Silver Lining

I’m weirdly happy. Its weird because the last week has been really, really tough. Today I had to go to work even though I’m ill and did a 13 hour shift yesterday. MY BPD has been so obvious and it feels like its holding the remote at the moment, but alongside that, I have also had an amazing week. I’ve laughed harder than I remember doing in months, laughed until I cried. I am falling further in love every day, with the most wonderful man I’ve ever met. Despite problems I am holding down my job, and I can appreciate the good parts of it alongside the parts I currently find unbearable. I started self-harming yet again, fairly badly, but I also stopped and didn’t inflict lasting injury. I’m still standing, I’m not in hospital, and ultimately I am still here and still able to smile.

It is hard to describe how strange it is to be incredibly happy and massively struggling, but somehow I am. It’s as if this week were impossible, but my boyfriend has stood beside me reminding me that he believe in me and that he loves me for everything that I am….and somehow it makes me strong enough to be better than I would have been without him. I don’t need another person, I can do this on my own. Yet having another person so close really does make my world brighter; suddenly my future has a far bigger smile in it. 

Exhaustion.

I haven’t written anything for a few weeks, and honestly it’s because I don’t know what to say anymore. It is exhausting being the human that I am; I understand that life is hard, I get that, but for the last few weeks my borderline symptoms have got worse and I’ve hand multiple mental health episodes every day. By that I mean constantly cycling between euphoric happiness, overwhelming anxiety, complete dissociation (feeling numb, no emotions), inwards anger, and overwhelming suicidal feelings. There is no normal, there is no rest. Currently it’s the anxiety, which doesn’t mean I’m nervous, it means my heart won’t slow down, my head feels like its being squeezed, my breathing is shallow, and my head has been pumped with fear so that anything I actually need to process seems like too much, too confusing and hard, and nothing quite makes sense. I would have to put a lot of concentration into upholding a normal conversation, and each of the sentences I type I have to re-type because of how many words I am repeating without noticing it.

I’ve barely slept for more than an hour at a time, I keep waking up shaking or terrified, I’ve relapsed with self-harm and I am almost constantly shaking. I worry about any time I have to spend on my own because I can’t trust that I won’t hurt myself or worse. I am never sure where my day is going to take me and how long it is until I fall weakness to complete self-destruction. These things are all my ‘normal’; this is the base off which I have to deal with the other daily stresses that all humans face. Money problems, hating my new job, needing more hours in a day, worrying about the people around me, trying to eat properly and exercise enough, whilst training for 2 national competitions and a performance. I don’t have a solid floor off which to deal with these things so it feels like all of it is toppling, its all a balancing act which I am very bad at, and even though everything is falling out of place I still need to look like I’m holding it all under control.

So I have barely written anything recently, because honestly, I’m exhausted. By the end of last year I was ready to fight, to turn up to events that I was terrified of, ready to leave my comfort zone behind and be the human that I have worked so hard to be even though I have barely got anywhere. Yet now I feel like I’ve gone back in time 6 months. I haven’t given up, there is just a very long way to go, and if it weren’t for my incredible partner, it would be impossible, but I’ve got him and I am not quite done with this planet yet. Though in another hour, everything may have changed. I am exhausted. 

Cruelty

It’s a harsh moment, when you are reminded that you have absolutely no control at all. I thought if I tried hard enough, spent enough hours, did enough writing, enough hoping, enough self-care, enough hours looking at the darkest, shittiest parts of my personality and life, then I would be able to come out of the other side alive. I thought, for a few weeks, that I was the one in ultimate control.

But I am not and this is all some stupid, and incredibly evil joke. Why don’t you imagine a future for yourself, sweetie? Imagine yourself with a job you might actually be passionate about? Let yourself have a bit of time where you ACTUALLY BELIEVE that you are going to get out of this life naturally rather than your own hand? Oooh, this will make it fun; why don’t I let you start falling in love again?

Then nothing is going to change apart from a tiny reminder that you are a poisonous, manipulative, horrible, piece of this world. Maybe I didn’t manage to die by my own hand because I deserve so much worse than death; I deserve the torture of living like this until I finally still end up killing myself and leaving the people around me to deal with that. Well I hope the torture is quick and the end is soon. 

A moment of calm

I don’t want to die anymore. I mean really, honestly. I am not saying I have a sudden overwhelming rush for being alive, but calmly, quietly, seeping in through little cracks in the sides of my thoughts and conscience, is a desire to not be dead. I have a desire to distance myself from death, to walk away and to not go into its arms, not for decades at least. I have spent about 6 years of my life being overwhelmingly obsessed by death. When I see writing about grief, about people who they have lost, my head automatically connects me to the person who has gone. I have always felt like I am already gone, clinging onto a body and a beating heart but desperate to be elsewhere.

Now I don’t feel like I’m clinging to anything. I’m not swimming upstream anymore, instead I just feel like a person. I am lucky to be alive, lucky to be supported, lucky to be loved. When people talk about grief and death, for once, I feel like I am on the side of the person grieving. I am one of the millions of people left on this planet after the horrible impact of death taking away the people we love. I know life is really hard but for once, I don’t want to quit. I am sure I will cry, probably a lot. I will scream, I will feel totally helpless. I will dissociate, I will probably fail to recognise people I love, and I might even hurt myself. I am not ignoring my issues; I know that they are still there, and that I am not yet in control of them. That doesn’t mean I can’t accept them a little bit, and accept that life is going to sometimes feel impossible, but it is still my life. It’s the only one I am going to get, I can’t change my brain, but I can let myself survive it. On a possibly bigger scale, I can stop the people I care about from having to deal with losing someone. I may not understand why they would rather keep me around, but that part is not my choice to make.

I want this to go away, but I don’t want it to go because all of me is gone. I think part of me is worth an entire life.