To My Humans

Dear friends,

Thank you for the days where even though you thought I was happy to start with, but by the end of our conversation, I genuinely didn’t want to die as much anymore. You’ll never know those times, but thank you anyway.
Thank you because I know that it sucks to have a friend who doesn’t always trust that you are friends. For having the patience to tell me that you don’t hate me and I’m not annoying you, even though those thoughts really are all in my head and you must be so bored of the words. They sound like new words to me every single time.
Thank you for looking at my reality and not shying away from me; because it would be far, far easier to have a friend who was less self-destructive, and yet you still see me as a human not a disorder.
Thank you for picking me. There’s a world of people out there and I am allowed a bit of your time. Thank you. I will never take that time for granted.
Thank you for the times where I failed to be there for you because I wasn’t entirely there in my own head and therefore simply didn’t have the capacity to see that I was needed – yet you still didn’t walk away.
Thank you for reminding me that its going to be okay; over, and over again.

Thank you for occasionally using the word love, however rarely. It’s one of the few words I believe no one would lie about.

Thank you for making me want to become a better person, and for standing by me whilst I make myself into the friend you deserve, rather than the one you accepted despite me being substandard.

Thank you for helping me realise that I can write this post without apologising.

I may be far more of a burden than other people, but I like to think that perhaps, in my own bizarre little way, I have a lot to give as well. It just might take a while to find it. Thank you for helping me look.

More than this pain.

Because I am more than a degree.
I am more than the university I attend.
I am more than my grades and more than my qualifications.
I am more than the academia which you think defines life.
I am more than a daughter, more than a friend.
I am more than what you think of me,
I am more than what has happened to me,
I am more than my dreams and my fears. 
I am more than my suicidal thoughts. 
I am more than my disorder.

I am more than you know.
I am a human, and I am the only human I will ever be.
I am going to do this for myself,
Because I deserve more than this pain. 

What makes it a disorder rather than just your personality?

A difficulty with Borderline Personality Disorder is that it is characterised by a set of symptoms which if all scaled down, most of the population probably experience. These being: antisocial behavior, compulsive behavior, hostility, impulsivity, irritability, risky behavior, self-destructive behavior, self-harm, social isolation, or lack of restraint, anger, anxiety, general discontent, guilt, inability to feel pleasure, loneliness, mood swings, or sadness, distorted self-image, fear, grandiosity, or narcissism, persistent thoughts of suicide.
Every person I know can tick a few off that list, yet they don’t have a disorder, it is genuinely just their personality. So what makes mine a disorder? The issue is that I have the entire list, and that the problematic side never goes away. At any time of the day I would say I have at least 5 of these happening, all the time, day and night. If I am at the ‘happier’ and of the mood spectrum I am also incredibly impulsive and obsessive, with almost no restraint, compulsive, self-destructive and feel guilty. When I am at the ‘sad’ end of the spectrum I get deeply depressed, feel no pleasure doing the things I usually love, have persistent suicidal thoughts, an very antisocial, highly likely to be self-destructive, incredibly lonely and with such a distorted view of myself that I often believe I don’t deserve basic needs, like drinking water. Along the way, between these moods, I have entire ranges of pain from anxiety and panic attacks or total dissociation to severe attacks of paranoia or hallucinations.

Those things are not my personality; I still have a personality aside from my disorder, but the unrelenting and persistently changing nature of these symptoms is what makes Borderline Personality Disorder such a problem. It isn’t how I was born, it was developed more like a disease or virus, inside my brain. One day I will have a life without these symptoms, but until then I will have to keep fighting to not be the 1 in 10 people with BPD who dies by suicide. 1 in 10 who die because of this disorder.

So if you read a summary of my symptoms and think ‘yeah I’ve had a few of them before, it isn’t a disorder, it’s just being angry sometimes’, then no. No, no, no. Please respect that the list above isn’t what sometimes happens, it has been unrelenting for the last 7 years of my life. I am desperate from a break but just like any long term illness, I am going to have to recover, slowly, patiently, and with a lot of hard work, until I get that break. BPD is not a life sentence, but for the years of my life that I suffer from it, it is every minute of every day. There is no such thing as a break from a personality disorder, and that is why it is a disorder. 

Don't tell me its good that I survive.

When people tell me that I don’t really want to die because I haven’t yet been successful, and that is a really positive thing, I want to strangle them. On the spot. I understand where you are coming from; I am still alive, I can see that, I know, I keep surviving, and I can’t seem to die.

I need you to also understand where I am coming from now. Because every time someone says that to me, it hurts in a few ways.
The first way is that it’s a reminder of my failure; I understand that it’s a positive thing that I am still alive but you have to remember that I am someone who wants to take my own life and who finds it very upsetting that I have not yet been a violent enough person to manage that. I know you see it as a good thing that I have not yet been successful, but I don’t. It being pointed out that I have repeatedly failed at taking my own life doesn’t make me feel proud, it makes me want to go and do the job properly.

The next way it hurts is because it’s focusing on the end point. When someone is physically ill, they are given medication to combat the illness itself. When you focus on the fact that I walked to the edge of a cliff and spent hours there then walked away, and see that as a positive thing, you are ignoring that in the weeks running up to that I have been desperately struggling to survive every day. Yes, that day I managed to walk away. Great news. But it’s not because I want to live, it’s because I am stuck in a horribly painful limbo between living and dying. I am not coping and haven’t been for a long time and you judge how well I am doing by whether I make it a month without taking steps towards ending my own life.
I will be recovering when I can get through longer than 12 hours without having a substantial feeling of how desperately I want to kill myself. Whether or not I die isn’t the most important part for me, because that is not the same as finding a way to survive and be better. I understand that you think I’m going to survive because I have a string of failed attempts, but that isn’t my reality. It tears me apart every time something like that happens and no, I don’t see it as positive that I walked away. I am desperate for this to be over, I am totally desperate. If that’s through death then that is something I am ready for, but the possibility of living like this for another 60 years is not something I am willing to do.

Don’t praise my lack of ability to kill myself. Praise every day where I manage to act like a functioning human, and respect the fact that suicide attempts are not the issue for me, it’s the hours in between that are the real problem and the worst pain.  

Mental Pride

Pride. It’s not a word I associate with Mental Health, personally, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. It is a difficult situation because I am not proud when I get to the end of each day, all I’ve done is survive, but some days that actually is an incredible achievement.

I sometimes have problems with reality distortions and hallucinations; I hear things that aren’t there (voices, animals, instruments), I believe paranoia that is wildly untrue and impossible (that I am not actually human), and I listen to daily distortions about how the people close to me feel about me (that they hate me, they all deeply hate me). These vary in intensity and how they show themselves, but with one thing in common that they are scary, deeply unnerving and make it near impossible to fulfill daily tasks.

There is no point in me being ashamed that I am living with a mental illness, instead I wish there is a way I could be proud. I would be proud of someone if there was literally a voice in their head telling them to jump off a building, alongside suicidal thoughts and mood problems, and they manage to stay alive. I would be proud of someone for being in public when they slip into the belief that they must not be real, and they still eventually get home unharmed. I would be proud of someone if they survived these problems every day and managed to hold down friendships, hobbies, and studies.

Yet I am not proud. I don’t know why I am not proud. Perhaps it is the constant knowledge that I am only just surviving these things and any day could be the day I fail, perhaps it is the knowledge that if I don’t survive it will be seen as a misjudged action, something that didn’t need to happen. Perhaps it is because I live in a culture where Mental Illness is accepted behind closed doors, but if I’m too open with it, I’m judged.

I want to survive this so that I can look back one day, and be proud. 

Why mental health is like building

It hurts so much because it lets me build a wall between me and the worst of my pain; it watches me lay it brick by brick, with no instructions, working out how to hold it together, how to keep it upright, how to make it strong and proper. It watches me cry as I drop bricks and they break, and it watches my pain when the rough surface scratches my skin away.

Then when my wall is getting high enough that it looks like the pain might stay behind it, it knocks it down. The bricks break, the cement crumbles away, until I am left with nothing but dust on the ground around me. Knowing that I not only have to sweep away the dust, I then have to start again. Find more bricks. Build from the ground up.

It’s no surprise I want to stop trying to build the wall and let it drown me.  Yet I haven’t stopped. I am not sure I will ever stop trying to build this wall. I am aware one day it might crush me, but until that day, I am still building. 

Because I mattered.

Reasons to make sure you have full consent before making any kind of sexual move:

Because saying no is hard
Because sometimes people freeze when they’re scared
Because people are humans not sex toys
Because we are just as important as you are
Because people who have been sexually abused will never forget it
Because life is hard enough already
Because there is a high correlation between abuse sufferers and those who develop mental illnesses
Because it is not your right to be pleasured, especially if it puts someone else in pain
Because someone being quiet doesn’t mean they should become your easy target
Because being drunk is no excuse for abusing someone’s body

Because humans are strong, but also breakable. You might not think it looks like rape, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t abusing someone.

Because to you I may have been an easy ejaculation, but I am also a daughter, a sister, a friend, a loved one, and a human.

Because  I deserved better.