Wallowing

Well, here I am. I’m in a mood today. I just feel like wallowing. I can feel that my emotions are quite raw at the moment, and it seems every sound I hear, and every sight I see is just like a heavy putrid syrup pouring over my heart and mind, coating it with stickiness I can’t get rid of. I could try to fight it and put on the fake smile but I just don’t want to right now. All I want is to sit and ruminate for awhile. And just let it be. I want to look at the white sky and the snow and float off. Listen to this melancholy music and watch the parade of images that dance in slow motion across the backdrop of my skull. Allow it all to occur, all the words that I don’t want to make sense of…just let them come. Lie around and do absolutely nothing of any worth. Wallow and bathe myself in these feelings that engulf me. Let them be and do not try to fight them.

It’s ok, because deep down I know it will not last forever. In a couple days, I will rise again. I will come up, I will get back on the horse and live again. I’ll keep striving toward the light. But not today.

The Demise of a Family

I’m feeling pretty low, so I’m going to write this. Maybe just as a vent but there really is so much to say, and so much encompassed here.

The crumbling of my marriage has made me think a lot this past year, especially in the last few months after separating for a second time. I know, and have for many years, that the relationship is no good and that it must be severed. But deep down, there is some part of me that still longs for that “perfect family”. The one I envisioned before I had kids. The one that has passed and that will now never be. Part of me doesn’t want to let go of that dream. But I have no choice, and I have to.

I wanted a loving husband, a supportive partner. Someone to share life’s ups and downs, the joy and sorrow and everything in between. Someone to grow closer to as the years went by, not further apart. Sadly, I didn’t get that, and I really in ways can’t blame anyone but myself for making bad choices and continuing on down a path I knew wasn’t right early on. But such is life, hindsight is 20/20 and a whole slew of things seem to come together to make the perfect storm at the time that becomes nearly impossible to escape from. The never ending cycle of people, of relationships.

When our kids came, I had a whole new dream…the dream of being the PTA mom, the mom that is involved in everything her kids do, who is patient, who is their biggest cheerleader and always encouraging them to be the best they can in life. Unfortunately, because of my own issues, I was at a disadvantage when it came to parenting, and I never really realized that. I found it to be hard, harder than most and often wondered why it was so hard and not as enjoyable as I had envisioned. Granted, a lot of things contributed to all that – relationship troubles, being alone, family troubles, mental health issues, kids health problems, moving, work and school issues…in short, the stresses of life hit me hard.

For a long time I managed to hold it together. I struggled with my moods, with depression and suicidal feelings terribly. I tried to continue to put on the brave face, to be the “good wife” and the “good mom” and show no chinks in the armor. But it was really hard to do, and eventually I did break.

After having my son, my stresses in life have only magnified. I love my kids tremendously. In fact they are the most meaningful thing to me. But I worry sometimes that I am a bad example for them. I worry that they see me “too sad” or “too angry” or even “too happy”. I try to exemplify all the traits I wanted to as a mom but each day is a struggle when you do it alone and are trying to maintain your own sanity, and take care of the needs of everyone else on top of it. For years, I have been both mother and father, nurturer and disciplinarian. I have to fill every role, and it’s not a natural place to be – to have to be everything to everyone.

Over the past two years the burnout of the stresses of life have slowly crept up on me to the point where I sometimes have so little energy I can barely get up off the couch. I wouldn’t even describe it as depression. More like – apathy, or even ambivalence. A complete drainage of the mental and physical energy that I need just to get through the days. This is life, and this is the way it is. Some things I can work on, some things I can change. But some I can’t. It isn’t going to get easier until my kids are grown, and I know that realistically. My family will never be “normal” and the broken things between their dad and I will never be mended. What’s done is done. And I accept that, but it doesn’t make me happy. Like I said, a part of me still longs for that ideal nuclear family – mom, dad, kids. The happy picture perfect scene out of a magazine.

I wish that life was not so hard and I wish there was more happiness, more lights to cling onto in the dark pit. I take them where I can find them, wherever that may be. And I keep getting up each day and carrying on, because that’s the best I can do. It’s all I can do.

Sometimes, I wonder what the point of all this is

I don’t even know where to begin this or if I will post it. I alternate with writing in my journal privately and stuff that I post here. I tend to have a bit of a problem with self-disclosure. I overshare. So it’s always a battle to try to decide what to post and what not to post, what is “too much information.”

Anyway I am really feeling miserable today. I really feel just angry and like crying at the same time. There’s a little TMI for you…sometimes, when I get really REALLY angry, I start crying. Doesn’t happen often but when it does it makes me even angrier! Especially if someone is around because they assume I’m sad when really I just want to smash something. I think it’s more of a result of trying to hold anger in. That and probably a bunch of frustration thrown in.

I’m just sitting here listening to angry & depressed music, thinking about all the reasons I feel crappy. And I’m just going to go off about it now.

I feel crappy because I have been sick off and on for a month. I’ve literally been to the doctor 3 times this month for different ailments! I know it partially due to stress and my immune system being compromised. It becomes so mentally draining. I want to go to sleep for a week but I can’t. Not really an option. I have kids, and their issues to deal with. But you know, no one can be “on” all the time. It’s impossible.

I volunteered to make a cake for the fall carnival at my kid’s school. Then I got sick. Now I’ve been rushing around trying to get it worked on (caking is a hobby of mine, so I don’t just throw a mix in a mixer. I make everything from scratch and usually each cake is a 10+ hour endeavor.) So I had this awesome idea and got it pieced together last night only to awake this morning to find my skeleton (cake topper) falling apart and cracking! I’m soooooo mad and upset about it. Not just because it’s not hardening like it should, but because I am doing this for a raffle to raise money for the school. And I’m thinking, who is going to buy this f*%^ed up cake if I can’t fix it??!?!? I have til about 1 PM tomorrow to figure it out *depressed sigh*

We bought a new car today. Ok, it’s not a “new” car. It’s new to us. We needed something so that I could take my girls to school. They have been having issues with problems on the bus and refusing to go to school. They somewhat agree if we drive them (to be fair, it is mostly one of my girls.) We were trying to get by with 1 vehicle for the next year because we plan on moving across country. But with all this huge stuff going on with my kids, it wasn’t feasible. So we bought a mini-van. Yeah, I am now that mom. It’s cool because it’s got a lot of convenient stuff for a person with small children. And my kids really wanted a mini-van, they think they are “so fun”. So now, I have turned over MY TRUCK (which is like my baby) to my husband. It sounds like a stupid thing to be upset about right? I mean, it’s just a car. But it’s my car. It’s big and shiny and has personalized plates and bright pink seat covers…it’s always been good to me. I really love it. On the way home from getting the new mini-van my husband says “The first thing I need to do is get rid of these seat covers!” I’m sure he will drive it around at 80 MPH all the time and in a year it will be a dented piece of $h*t.

We were so busy today we wound up going out to eat with the kids at a sit down restaurant. They were so wild, especially my son. He was flailing and fussing and trying to run away most of the time. It was so stressful, I could barely get any food down because I was just trying to manage the situation. Enjoyable family time? Yeah right.

Life is boring. The past two days I have just been plagued by this overwhelming sense of boredom and blah-ness. Part of it is the weather. I hate it where I live, and I hate winter, period. There is nothing to do in winter, there is nothing to do where I live. Which is why I am moving soon, away from cold and snow and boring isolation.

But even beyond that, life is just boring. It just seems sometimes like everything is recycled. You get excited about something but then it lasts a short while and it’s over. You have to find something else to get excited about. Once you’ve experienced something once, it’s like it all becomes the same. You’ve had sex once, you’ve done it a million times. You’ve eaten one piece of chocolate mousse, you’ve eaten a million. You’ve watched one movie, you’ve seen them all. You know what I mean? There is no real point. It’s just various versions of the same thing. But we’re always seeking out distractions, diversions from the monotony of life.

I live a life without love. Not entirely – I love my kids and they love me. In fact I would say they are the “loves of my life”. The only things (besides God) that I do love. But I guess I mean love in an adult sense. Romantic love, partner love. I sort of gave up long ago on the idea, and I accepted that. I was fully prepared to live life alone and just do it on my own. Detached? Jaded? Maybe. But functional. Then when my husband moved back in, everything became f*%#ed up again. Being constantly confronted with negativity and hostility takes a toll. I waffle between being hopeful and hopeless about it. Most of the time I just don’t care. Like I say, I’m detached. It’s a weird feeling. My motto a long time ago became “It is what it is.” I even found this at the store months back. I contemplated buying it.

I did see a young couple today though, and they brought me kind of low. I was in our new mini-van, waiting for my husband and daughter to get a few things while my son was napping. A car pulled up across from us, and there was a young couple. They were laughing and smiling and when they parked they just sat talking. Then they had a cute little peck. Then they held each other’s faces and kissed tenderly. They sat quite a while, talking, laughing, kissing in the darkened night, thinking no one could see. It was very sweet. I remembered being that young person like them, sharing those moments of laughter with someone I loved, being so hopeful. Then you make choices, you grow up, you realize life didn’t turn out the way you hoped. And you can’t turn back time. Life is what it is now, and I accept that.

So there is my bleak outlook on life for now.

 I could go on and on…but I won’t. Just life. Everyday life.

Depression, sensitivity, and Kurt Cobain

“I’m so happy, because today I found my friends…they’re in my head…”

Alright so I’ve never been a Nirvana fan. In fact I never really liked their music at all, especially with people just idolizing Kurt Cobain and making the band out to be these superhuman rock Gods. Then again, I’ve never been someone who is particularly star struck. They’re just people after all.

I wasn’t even going to write anything tonight but as I revised one of my old blog pages, this line came into my head so I felt compelled to write. I actually have a new respect for Kurt now. Let me explain. A few months back, I was driving to one of my university classes, it was raining, I was in my own mind, in a mood, driving on autopilot (nothing new for me – driving is a great way for me to zone out since a lot of it is long uninterrupted stretches). This song came on the radio and I actually listened to all the lyrics. It’s not like I hadn’t heard them before but I guess my particular mood on that day made the words go ZING! Into my brain and ruminate there. I saw all this meaning in his lyrics I never did before.

Obviously, he was depressed. A lot of his songs are dark and morose or just ambivilent. But on that particular day, I felt his great pain, the pain he felt when he wrote the words to the song and God knows, how he must have felt half the time when he sang them. Ironically, the song title is Lithium.

So I (being me) got it in my head, this desire to know all about Kurt Cobain. I looked up bunches of his song lyrics and pored over hidden meanings and BAM I suddenly just got him. Old Kurt who I held in disregard for so long, I got him and I totally related and felt terrible for his sad end.

Maybe a day later, I was walking through a store to get to the bank in the back and I passed the magazine aisle. There was this HUGE cover with Kurt on it, some special edition on his life and the band. I got distracted from the bank and stood there leafing through it. Just quickly reading captions and what not, and he was portrayed again as this sort of crazy, depressed, addicted rock star dude. I thought, wow, poor Kurt. I bet he hated the way he got portrayed in the media even when he was alive. He seemed to really have a disliking for being in the limelight a lot of the time.

Then later when I mentioned it to someone else, they told me that his suicide letter was public and anyone could read it. First I thought, how terrible! Then in my quest for understanding I had to read it, see if it had any deeper clues other than what everyone says, “Kurt was depressed” (ok, that is obvious.)

So I read the letter, and felt this profound sorrow and intimate kinship with him. I felt everything he said like it was me who wrote it. I GOT IT. I remember the website saying something about the letter being “mysterious”. I thought, how? Here are a couple of excerpts  that really hit home to me (I post with complete respect to Kurt and in no unflattering terms whatsoever.)

He talks about his touring with his band a bit, and then writes, “I'm too sensitive. I need to be slightly numb in order to regain the enthusiasms I once had as a child.

On our last 3 tours, I've had a much better appreciation for all the people I've known personally, and as fans of our music, but I still can't get over the frustration, the guilt and empathy I have for everyone. There's good in all of us and I think I simply love people too much, so much that it makes me feel too fucking sad.”

Then a bit later he says, “I have it good, very good, and I'm grateful, but since the age of seven, I've become hateful towards all humans in general. Only because it seems so easy for people to get along that have empathy. Only because I love and feel sorry for people too much I guess.

Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the past years. I'm too much of an erratic, moody baby!”

WOW. I had been feeling every bit of that. The love/hate dichotomy I’ve struggled with often myself. I love people intensely just like Kurt, yet they always seem to be hurting, either hurting themselves or bad things just befall them. I empathize and internalize others pain so much sometimes that I cannot function. Then I start seeing these bad things in the world and start hating people for causing their own demise and I start withdrawing. Then my real love and caring overrides and I try to help. I go on that way for a while, doing my best to help, to make things better for others. But then I get to the point where I am overloaded with their feelings and I’ve taken in so much that the energy is overpowering and sucks the life from me and I become down and depressed. It’s a weird back and forth cycle. Caring, empathizing, helping, absorbing energy…then upset, sad, depressed, depleting energy…And so, gosh, Kurt, my kindred spirit, I so understand you and I feel so sad that you died. I didn’t know you other than a song on a radio I perceived as ramblings from a disaffected drug addict. But I was wrong. I’m sure that your drug issues stemmed from the fact that your head was always spinning, and not the other way around. I’m sure it was a way for you to numb the pain and the unceasing words and feelings plaguing you. I wish I could tell all these magazine producers that they don’t have a clue about who you were. I wish I could tell people that there is nothing odd or mysterious about your description, and that they simply don’t have the capacity to understand because they haven’t felt that way. Well, I suppose I am telling them all now, in this post.

Sensitivity is such a two edged sword. It is both a gift and a curse. Too many people take their lives because of their intense inner pain and turmoil. Often these people are smart, talented, with much to offer the world. But they become overwhelmed to a point they can’t see it. I don’t think it is because they are “selfish” as some claim. I think it is because, like Kurt, they care so much, and that can cause intense pain. As someone who has struggled with the suicidal ideation much of my own life, and had one failed suicide attempt, I can speak from experience. It’s a huge jumble of emotions, very intense emotions.

I didn’t intend to write this long and ramble on about my personal internal experience with Kurt Cobain’s words. But it made me think, sometimes, all we have are our words. So here I am now, putting out my own words, hoping to bring understanding and a little more empathy from the masses. And to say, I’m sorry Kurt.

Diagnosis of BPD/Borderline, and making sense of the chaos

Hi everyone…it’s been a long long time since I’ve written!!! Life is so complicated, as it always is J There are ups and there are downs and in betweens.

Today I want to talk about a subject I have not discussed much on my blog, and that is Borderline. I myself was diagnosed with borderline last year when I went through a particularly heinous episode of a couple of months that pushed me back into counseling and psychiatry after a long break during my pregnancy. I did not know what was going on with me at all…it was very extreme. I was fighting with my husband all the time and having these rages that would start at my toes and literally go up through my head like a white hot heat. I’d never felt anger like that before, like some crazy wild animal – the intensity was far beyond what I had ever experienced. Having mostly been an inward turning person throughout my life, expressing angry rages outwardly was scary to me, yet I felt completely out of control of my emotions and behavior. I began having traumatic flashbacks to my childhood that would hit me out of nowhere, while shopping or doing laundry or driving. I began having panic attacks where my heart would race and I would be short of breath, hyperventilating, sometimes for hours. I began severely dissociating (although I did not know what dissociation was at the time). I would be walking and talking and having no idea what I was doing, where I was going. I felt very “muddled” in the head during those times and would find myself putting garbage in the refrigerator or driving off someplace where suddenly, nothing looked familiar and I had no idea how I got there. My emotions would fluctuate between extreme and overwhelming to numb or non-existent. I literally felt as if I were going crazy and KNEW I needed help. I did not recognize the person I had become.

So, on top of having bipolar, I was diagnosed with borderline, and initially, I actually felt relieved. I thought “Ok, this makes sense” and did a lot of thinking back on my life and feelings and behavior. I came to recognize a lot of things that I never did before, almost like blinders coming off. But then after a couple of months, it started having the opposite effect. The more I learned about borderline the more bleak it seemed. People view those with borderline as “crazy” “unpredictable” “angry” “mean” “unfixable” and whole host of other very negative descriptors. There is very little understanding out there about it. Much like when I was diagnosed with bipolar, I did not like the idea of being lumped in with “those people” especially since I DO NOT do some of the more egregious things that many borderlines do (verbally assaulting others, physical aggression, manipulating behavior). I can’t say that I have NEVER been mean to another person verbally but overall, it is not what I would consider a part of my “personality”.

So that brings me to the other point that I didn’t like about being diagnosed, and that was the label of borderline itself. The name “Borderline Personality Disorder” originated when it was believed that the disorder existed on the “border” of so-called neurosis and psychosis. This is now known to be untrue but the name remains. It has insane amount of stigma associated with it, probably moreso than any other mental disorder. People just hear the word borderline and they immediately get a horrible idea in their heads and think you are the scum of the earth. Which, honestly, I know I am nowhere close to being!!! I’m sure there are some borderlines who ARE that bad but again, I’m not a ticking time bomb walking around hating everyone and just waiting to unleash my anger. Quite the opposite. I’m generally a quiet, meek individual. Growing up my anger and negative feelings were turned inward toward myself and came out as depression, suicidal thoughts, self-injury and those types of things, rather than angry tirades and verbal abuse of others.

I really think that “Borderline Personality Disorder” is in itself a misnomer. I do not believe it is a disorder of personality, which implies that it is some sort of core fault and that those with this disorder are “bad” people. The truth is that with more and more research being done into BPD and mental illness in general, the more the findings are showing that it is a complex interplay of both nature and nurture that causes these disorders to arise. In the case of borderline, individuals are believed to be born with a highly sensitive temperament which, from the start, predisposes them to various issues. So there’s the nature, the hereditary element of it. Then add in what is described as an “invalidating environment” in a child’s formative years – that can be anything from being ignored or criticized by their caregivers all the way through severe forms of abuse or neglect. So there’s the nurture aspect of it. The outside factors that influence and shape a person’s neural pathways in the brain which then control their thoughts, beliefs and behaviors later in life. It’s a big can of worms, essentially.

So, the idea of this being a personality disorder just doesn’t sit right with me. When you take into account that the vast majority (some studies have said as high as 80% or more) of people with BPD come from traumatic or abusive backgrounds, it really seems like a way of punishing the victim unfairly. Truly, BPD to me does not seem to be a personality disorder, but actually a disorder of trust and attachment which was skewed and malformed at a young age. As a result, people with BPD struggle with relationships and their sense of self/identity. Most of the classic BPD issues (fear of abandonment, lack of trust, love/hate relationships, outbursts of anger) can be traced back to events which occurred in the person’s life. They weren’t just born “bad”…like a malleable ball of clay, young children are impressionable and shaped by the experiences around them. I think if people understood this basic premise they would understand those who suffer with BPD a little more and try to understand what hell it must be (and I can speak from experience, it is at times) for the person living inside that body and mind.

Now, that is NOT to say that because those with BPD come from backgrounds of trauma that they can just throw their hands up in the air and say “This is how I am. I can’t do anything about it,” and just subject others to inappropriate behavior. Just because things happened to us as children, doesn’t give us a right to say “It’s somebody else’s fault” and subject others to the same things we were subject to. There again, I see another distinction between myself and the “classic” borderline individual – I recognize these areas I need to work on and accept that. I’m not happy just living in chaos. There are many BPD sufferers who choose not to do anything about it, and to me, that isn’t OK. We didn’t ask for these problems but the fact is, they are there. And they must be dealt with. Those with BPD (like myself) do have the capacity to improve, we do have the ability to get better at managing our intense emotions and relationships with others. But that can only occur when we accept WHAT IS rather than denying it.

So I guess in that sense, the diagnosis has helped me. I’m understanding more and more about myself as time goes on and working hard at getting better control over things, which probably never would have happened had I not gotten the diagnosis. After I was diagnosed with bipolar 4 years ago, I automatically lumped all my emotional states into that, but now I see that not all the emotional issues I have are bipolar related. Many of them are borderline related. The causes are different, treatments are different. I finally, in my third decade of life, feel like things are starting to make sense to me. I feel much better than I did then, emotionally. I feel stronger. For most of my life, I felt weak and fragile and wore a mask to hide all those so called imperfections from others. I’m finally starting to actually FEEL the inner love and peace rather than just pretending that I do. DBT has helped tremendously with this. It is hard work but I recommend it to anyone suffering with BPD who wants to better their life situation. We cannot control our genetics or what we were born with, we cannot control past events or things that were done to us when we were small and powerless. But now, we are grown, we DO have a choice. We do not have to be angry, sad, helpless. We can begin the process of healing, of taking back the power that was stolen. The power is all inside of us…we just have to believe in it.