This cruel diagnosis

Over the last fortnight I have spent a lot of time thinking about my diagnosis. After an appointment with the psych doctor about a new medication, I was sent the letter which was also sent to my GP, and written at the top was ‘Diagnosis: Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder’ with some extra words and letters that I can’t currently recall. I knew I had EUPD, also known as BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), I have known for about a year and a half officially but have had the symptoms for 6+ years.

To me it feels like a really cruel disorder because it is all grey areas. No two BPD patients will have the same symptoms, but we are characterised by a general total lack of mental stability. Fast changing moods, lack of logic, irresponsible and destructive behaviour, depression, anxiety, anger. We all have a flurry of these symptoms which represent themselves in different ways, with the shared factor of not having any stability within ourselves. I know many people would say that it isn’t a symptom of EUPD to be unstable and is in fact a symptom of life, but those people would also be able to describe who they are. They would be able to describe a day in one or two emotional mood states, and they would struggle to understand being euphoric one minute and wildly self-harming the next, and for that to be normal. I have a disorder which is defined by emotional instability. I have an unstable personality. I am not entirely sure how I am meant to accept that. What is my personality and what is a disorder? Is it ever possible to differentiate between the two, or am I going to have to spend my life accepting that because EUPD lives in the grey parts of mental health issues, I am stuck feeling like a horrible amalgamation of symptoms and crumbing human.

I don’t remember how it feels to not think like this, but I am aware that there were days before EUPD. When I was 14 I think I was fairly normal, a slightly odd sense of humour perhaps but which 14 year old isn’t a bit too giggly? I had a constant state. I had a ‘normal’, and I no longer know what my ‘normal’ state is. Most people seem to be able to function on what seems to be an autopilot emotional setting, where they are capable of getting on with daily tasks. They may sometimes feel said or nervous or happy, but they are also functioning. Yet with no stimulus I am rendered incapable of performing basic tasks purely because my mind randomly gives up, or randomly throws at me so much self-hate that it makes me genuinely believe I deserve to be physically tortured, then suddenly I am euphorically happy and laughing at how funny and lovely the world is even though I may still have blood dripping down me from the self-mutilation.

When I first took an overdose, I was beaming with happiness. I don’t remember many moments in my life when I was that happy, but that day I remember no fear, no sadness, just pure joy at the knowledge that within a handful of hours I would never have to experience my unstable personality again. I have since failed to take my own life more times than I can count on my hands, and it seems like there could be no other diagnosis to give me. I have an unstable personality, and it has such a prominent effect on my life that it is a disorder. My emotions have no stability, and no relationship or therapy or medication has yet managed to stabilise me, because it is deeper than that. I didn’t develop right, and that is difficult to be fixed. I am not sure how you fix a person who is chronically emotionally unstable.

I am constantly trying to come to terms with my disorder because if I can manage too for just a few seconds then I might be able to forgive myself for all the pain I have put myself through. Until that day I will continue to feel like the victim and the criminal at the same time; simultaneously desperate to look after the hurt, terrified human and wanting to punish the human who put me through that much pain, wanting to hurt the human who’s fault my pain is. Being both of those humans is constant hell, and for that reason I feel like EUPD is an incredibly cruel disorder. The harsh reality is that I may die by my own hand, with the other hand desperately reaching out for help and to be loved, because I have no idea how to save myself. 

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. 

Deadly elephant in the room.

Trying to recover from a mental illness with heavy suicidal ideation feels a bit like having a man with a gun sat next to you, having to ignore him constantly. Sometimes he just sits quietly, gun in his pocket. He might as well not be there because you are used to this presence.

Tonight it feels like he has his hand on the trigger and the gun pushed against my head, but the only thing I can do to not die is carry on with my life, try and distract myself from the threat, try not to think about it. It is an impossible thing not to think about yet still I have to stay calm and pretend it doesn’t feel like I will be dead by morning.

It is nice when people ask how I’m doing, I mean really ask, as if they care rather than out of politeness, because when there is a man with a gun to your head it feels good to have a friend care. It is a bit like the elephant in the room to me, but it’s the man with a gun instead, and if everyone ignores him then it is hard for me to ignore him because he demands attention. If other people mention him then they give me an outlet and I can use up my mental capacity on a thought other than how close his finger is to the trigger.

I used to be scared all the time, and nowadays I am scared 40% of the time not 100%, which is great. But when I am scared it is no less terrifying, and in some ways the danger is no less present. I am doing better, I can see that, but in the moments where suicide is breathing down my neck, he is as close as he has ever been and the rope still feels like it’s by my fingertips.

I hope one day I can live a life where I get through entire days without the man putting his finger on the trigger and the gun to my head. I have come so far, but I still have a long way to go until I feel safe from the risk.

Improvement.

Recovery is strangely difficult to see sometimes. We are all aiming for perfect; physically, mentally, socially, and sometimes I think we forget that recovery doesn’t mean becoming perfect, it means becoming who we are meant to be without the disorder. It means becoming safe and a bit more capable. It means being less ill.

At the beginning of this year I was incredibly unwell, mentally. There was a period of time where I tried to take my own life multiple times per week. There was one 48 hour slot where I overdosed, was hospitalised, tried to throw myself off a cliff, self-harmed, tried to suffocate myself, physically beat myself up, and tried to knock myself out. Now it is strange to think back to that; it was a time where I actually wasn’t okay 100% of the time. Every minute of every day was unbearable and impossible, and I legitimately wasn’t myself for a long time. Between January and April I was barely recognisable to myself, when I look back at things I wrote back then in notes and emails to myself they don’t even make complete sense. I could structure a sentence but everything I was saying was based on twisted and disillusioned thoughts rather than my reality. I lost myself at the beginning of this year.

I am not saying I am better, I am aware that I am far from it. But today, looking back at the last 3 months, I am more myself than I was at the beginning of this year. I have tried to take my own life twice in 3 months, only one of them ended in hospital, the other ended with the police. I have self-harmed but only for one awful 48 hour period, and not before or since. In three months. That, actually, for me, is fairly incredible. I am proud to say that I have tried to take my own life twice in 3 months because that is far fewer times than it once was in 24 hours. It’s not perfect, but I am not aiming for perfect, I am aiming for a bit of stability. One day I will be able to write a post about how I haven’t tried to take my own life for three months, then years, perhaps one day 3 decades. And it is amazing that I believe that one day I will be able to write that, because 8 months ago I truly didn’t believe I was capable of any sort of future.

Well today I am here, I am safe, I am loved and cared for, and I am capable of having a future. In my own little way in my own little world, that is a massive step towards recovery. 

The Paris Shootings and the impact of mortality.

Death and the mortality of myself and those around me is a thought which for someone like me is all too present. I am obsessed by it, terrified of it, controlled by it and desperate to control it. The recent shootings in Paris have really made me think about how close death is to all of us, and how easily it can happen by accident. Any of us could be shot tomorrow, have a sudden heart attack, or be involved in a car accident. It may sound like a morbid thought but in some ways it isn’t; because it means that every day we get to the end of is something to be happy about.

The people who were killed in the Paris shootings were so alive. They were out on a Friday night, most likely thinking about having a good time, and what they had to do over the next week or so. They may have been thinking about their plans for the weekend, worrying about getting work done, and thinking about the people they care about. I find it very hard to comprehend that these people will never be able to see that weekend; they will never get a Saturday 14^th November 2015, or any of the days after that. They were robbed of their chance to grow old, but not only that, they were robbed of the chance to appreciate each day. They won’t see Christmas this year, there will be an empty chair at a table somewhere, an empty seat on a sofa, a present with no recipient, a pair of skates never to be laced up again.

We are all temporary beings and none of us will survive this life, yet when someone seems to be ripped off the earth rather than having the chance to pass away, it is a new level of cruel. The people who lived their lives alongside them have to readjust the way they function; they have to fill a blank spot which shouldn’t be there. The people who are no longer here along with so many others who pass away daily should not have been taken from us, or so it feels. Their hopes, dreams and future plans have to just disappear, everything they have worked for, everything they have trained for, planned for, has to remain unfulfilled forever. It isn’t a concept I can truly accept or understand and I am not sure I ever will – the magnitude of loss is huge.

I often think about how much of a struggle it is to survive with the problems I have, though I am always aware that everyone has difficulties and of course some have it harder; our pain is not comparable. One thing I do know is that there are people who passed away three days ago in those shootings who would give anything to be in my position. I may feel like I am on the edge of death for a lot of my life, but the important part to remember is that however close it may be, life is closer. There is a very high chance that I will wake up tomorrow morning, and that I will keep breathing for another day, another week, probably another year. I will get to fill that chair at the Christmas table; I won’t be an empty space because I exist to fill it.

I could easily be a memory by now – all too easily. This is another thing which is hard to comprehend – that if my life had gone the way I planned it, I would no longer be here. I would have become a memory of grief, a feeling of guilt, and a lot of love with nowhere to go. I would be an empty seat, a pole without me to perform on it, a derby game leaving my clipboard untouched. I would never again get to wake up, or fall asleep. I would never get to hug someone I care about, to rest my head on their shoulder and feel genuinely safe for those few seconds. I would never be able to reassure anyone, make anyone smile, teach anyone what I know, or hold out my hand to those who might need it. Grief isn’t something which goes away – it changes and eventually becomes a more bearable part of life, but the seat will always be empty of the person who it was meant to be there for.

I am incredibly lucky to be alive, and I desperately hope that this reminder of mortality can help people like me try and understand the magnitude of death. Understand that it is in some ways not massive, it is not like a firework or an explosion, it is a quiet and heart-breaking ongoing loss of someone who was not meant to be lost. Death by suicide doesn't leave its mark because it adds death to the world, it leaves its mark because it removes some hope, it removes a heartbeat, it removes your dreams and ability to love. I don’t believe I was born to be lost, I just need some help to believe that and be capable of it.

Sometimes I am blind.

I've been focusing on the wrong things in life, and I've been doing it for a long time. I don't mean too, and I'm not sure why I'm wired in such a narrow minded way, but I can be honest that I've made mistakes and I'm clear about my imperfections, and more importantly I'm going to try really hard to change them a bit.

See, I am desperate for reassurance from the people around me. It's something I hate about myself but it's also something I have very little control over. I've been looking for the wrong reassurance though, and I need to start learning that I'm not going to find it through asking for it. It is hard that questions never get the right answers, because trust isn't something that comes easily to me, mainly not trusting my own brain.

If I think: "They must like me, we're friends"

Brain says: "how do you know you're friends?"

I think: "well...we see each other sometimes, and chat a lot, and...I don't know, we're just friends"

Brain says: "you were friends, but you can't prove to me that you still are. I don't believe you."

In this situation I wish I could remind myself of all the events that mean I am cared for, but for some reason that's something I am not capable of a lot of the time. I tell myself things and my brain refuses to process them – leaving me empty.

What I need to try and slowly be able to remember, is that the words we are all obsessed with actually don’t mean very much at all. Things like friendship, care, trust and love are very personal and no two people feel them in exactly the same way, so why do I look for these words, when they don’t even translate between people? What I should be listening for are the things that do translate.

People telling me they love me does not make me loved, people telling me they care does not mean they care about me, and people saying we are friends doesn’t necessarily show friendship. One of you got up and drove to me when you should have been going to sleep because you were told it would help keep me safe. One of you didn’t question staying up until 4am to wait for the mental health team even though you had an assessment the next day that I didn’t know about. More than one of you drove to a random town in the hope that you’d find me there and be able to bring me home. More importantly; you didn’t run. I have people around me who should have run miles by now, I have pushed them away and I have clung to them too tight, I have drawn them into my tornado of a world, and they still stand strong and smile with me when things are good. They’re still there. I don’t care what 4-6 letter word you use or don’t use, I’m incredibly lucky to have these people in my life. Those things do translate.

I am sorry that I look for words when I should trust your actions. This is not something that comes naturally to me, but one day I will learn it, and the memories of the actions of so many people will keep me safe for life. 

3am lies to you.

Of the many, many small (and some very big) steps I’m taking towards recovering from both BPD and the traumatic memories my actions have left me with, I have to conquer myself at 3am.

It is commonly known that it is harder to find positivity in the middle of the night when its dark and you’re alone or next to someone asleep, and all you can think of is your failure. When you’re someone who’s suicide attempts have reached double figures by your early 20s, there are a lot of failures for 3am to pounce on. Something I have started to do to try and help stay sane through the night is to talk to myself; and yes I do know how that sounds! Honestly though, when there are voices in my head telling me that I have let down everyone I know, that I am hated, disgusting and that the world would be a better place without me, there needs to be another voice.
At those times I desperately need a person to be there with me, to look into my thoughts and to tell me that I am loved, I am cared for, I am worth surviving this. That will never be possible, even if I am not alone physically, I will always be alone inside my head, so the only voice I have to rely on is my own.

I am not strong enough to counteract the poisonous things which 3am tells me, but there is a small part of me which is capable of saying ‘It’s okay lovely, honestly, I know that this is horrible and I understand the tears, but you won’t feel this way forever. Tomorrow will bring a new day, and tomorrow will bring change and hope. I am here for you, I care about you, and I’m proud of you.’

It may sound ridiculous that I say these things to myself, but having spent my whole adult life being incredibly horrible to myself both mentally and physically, it is finally time that I try and care about the girl who screams into her pillow because she can’t handle the pain or the memories. When you’ve been abused it is too easy to feel like you deserve the abuse, it is too easy to fall into a trap of self-abuse because that feels like the thing you need to do. Self-love is a lot harder, but perhaps one sentence at a time, it can help me survive 3am. Some days it isn’t possible, but I’m proud of the few days where it is possible, because I would actually really like to survive this!

If 3am is lying to you; remember that you can comfort yourself, and remember that 3pm the next day may in fact be a lot nicer, and is worth waiting for and worth fighting for.

Borderline Animals (and Dr Chess Denman)

“They’re very very sensitive to rejection. I used to say to all the people I trained imagine when you’re talking to somebody with one of these problems that it is them listening to you but also behind their eyes there’s a little animal and that animal isn’t listening to what you’re saying, they’re listening to whether you like them or not or whether they think you like them or not and for that little animal ‘listen I’m going to be away on holiday’ it doesn’t mean ‘listen I’m going to be away on holiday’ it means  ‘I don’t like you enough to stay here next week.’ It’s an animal, it’s not thinking the same way as you or I might think in a calmer moment. They’re very, very sensitive to rejection.”

This is a quote by an NHS Medical Director and severe Personality Disorder specialist (Dr Chess Denman) in a talk about Borderline Personality Disorder. A few days ago I was thinking about the idea of mental illnesses as little monsters. I’ve always felt like the BPD ‘monster’ doesn’t quite fit the bill, and I’ve never been sure why. I have been coming to the realisation that it isn’t a monster; it’s a team of monsters. In her talk quoted above, Chess Denman described the animal of rejection which sits behind your eyes. This animal is definitely there for me, overwhelmingly, and I know that it is joined by the little animal whose role is just to project suicide into my brain, and the anxious animal beside it who quietly whispers all the time that I am doing everything wrong. There’s a paranoid animal which feeds poisonous thoughts into my brain about how much everyone hates me, which is great friends with the animal who is there to remind me constantly of how disgusted I am by my own existence. One of the hardest animals is the little guy who sits very quietly in the back of my brain, he spends most of his existence just watching. But then, occasionally, at seemingly random points, his hatred is so overwhelming that I end up furious. It isn’t because something understandably anger provoking has happened, its usually because I feel rejected and like the fight is over, and this little animal turns me off completely. I hurt myself, I hurt people I love, I say things which to be honest are fairly rude. Things I would never say if I was left as myself.

These animals can’t be summed up in one sentence and are one of the reasons that Borderline Personality Disorder is so hard to explain and to understand. It has so many faces that it it gets hard to recognise – even my happiness is often the disorder rather than myself, which is something a lot of people struggle to understand.

My entire life is trying to control these animals – so if you catch me in a good moment, it means I am controlling them well, not that they aren’t there, because I am nowhere near that stage yet. 

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. 

Let me be a coward.

Seconds. It always amazes me how it takes seconds for everything to drop. It doesn’t matter what has happened or how happy I have been for how long, it just goes. I lose it all and revert into a broken, barely human body which is so empty and so desperate that I can barely fake a smile and hold my head on my shoulders. I have to go on living a life that could be completely lost at any moment. I know that everyone has this, but I don’t believe it is in the forefront of most people’s heads at all times.

Suicide is seen as the cowards way out. Its seen as selfish.
“I know I’m not capable of that because I know it would hurt people I left behind”
“Just push through a few more days, you’ll see, it’ll get better”
“Don’t be an idiot”

I am not a coward, I am not selfish, and I am not an idiot. I have a problem which means that suicide is on my mind almost all day, all night. I sometimes wonder how long someone else would last with my brain. Honestly, I don’t think it would be long.

I am just a girl who doesn’t want to exist anymore. I want to delete myself. Remove the error. Rub out the mistake.

I am just a girl who thinks about dying all the time and doesn’t know how to live. It really isn’t selfish that I am incapable of living. I bet you’d be a ‘coward’ too if your brain didn’t work properly.

Grief is hell, I understand that. But when I lose this fight, I lose it all. At least grief means you still have a beating heart. 

This is my dream

Right now I feel like I am on top of the world. Not because I am the happiest person, not because I’m no longer ill, and not because I have achieved any incredible feats. No, right now I am happy because I truly believe with every bone in my body that I am going to be allowed to try and live until I am old and wrinkly! In this moment in time, I believe I am someone worth fighting for. I believe I matter, I believe I can help remind other people that they matter, and I believe that I actually have the power to put my experiences to good use and make a tiny bit of difference to someone’s world.

The thing about having a disorder like BPD is that is fogs your mental vision, constantly. It is always there, twisting things and taking away hope, trust and belief. Yet when things are a little bit better for me, like now, I am honestly so appreciative. A lot of people talk about living their dreams, but for me, honestly, my dream is to live. This is my dream. For me, this mood is an achievement, and looking past the pain, fear, mistrust and disillusion can be hard.

This mood won’t last, that is the nature of my disorder, and at any moment in the next 24 hours I could be reduced to a shattered human, curled up in the corner of my room unable to do anything apart from sob, or do myself damage. I am aware of that. Yet I can look past it, because I truly feel like I can get through that. I can shatter, I can go through pain, and I can put myself back together and wait for the pain to pass, because being a borderline hasn’t just made me weak; it has made me unbelievably determined as well.

Watch this space, because I have only lived ¼ of what could be my life, and I have a lot of things to do in the next 60 years and a lot of people I love to do them with. If you’re reading this as someone who is currently struggling, keep pushing through, because mental illness should never win. You are better than that and you deserve so, so much more than that. I will always believe in you.