenever I feel I need to, but I find myself refraining from this because I don’t want to bring her down any farther than she already is. I know she has so much stress and negativity around her as is, the last thing I want to do is add to this. I only want to help her. She’s the only other person in the world that I have actually felt is enough like me to understand why I am the way I am. She’s the only person who has ever actually completely validated the level of trauma I’ve been through. She doesn’t judge me. She just understands and listens. She knows what to say and when to say it. God I wish I could see her more often. But more than that I wish I could learn how to provide myself with that same level of care. I wish I could comfort myself when I get in a dark place. I wish I could make myself feel better, or regulate my emotions. I’ve come along way from where I’ve started but, I still have so far to go.

When things get extra stressful, chaotic, or just overwhelming, I retreat. This is what I’ve learned to do. I withdraw and shut down. Sometimes I will vent to people but that only helps momentarily, and even when I do vent I feel bad about it. I wish I could turn my emotional sensitivity down a few notches. I wish I could also become more assertive. I wish I could fully learn some of the Chakra rights. I need to learn that I have the right to speak and feel without fear of punishment or judgment. I need to learn that I have the right to be and to have. That I have the right to my own personal space and that I welcome and wanted in the places that I live or am. I was never really allowed that when I was growing up. I’m glad that I got into spirituality at that time when I really needed it, but I have lost touch with it again for years. I have been sucked into the responsibilities and realities of adult life. Everything is so serious and stark now and it’s hard because this is a new reality to me. My previous realities were terrible and I never did believe things would get better. They have gotten better but now I have a whole new set of harsh realities to face and I feel like I’m suffocating. I try so hard to remain positive. I somewhat succeed but a lot more so when it comes to other people. I can have generally positive viewpoints on people and I’m good at emotionally supporting other people. But I’m pretty terrible at emotionally supporting myself. I never did learn how to do that. I was never taught how because I was never given consistent and healthy emotional support. In fact most of the time I was just never good enough and whenever I did express emotion in the form of sadness it was invalidated and denied. I was told to stop being a baby, to get over it. I don’t know if I will ever will get over being told to get over it. It’s like the coldest thing you could say to someone in pain, other than worse things like telling them they are worthless (which I have was told many times over as well).

I just want to move into the new chapter of my life and get away from all that is negative or makes me feel hopeless.

http://borderlinepersonality.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/07/the-quiet-borde.html

I have never been diagnosed with this, I’ve only been officially diagnosed with Mood Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, but I feel like this type of Borderline is one that almost always goes undiagnosed. Of course it does, because there are no outward, in your face behaviors to be physically seen as it is all turned inwards. 

I always turn inwards. My father taught me that to cry or express emotion other than anger was to be weak, and was wrong to do. He’d actually insult me, even after knowing why I was breaking down crying, and say things like “Get over it”, “Stop being a baby”, etc. He’d essentially tell me to stop expressing my negative emotions. Yet, he was allowed to run rampant with them and spread his venomous psychological issues all over anyone he was close to. 

I very rarely cry. When I feel like I am going to, I repress it until it goes away if I am around anyone. If I’m by myself, I might let myself cry for a long time, behind doors where I won’t draw any attention or sympathy from anyone. When I get that upset, I have conflicting feelings about what I need at that time. There is a pretty tradition pattern to the way it tends to happen. Typically, I’ll get in some sort of heavy or controversial discussion with someone I’m close to, which ends up playing out just like the arguments would that I grew up around all the time. First, the argument goes on for a long time. It starts out objective, I challenge the person’s thoughts/feelings if I don’t agree with or understand them, they take offense and get defensive, they attack me and say that my reasoning is based in my negative experiences with my father when I was growing up. Ok, I keep saying they, but 9 times out of 10 this is how it goes when these conversations happen between my boyfriend and I. 

Once he brings up that he thinks I’m saying what I’m saying because of how my dad treated me in the past, this is when the downward spiral begins with my emotions. I try to explain myself over and over again, it once again goes misunderstood, then I am told that I’m making him into the “bad guy” when I point out that he is bringing up a very sensitive topic when we weren’t even talking about that in the first place. I told him it was not appropriate to bring up my most sensitive issue, since I had not offered it up for discussion in the first place. People don’t get to bring that shit up whenever they feel like, unless they are being totally insensitive and are unconsciously or consciously trying to “get revenge” for whatever it is I said to them that offended them, even if I wasn’t even talking about them personally in the first place.

So anyways, this happened last night. And unfortunately, it happens every single time him and I have a heavy discussion about something controversial. We are both stubborn, we both have strong opinions, we both have baggage from our upbringings that clouds these discussions, we are both very sensitive, we are both pretty guarded, and thus it devolves from there on. I began to get very emotional at the end of it, and since he also has this method of bringing up my baggage, then saying he is done with the argument, it gets worse. After I start breaking down and actually expressing how upset I am emotionally outwardly (something I very rarely do), he tries to break the ice and interact with me normally again, and I reject that. Then, he walks away while telling me that he will see or talk to me later. I know it’s because he doesn’t know what else to do to fix things, but it hurts ten times more for someone to leave you right when you need them the most, and right after they just finished opening up some very old, very deep wounds.

Even once I can no longer keep myself from crying, and crying hard, for a long time, I’m *still* repressing the extent of it. I’m *still* trying to cry silently and I’m still trying to hide that I’m even crying in the first place. Even when I can’t keep my emotions under wraps anymore, I am still concealing it. I was taught that emotions were wrong and a sign of weakness, and I was consistently told that I was being illogical, or not using logic, etc. I also overheard my father saying this to my mother and my brothers on so many occasions I couldn’t even count them.

Later on, my boyfriend came back over to me again to try to console me. This time, he did it right. He came up behind me, and spoke quietly into my ear. He said, “I just wan’t to tell you that I love you and that I’m sorry if what I said hurt or offended you.” I was still really upset but I accepted his consoling from that point on, because it was now being presented to me in the form that I needed. He said many more sweet things to me, and I laid down and cuddled with him until I was out of tears. It was nice. I still felt guilty about even being the center of attention and about needing this kind of consoling for this amount of time. That’s another thing I was raised to feel–that I am not worthy of this kind of attention and that I shouldn’t seek or accept it. I shouldn’t even *need* it because I’m supposed to be strong minded no matter what. My father raised my brothers and I much like a drill sargeant would. We were forced and expected to be physically fit, like as much as a soldier would be. We were criticized, insulted, screamed at, hovered over, consistently made to feel never good enough. He did this intellectually and emotionally as well. We were forced and expected to be intellectuals, to be constantly analyzing everything, to be viewing and dissecting things in a purely intellectual way. We were expected to be emotionally in control all of the time. Anything else resulted in being called a baby, a sissy, a wuss, etc.

The job that I do does bring up old baggage and that makes it hard psychologically for me, but at the same time it’s the first job that I’ve had in which my personality and experiences were needed, and appreciated. I think that sometimes I overlook the toll that it has taken on me, I guess because I’m still in the same mindset of “toughing it out”. Toughing everything out, rarely taking breaks, rarely asking for help, rarely discussing my concerns with the people that need to hear them. I will likely always be this way.

I have definitely learned to be very independent in most cases, because I’ve had to be and because that kind of thing has kept me the most balanced and the most genuine. Genuinely, I am tough, I am patient and *very* tolerant. However, I am also very sensitive, very empathetic, and very emotionally and intuitively driven. These two sides of me seem to be in somewhat of a battle with one another. I think in general I balance them out well, but I think it also confuses the fuck out of most people. They think you have to be just one way or the other. As much as my father neglected me emotionally and was very tough on me, I still grew up to be a very empathetic person and I still grew up to be very guided by my emotions. I still find them very important, and I surely did not grow up to be cold or insensitive like I easily could have were I to only be a product of my upbringing. 

I’m not sure where I got this trait from since neither of my parents demonstrated this (maybe that’s why, actually), but I have grown up to be overly considerate of other people’s needs, and to be beyond considerate of disrespecting or hurting anyone in any way. Actually I just figured out why. I became this way because this is exactly what was expected out of me. I also did it out of extreme care for my parents and my family. There was so much dysfunction and so much misunderstanding. There was so much unhappiness and stress in my family. I wanted to be there for everyone and I wanted to protect everyone. It was hard as fuck to do that for everyone because on top of that, my parents always used me a pawn to fight with each other even more by fighting to be the “favorite” parent. They both tried to get me to be “on their side”. So, I grew up unassertive and extremely self-effacing. 

I had a mandatory staff meeting today at work. This trait in myself stood out so much, likely only *to* myself, but whatever. I contributed almost nothing, because the management staff were fighting to be in control and fighting to have the dominant voice or say in things. I could feel the tension, and the topic was also something that I’m not very involved with in a way, because it had to do with a resident that is coming back to live in our residential home. She is the most difficult resident we’ve had, and this resident chose me to dislike much more than other staff, so I avoided her as much as possible. She was very mean to me, very critical, rude, insulting, etc. She even flat out refused to accept my help for things at times. The way she treated me felt just like how my father always made me feel growing up, so that’s a huge reason I avoided her as well. It was just too painful, and the other residents love me and appreciate me. The other residents actually ask for my help specifically and express that they really like me and want to be around me. 

I guess I felt awkward at the meeting because it was supposed to be one between the head of the department and the staff, it was supposed to be him “addressing” the program/us, but it was mostly just him and other management arguing for most of the meeting. The actual staff very rarely got a chance to contribute info, as the bossy/aggressive/domineering management staff were taking up all of that space. I don’t think I really like the head of the department, because he doesn’t have a real clue how these residents are, who they are, or how things have really been at the program. I’d like to see him stay at the house for even a few days, especially after the worst resident comes back, so he can get a fucking clue before he starts having so much to say about how we should be acting. I found it really presumptuous, the way he was talking to us. I get why the other management people were arguing with him, because he was being ignorant and totally defending the resident, even though he has no real fucking clue how she has treated all of us. I just wish he would’ve shut up more and asked more questions and listened more to *us*. He should’ve spent the time observing and figuring out how to approach the problem, rather than proposing what should be done without even knowing the initial conditions. It just felt like a waste of time. Whatever. These are just more issues I’m having with people that are too aggressive, too bossy, too domineering, and essentially straight up hogs of attention and all conversation space. They don’t leave any room for quieter types to contribute because they’re too busy trying to control everything in their extroverted ways.

Alone.

No matter what I always end up feeling alone. Doesn’t matter how many fucking people are around. I feel separated. I feel I can really absorb other people’s emotions but yet I still feel like I’m alone, set apart from everybody else. I think I’ve felt like this for most of my life. Both before and after all of the trauma. I never quite fit in anywhere. As soon as I think somebody else truly understands me and my intentions, something happens that breaks that down. Something happens that reinforces my belief that no one will ever understand me and that I will always be misinterpreted. I will be noticed for my flaws, for my most outward behavior, not for what I really am or for my strengths. The core of me isn’t fully shown because I hide a lot. I repress a lot of my intense feelings and thoughts, in order to keep them from upsetting others. I’d rather hurt myself than anybody else. Yet even though I do all that I can to keep people happy, I still manage to push them away in one way or the other. It’s like the more that I reveal myself the more others move away. And I’m so goddamn complicated and broken up into so many different parts with different traits that I’m sure I confuse the fuck out of people.

I just had a like hour and half long argument with my boyfriend. He suggested we go on a walk together earlier today, and I was happy about that because normally I go on my own and he doesn’t typically want to go or I don’t ask him because I want to walk fast. But because he actually asked me to go I felt wanted. It was nice.

But then the walk of course turned into a ridiculous argument the whole time. The whole time that I was just trying to help him. To talk to him about how many people in his life that he keeps around that don’t deserve him. I asked him why he continues to be friends with people that stress him out more than they make him feel good, when the relationship is more toxic than it is healthy. He got incredibly defensive and acted like I was straight up attacking him. Started yelling at me and actually was the one to turn the whole thing into an argument. I don’t know why whenever I’m really honest with someone about something that might be a bit touchy, they become livid. I feel like I try to talk to them about it in a way that is passionate and persistent but also calm. I don’t feel like I’m trying to start a fight at all, yet that is what is suggested by the person on the other end.

I brought this topic up because he won’t let go of people that for the most part just hurt him in one way or the other. He treats them pretty damn well but they are not good friends or are not fair and he continuously gives them chance after chance but all the while frequently complains about how much these people suck. Says really harsh/critical things on a very regular basis about these people, but will not let the ones go that he could let go of. What I got from what he was saying is that he won’t stop being friends with people because of those things, and made it sound like he had no choice.

I know this kind of thing is near impossible to do with family members but with friends you certainly can cut them out. Why keep around friends that are toxic and extremely difficult, why keep around friends that are unwilling to be flexible about anything or to try to be better in any way? Why keep them around if they negatively affect your quality of life??

I think he keeps these people around because they are people he’s known for a long time and so they are super familiar. He won’t let go of these people and the fact that I suggested this to him made him think I was being cold or ridiculous. Said I was being idealistic about it. Kept saying that I just don’t understand because I haven’t been in the situations he’s in.

I know that he doesn’t like to try new things and damn near avoids doing so. He prefers the known, the tried and true, the established things. He has a lot of attachments is what it comes down to. Like he won’t let of people/things/concepts even if they no longer serve him at this point in his life. It’s interesting to me because he’s such a solitary person who is definitely an individual in a lot of ways, yet he is so goddamn attached to the things he already knows front and back. I don’t know what he thinks will go so horribly wrong if he tries to make new friends, if he lets go of these toxic friends, if he tries something entirely new without knowing how it will turn out.

Now I’m not saying that I am not a fearful person in a similar way, but I find that on the whole I am the opposite of him in these ways. I ALWAYS want to go new places, to do new things, to meet new people, to watch new things, to find new music and movies, to try a lot of new things. I love to learn new things, and I love to try them as well. I have had more than enough of the same old bullshit in my life that I never even wanted to begin with. I have had more than enough of the familiar. For the most part it caused me more pain/depression/stress than it did me any good. It made me static, stubborn, stuck, incredibly resentful, and eventually, numb.

I want the new. I want new, positive, exciting things/people in my life. I want new experiences. I want to feel incredibly alive again like I used to, like I always do when I am brought to a point in my life when a lot of things are new. I view change as mostly positive actually, because for the most part the familiar things in my life were very bad. Kept me from growing. Kept me from having hope. Kept me from feeling enthusiastic about anything, kept me from feeling a strong desire for anything other than to get the fuck away from those bad situations and people.

The familiar is not something to cling to because I think it prevents personal growth.

—-everything after this point is post huge meltdown sesh——

Anyways maybe the main reason this argument happened and whatnot is because him & I are total opposites in some ways. And I think that’s actually what makes us compatible in an ironic way..because we complement each other instead of clashing. I think that we help each other grow or to atleast hear/mull over different perspectives. It’s just really hard sometimes because him and I can really agree on a number of things and have a harmonious relationship…and we’re really good friends in addition to being in love, but when we do disagree…it’s a vehement mess. We’re both very intense/stubborn people and neither one of us backs down easily or just lets something go easily or whatever. We both have a lot of baggage too. I think I have more baggage than him but again we just have different types of baggage and we deal with in different ways. He deals with it in a relatively healthy way, while I deal with it in a predominantly unhealthy way. I almost never admit this kind of thing to anyone but I actually did some mild self harm when I was having this meltdown today. The urge to do it was so strong and I felt like just balling my eyes out was not releasing my pain enough, so I scratched the fuck out of my upper thigh. I used to engage in it a lot more when I was like 14, and I’d just scratch really hard then too. I’ve never been diagnosed with Borderline but seriously the more time goes on the more that I feel like the criteria applies to me.

   I feel like whenever I actually make a confident statement about something, not long after something happens that makes me think “I spoke too soon, I should’ve known it’d go wrong again”

My ability/tendency to feel rejected is triggered so easily. And when it is triggered the pain hits fast, and deep, and sticks around until I cry all of the pain out and have nothing left. I feel the worst pangs of rejection (whether real or imagined), within my romantic relationships. I constantly need to be reassured that I am loved and wanted around, even though the guy I am with now has stuck by my side for nearly 2 years now. It took a really long time for me to trust him and to believe that he’d really stay with me despite seeing all of me (the largely broken self). I feel like I believe it now but that doesn’t make me not feel utterly rejected over simple matters still. It can be the most trivial thing or situation, and if it is ignored or pushed away in any way, I crumble. I of course don’t let the person who triggered it know that I’m about to cry my eyes out. I wait until I can do it in secret, unless of course the trigger is so bad that I can’t help but cry like right away. I find it hard to discuss my thoughts/feelings when I have been triggered, because I can’t do so without crying, or without saying something inflammatory that will start a fight. So most of the time, I just shut down. I go silent, I put my numb face on, and I turn off.

I just feel so fucking strongly in general, never mind when someone I really love does or says something that makes me feel as inadequate or bad as I felt when I was a child.

I feel I cannot explain this series of emotional events to anyone and have them truly empathize with what I’m saying. I just feel hollow and disconnected, yet so incredibly full of sadness. It’s a feeling I learned to develop long ago, likely since I was about 9, and the feeling and reaction seems to only deepen as I grow older. These wounds from my past will never go away, atleast not to the point where I can have one romantic relationship in which I never feel this deep rejection. I think that almost all of the time, in reality I’m not being rejected at all (in current situations), but I can’t separate feeling rejected/unwanted from someone simply expressing that they have to be enveloped in something else for a little while. I personalize it all, I can’t go like one day of even slightly less affection or interaction without being convinced that they want to get away from me.

Because my emotional responses are so unreasonable to most everyone else and because they are likely just seen as a confusing burden, I suppress my expression of this very deep feelings. I don’t feel comfortable just openly expressing to my boyfriend that I feel he is rejecting me a lot and that it hurts me a lot, or that I really just want to be close to him physically and mentally for atleast a short period of time each day. I feel I need to suppress myself, and I know this aspect of myself is my inner child. My inner, damaged child. My inner, exhausted yet ceaselessly curious/needy self, that seems to have a hunger that can never be fully satisfied. When I get in that deeply hurt/rejected/ want-to-disappear-now-for-their-sake state of mind, I feel as helpless and needy as a child. What I need in those moments is to be noticed, for my strong emotions to be acknowledged and validated, and for the person that I feel hurt by to do everything they can to let me know just how much I mean to them. But since almost all of this deeply emotional reaction is dealt with by Acting In, it’s probably nearly impossible for anyone else to fully see and feel.

So it’s swept under the rug, or if I do open up about it I STILL repress expressing just how down I feel in these situations, and I still don’t know how to be consoled without feeling like a burden and without still feeling like mostly I’m being pitied and I fucking hate that. The last thing I need at a time like that is to be pitied, to be seen as an overemotional/needy person who is blowing something totally out of proportion, or to be seen as delicate. But I am delicate. I am delicate internally. Writing that previous sentence out made me realize why it is I can’t properly be consoled–because I feel like the way people respond is in a way that shows they see me as a baby. And that is almost entirely the reason why I don’t let people see me cry–growing up & going through A LOT of trauma/depression, I was told over and over again to “stop being a baby”, to “get over it”, to “stop feeling sorry for yourself”. So now no matter what I tell myself, I still feel like I am perceived as being a baby when I do cry.

I’m broken in so many places that when a deeply negative emotion is triggered, I have to cry for usually an hour or more in order to feel better. The pain runs so deep and is so complicated that once a bruise is hit, I re-experience months worth of built up sadness, in one session. Once the dam is opened the water pours out until not a drop is left. It’s like I’m constantly holding an entire ocean of intense feelings within some barriers, and every time something hurts me the ocean fills up a little more, until it eventually has no choice but to overflow and spill all over the place. The thing is, it’s as if I’m already starting at 3/4 full no matter what, and then anything that actually happens after that is just bringing me closer to overflowing again.

Ok so I hope I didn’t just totally fail at using all those metaphors and similes and sound like a complete idiot. I just wrote them out as they came to me in the moment, because I just spent about a hour experiencing a meltdown on my own, even though my boyfriend is right across the room from me, half asleep. He doesn’t even know I’ve been balling my eyes out and that it hurt so badly when he just said he was going to bed abruptly without saying I love you. He doesn’t know that I was curled up in the fetus position for a long time, with tears pouring down my face, feeling utterly unwanted and abandoned, literally holding myself because I felt so low. He doesn’t have any real idea how many times I have felt rejected by him today, even though I know he wasn’t truly rejecting me, he was just busy doing other stuff. Most of all, he doesn’t know and can’t feel just how much I hurt over these small incidents.

I feel so conflicted. I wish that him and I could trade souls for a day, in which we would each experience all of the pain and traumatic experiences that we’ve both had in our lives. I want him to be able to see it all, to feel it all, so that he can understand why I’m so sensitive and so he can understand why I react the ways that I do. I want him to be able to feel how I feel, so that he can know when to sense I am feeling hurt and so that he will know what I need from him when this happens. It hurts so much to feel like your pain isn’t even noticed or validated as intense as it really is, when you feel it so strongly. It hurts to feel like the people you love so much, no matter how well they know you, can never experience the depths of your emotional experience. So you’re essentially alone, and I think almost everyone needs people to recognize their struggles and to empathize with them.

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.