Patience, please.

My world changed on Sunday. It changed in a way which I didn’t think was possible, and which I am struggling to word, and coming to terms with it seems impossible. Perhaps if I can find a few words then it might somehow become a mountain which I can take steps towards considering climbing.

It would be wrong to say that on Sunday my world fell apart, because that started happening a long time ago, but last week it crumbled even further, and by Sunday I was still the same person, but stripped bare. I had no strength. I could talk and I could just about think, but it felt like someone had taken every ounce of me away from me, and left just pain inside a shell in the shape of me. I wanted me back, and I wanted my life back, but more strongly, I wanted the pain to go away.

On Sunday I poured kitchen bleach and kitchen cleaner, both corrosive, into a bottle. I left my house, holding the bottle incredibly tightly, and I walked. I walked away from humans, through fields, away from my home. I have tried to take my own life many, many times. That is, sadly, not new for me. Though I have never drunk a corrosive substance like bleach; that part is very new.

I am an intelligent (albeit very forgetful) young woman. I was not confused, and I was not psychotic at the time. I was not hallucinating, and I was completely aware of who I was. I knew that drinking bleach caused a massive amount of pain before dying, that you are in absolute agony until your organs fail. Yet I, with full mental capacity, put the bottle to my lips, ignored the overwhelming smell of chemicals, and drank a few mouthfuls. I gulped down bleach. I couldn’t physically drink more because of how immediately my body rejected it – and by the time I had recovered enough physically to try and drink more, there was someone there to stop me.

This isn’t me trying to tell the story of what happened, it was horrendous and I hope that neither I nor the other person who soon arrived there ever have an experience like that again. Of course I feel overwhelmingly guilty that there was someone else there to experience part of it; when you care about someone the last thing you want is to have them watch you when you think you might be dying. I would trade anything I have to be able to have removed her from the situation, but honestly, I don’t think I’d have survived it without her.

This is me talking about why this has changed me, and why I don’t think I can be the same again. I am not sure anyone could be the same again after that. Not because of the pain or the inability to breathe or speak properly at times, but because I have to spend forever with the knowledge that no matter how hard I tried, because I really did try and stop this attempt, I have the capacity to drink bleach, and I don’t have the capacity to stop myself. I can spend years ‘recovering’ from the personality disorder, but when I close my eyes, I will always be a girl who couldn’t stop herself from drinking bleach. I will always remember the moment where I was first asked what I’d done, knowing the expected answer was that I took too many painkillers, and I had to try incredibly hard just to have the ability to reply ‘I drank bleach’. I drank bleach.

 When taking an overdose, you take one pill at a time; one pill that wouldn’t kill you on its own. With bleach, it’s just one hit. There is a second where I thought ‘I can’t get through another second, it has to be now’. There’s a certain romance surrounding suicide. A Romeo and Juliet style ideal of dying, of being at peace. I wish I could show people the reality of being in so much physical pain that you want to die so that it ends, of feeling like all of your organs are on fire, feeling like your throat is melting. It is no longer about whether or not you want to die, because I didn’t think surviving was an option any more, I just needed my death to be quick. I clearly didn’t die, I went to hospital, and once my heart had stabilised and I had stopped throwing up cleaning foam, once my organs seemed to have got rid of most of the toxic liquid, I had to go home. I had to lie in my bed at night, still in pain, knowing that the next day I had to stand up and face another day, still with all the pain of the day before, yet now with the memory of what had happened.

This is not something I can see a way to be capable of dealing with. I know that time supposedly heals all wounds, and I trust my pain will fade one day, but that doesn’t give me a way to tell the people I love most that this has changed me, and it isn’t for the better. When I took a breath and drank from that bottle, a part of me was left behind. A part of me that still naively believed that I was allowed to hope, that I was allowed to believe it couldn’t get worse, was killed by the bleach. It got worse.

I don’t know how to tell people that every morning when I wake up I feel empty, not in a sad way, but with a sense of overwhelming exhaustion that I am stuck being a suicidal adult for the foreseeable future. Since Sunday, I haven’t actually felt happiness properly, in any way. I haven’t felt safe, and I am never actually sure how to get from morning to night. I feel like I am sharing my body and mind with a murderer. I am terrified of how soon I might be in that much pain again, and I am terrified of how I will end up if I keep doing this much harm to my body. There’s a person in me who wants to kill me. I don’t know how to live with that.

I think that this might be the time in my life where I have been least deserving of any care, any affection, or any sign of love. I have taken too much from other people, and I am aware of all the things I have failed at. If you know me, if you spend any time with me, please be aware, that I have not dealt with this. I am so sorry that it might take even more patience until I can cope, and if you want to turn away, then do. I understand. If you don’t turn away, then be prepared that I might cry randomly. I might stop talking and stay quiet for long periods of time, and my replies to you might not always make sense. Ultimately, the answer to whether I am okay, is no. I am not going to be okay for a long time, because a week ago I drank bleach, and I cannot cope with that. I cannot cope with the shell of a person who survived, and no, I don’t see any sort of light at the end of the tunnel. If you have a bit of extra hope you can lend me, it would be much appreciated, and if you can find a way to make me feel even slightly like I deserve to be loved, then you’ve managed something I failed to do. But feel free to still ask how I am, because I appreciate that, and it reminds me that one day I might reply that I am doing a bit better, and that is a sentence that would fill me with a lot of pride. Until that day might come, I am still here, and I am still trying so, so hard. 

World Suicide Prevention Day

Today is World Suicide Prevention day. Suicide is something which everyone ignores unless it is directly in their face - but if people can just spend one day considering how they'd like the world to act if it were them or someone they love who is affected by this awful act, then maybe that will be one step towards living in a world where people taking their own lives isn't a leading cause of death.

Suicide is surrounded by connotations of selfishness, shame and secrecy. It is seen as a choice for the weak, or only an option for those who have no hope in their lives. But that's not true; suicide could affect any of us, and any seemingly successful and happy person could be hiding a level of pain which means they genuinely find it hard to get from morning to night, every day.
Seeing as we don't know who that person is, take this time to remember that when you next casually refer to suicide as a joke, you don't know how much pain you might be putting someone in.

People often say of those who have passed away that if love could have saved them they would never have died. Well here we have a chance to make that come true; because if you show love to someone suicidal, it might stop them from dying. Doing be afraid to bring up the topic, don't be afraid to tell someone how much you love them, and please let us talk about suicide without being ashamed. Don't be scared to save someone's life.

World suicide prevention day shouldn't just be today, it should be every day.

Acceptance of Mental Health and never, ever giving up.

One of the toughest things about almost all mental illnesses is that they are a constant.  Every night the pain you fall asleep with is the one you wake up with – and this routine continues, sometimes for years, with no control. Its tiring, repetitive, exhausting, and can take massive control over your life.
I spent years being given false diagnoses, believing that my issues were just my personality. That it was just what I was like, rather than there being a separation between who I am and what my illness is. It is taking a long time but I am slowly coming to accept that there is the person I am, and there is the Borderline Personality Disorder that I have, and that I am going to beat. I accept my disorder, and I accept that it’s going to make me feel like giving up on a daily basis, but I also accept that I deserve better than that and one day I will be better. I don’t always believe this, in fact I rarely do, but if I write it down now then perhaps I will remember it when I can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Another tough thing is never, ever giving up. I sometimes feel like I give up on a daily basis; I break down, I cry, I sit staring at walls unable to move or speak. Yet that isn’t giving up; that is my brain doing everything it can to not give up. Sometimes that means turning all my emotions off so that I am unable to do anything, anything but be safe. I may have tried therapy, group therapy, CBT, psychotherapy, counselling, and 7 different medications, but until I have tried it all, I won’t give up.
Currently I am trying lots and lots of vitamins (you never know), a STEPPS programme, solo therapy, mood plotting, and working out how my friends can support me in the way that I need it right now.

Never giving up isn’t necessarily about the therapy, or the medication. Sometimes never giving up is in every morning, giving yourself a chance to enjoy the small good things in your day, and reminding yourself that they exist. Because however small, it is those tiny jewels of hope and love which are going to give us the strength to fight our minds shattering around us. For me it’s often a single caring text, an outfit I feel confident in, or seeing something unexpectedly beautiful which allows me to hold onto hope for another tomorrow. That’s what life is; just a series of tomorrows. 

Scared of my own suicide

For the last 6 years I have been plagued by suicidal thoughts, and for about 3 years prior to that it was an array of other self-destructive thoughts. I dislike the term ‘suicidal thoughts’, because they have never just been thoughts. They are an overwhelming feeling, a sense of power, control and belonging, and feel like a look at the future rather than just an idea. When I think of suicide, it is not me considering it. The time for considering suicide was 6 years ago, and now it is a constant battle between the part of me which strongly knows that it wants to kill me, has to kill me, and the part of me which wants to beat this and live a full life.
I have good days and bad days. On a bad day, 90% of me is suicidal and 10% of me doesn’t know how to fight it, on very good days it’s the other way around, but those are rare. Very occasionally I get to come up for air and feel 100% able to survive, but this only tends to last for about 5 minutes and happens once every month or so. When that happens it feels like after years of being suffocated, the hands have been lifted from my throat. Yet I know that the hands will return, I know that I haven’t yet beaten this.

Suicide is a fear, an incredibly deep seated and slow yet terrifying fear. Some people describe their mental illness as an animal, holding onto them, walking near them. Suicide feels like an ink which has been injected into my bloodstream. People talk about recovery yet I have no idea how to remove this ink without bleeding out. People often tell me that I can’t commit suicide because it will hurt the people left behind. I’ve been told it will leave them angry, heartbroken, and an array of other negative emotions. Yet I struggle to make this a reason to not kill myself, because for me it is not as simple as ‘kill yourself or don’t kill yourself’, it is purely a question of how long I can hold on before I do inevitably die by suicide. That pain, anger and heartbreak will always happen; to me that part is not up for question. The only question is whether by the time I die, I can get the people I love to understand that when someone is killed whose heart is already black with ink; it isn’t actually a loss at all.

The fear comes from the knowledge that I don’t want to die. I don’t want to hurt the people I love, and I don’t want to be dead. I don’t want my life to end in my early 20s, and I don’t want a funeral before I get that chance to have a wedding. I want to go abroad on my own, I want to love someone and be loved back, I want to see which of my friends goes wrinkly first, and who is the one to try Botox? I want a life where I can gather more memories, not a life where all I leave is painful memories.

The control over whether I get to do these things doesn’t lie with me. It would be my hand taking my life, but honestly, its not within my power. I can try, and I can fight, but there is a mood which takes over where all I can do is watch from the side-lines as I hurt myself, swallow pills, prepare to hang myself and try to throw myself off a cliff. I get my own special seat ready for the viewing of me ruining my own life, and all I can do is watch.

So if I die by suicide: be angry, be upset, be whatever you want to be, but remember that the biggest loss alongside that you won’t see me again, is also that I won’t see the life I desperately wanted to live. So you might have to live it for me, and feel lucky for every day you go through where you don’t have to watch your own hands take something as important as your life away from you. 

The layers of BPD and why the internet is foul

Today I went on search of another blog by someone with BPD, because I felt incredibly alone, and I thought it might help. I found the following things:

1. An entire article on how people with BPD should never have children because those children would have a very high risk of developing a mental illness or PTSD just from being around you.

2. An article on how to stay away from people with Borderline, because, you know, we are clearly the devils work.

3. An article of how to cope better being a friend of someone with BPD. I was pretty hopeful about this one. Until it genuinely described how people with BPD will be emotionally crippled for their entire lives and that you'll have to accept that they'll never be a good friend.

I then thought I would look for blogs about suicide, because honestly, reading the first set of blogs made me heavily question why I bother fighting as hard as I do just to be judged. Every article I clicked on talked about suicide, then gave statistics for people with depression. They talked through depression, described it, and gave a range of helpful tips for dealing with it. Firstly Depression was portrayed in a positive light, but second and more importantly, no where was it mentioned that someone may die from suicide due to another mental disorder.

The thing I find most difficult about BPD is that its all the time; its a constant. At any time of day, I will probably be either overly depressed, anxious or bizarrely elated. Thats the first layer. On top of that layer, I will be scared of the people I need leaving me, irrationally. The next layer is thinking about suicide - I am in constant battle to fight it out of my head, and am reminded of it all the time throughout the day. Whether its trying desperately to remind myself I want to live, or working out how i'm going to die, its there all the time. The next layer is wanting to be alone, because I am exhausted from all the other layers, and can only process them properly in private. On top of that I am paranoid about random daily activities and the people around me, my feelings about people change in an instant, and I am scared that i'm going to die alone, in pain, and by my own hand.

And those layers all have to somehow co-exist, and when I walk near the edge of a high building, I have to have the strength to not jump off it. Because when you have those layers 24/7, the jump feels not so much just temping, but more like a necessity.

So to the people who write blogs about things which you know are going to be incredibly hurtful towards people with BPD, perhaps take the time first to think about whether its worth it. Because to me, being told I should never have children, is heartbreaking. To be told I can never be a good friend, is something I can't cope with. And to think that people need to stay away from me is a cherry on top of all these layers of pain that I am already struggling to deal with on a daily basis. Was your article still worth it?

My mind is hell.

Today I woke up and I knew that something was wrong. I opened my eyes and stared straight ahead, but couldn’t bring myself to turn my head, that felt like too much. My chest felt very heavy, as if someone was trying to pull my heart and lungs down into the bed. I rolled onto my side and curled up, continuing to stare straight ahead, wishing I didn’t have to face up to the reality of going through another day.
I try and sit up but I realise I am crying, and whenever I try and take a breath, it feels like I am taking on a promise to survive, each second. A promise I don’t feel I can keep, but every breath holds me to it. This makes me angry, my body is forcing me into thing I don’t want. I try and hold my breath , this should be my control, but as my tears catch up with my clenched lips I just end up sobbing, clinging onto my knees, hoping someone will come and take all of this away.

I haven’t been through a break up, no one has died, I haven’t been dealt any bad news. But I do have Borderline Personality Disorder. It’s a disorder which characterises itself through rapidly changeable and intense moods, a lack of ability to hold stability with inter-personal relationships, difficulty holding onto an identity and incredibly strong impulses towards self-destructive behaviour, such as self-harm or suicide, along with a plethora of other painful traits. It is difficult to medicate and hard to treat with therapy, but these are the best options. It is hell on a daily basis, but it is my life.

One of the things I find most painful is knowing that I can’t actually let anyone know how bad it is without overwhelming them. I allow myself time scales. Maybe once a week, once a fortnight, I can be honest when a friend asks if I’m alright, and I can tell them the truth. But every other day I act as if I can actually cope. When I am out, I take regular ‘toilet breaks’ which are actually me having a panic attack or sobbing silently in a bathroom. I pretend to be busy on days where I am too scared to leave my bedroom because paranoia has overwhelmed me, and every month or so I make sure I let people know that I am doing better, so that they don’t give up hope even if I have done. Nothing in my life feels natural, because I can’t let anyone in to know the true depths of the hell I am in. It is carefully planning my next move, because if I burden someone with too much, the guilt will take over and I would probably overdose. Yet if I stay silent as tell no one, I would feel so alone that I would probably overdose. But if I strike the balance right, I feel as if I am manipulating people around me, which makes me hate myself, and want to overdose. It is a never ending cycle of not feeling like I belong in the world but being terrified of death, despite being completely over-ruled by the idea of it.

There is no way I can let someone into my world and let them see what it is like. As a person I am not sure of many things, I doubt almost everything, but the one thing I don’t doubt is that my situation is far worse than even I am willing to accept. For many people, a suicide attempt is the lowest point in their life, and something which makes them see the light and make a change; something that they move on from. For me, suicide is a life sentence.

If you love someone who is struggling with mental illness, take the time to ask them what it is like, and try and understand what they are actually going through. Understanding is surely the first step towards being able to support them through it. And if you’re in it for the long haul; I am sure they’d appreciate a reminder that you don’t plan on giving up on them, because I know that’s a reminder I would appreciate.

The Silver Lining of Borderline Personality Disorder

With Mental Health being an increasingly mentioned issue in social media recently, awareness is slowly rising for conditions such as Depression, Anxiety, and Bipolar Disorder. The net hasn’t yet spread far enough for me to have seen mention of slightly less known disorders such as Borderline Personality Disorder (also known as Emotional Intensity Disorder), but also few people have taken into account that longer term disorders such as BPD can also bring positive outcomes. There are few, and they pale in comparison to the negative symptoms which outline the disorder, but that doesn’t mean that the positive effects should be ignored.
One of the negative symptoms of BPD is having a persistently unstable personal image or sense of self. It is common for BPD sufferers to regularly change the way they look, doubt their sexuality, and question the way they act and who they are. The positive factor this brings is a very specific type of personality which can adapt to situations and is often good at a wide range of tasks. A malleable personality may make it weaker, but it also means that every day there is the ability to be changed for the better, to be inspired, motivated, and to build a wide range of experiences.
This ties in with another positive outcome; intense passion. We may be overcome with emotions which seem uncontrollable and unmanageable, but when we are passionate about something, we will not lose that. We will be so passionate that we try as hard as we can, we care with all that we have, and we have the ability to truly give it our all. If you are the loved one of someone with BPD, then trust that you will be loved so deeply. If we succeed in something we care about, it will make us so happy that we will remember the feeling deeply for a long time. It may hurt sometimes, but intense passion is an incredible emotion to have.
Other positive factors include stunning curiosity and genuine interest in other people, the ability to sit and listen for hours as long as you have things to say, we will care. The ability to be spontaneous, to live in the moment, and to really feel the highs which life has to offer. Due to having experiences so much pain, we are deeply empathetic, we will never judge someone for having feelings and will never push down the importance of them. Some borderlines struggle with compassion because their emotional ranges are so different, but many, like me, can access such a massive bank of emotion that we can feel compassion in almost all situations.

The last two positive attributes I will mention (as there may be many more!) are two of my favourites. The first is the ability to be deeply creative. We have the ability to open our mind, to use our bizarre range of experiences and deep level of emotions to create in a way which others may struggle too. This makes us naturally good at the Arts, and creative careers.

The other is the ability to pick ourselves back up again. To know that things will get better, and to fight so much more than I think it is possible for non BPD people to understand.  My mind is a tornado of pain; my symptoms literally include recurrent suicidal behaviour, chronic feelings of emptiness and nothingness, and transient paranoid thoughts. Every single day of my life. But I am still sat here writing this post.

I may have a personality disorder, and that may mean a lifetime of intense mental difficulty, but perhaps it’s worth reminding ourselves every now and again that with the hardest challenges come the greatest successes. And I am determined that my personality doesn't have to be a disorder, it can be a success as well.