(I would be grateful if you would please read “About” before reading this, or any other post)

It has taken a long time to come to this point.  The idea of starting some form of blog has taken shape over several months.  Writing, on and off, has been an important part of thinking, processing experiences and emotions, praying, reflecting, sometimes reaching out to people, keeping in touch (sometimes when anything else is too frightening), building relationships.  Sometimes just a way to walk through the frighteningly frantic thought processes that spin round and round.

I’ve also hoped that somehow I may be able to bring something from my experiences that helps someone else.  I firmly believe that everything we experience, however bad, in some way eventually increases our understanding of the world, of others; increases our ability to empathise and love.  (Yes, I can say that now, because today I have some degree of calm… the next time, whenever it be, that I am in the midst of the terror and anxiety it will probably be impossible to comprehend this hope, but somewhere, very faintly, it remains, and I am thankful for that.)

So I guess I hope this blog may bring together the purposes writing serves in my life and the hope to help someone and to share with others experiences.

It is hard to know what is helpful, or interesting, to others – not least because I don’t know who will visit these pages and what they may need or feel.  Therefore, though I do deeply hope this site will bring about some good and help for others, I need to be clear that it’s a personal experience, a personal story. I am not clinically trained. I am not a doctor or counsellor. My knowledge of the conditions and issues I discuss here comes from my experience of my own life, the life of people close to me, the services I’ve come into contact with and the therapies I have participated / am participating in (also, some little experience of working in support roles in psychiatric healthcare settings and as a volunteer).

I also think I need to make clear that some of what I share here will be painful, because the reality of what I’m going through is painful. It is frightening, often feels out of control, often feels hopeless, often all I can see is dark and bad. Equally, there are surprising moments of encouragement, which are surprisingly easy to forget when the next stage in the struggle comes, and I hope to be able to explore those too, and genuinely be thankful.

It seems to me that a strong feature in Borderline Personality Disorder is that feelings become so very intensely consuming and real that they can block out all other truth and experience and in the midst of them, it can be impossible to know anything else, no matter how much the “else” is otherwise important to us, central to our lives.  Then, despite how absolute they seem, these feelings change so fast.  This does not mean they were not genuine at the time but can be very hard for me, and anyone around me, to understand.  Perhaps this means that what I express here will also be hard for anyone to understand at times.  If so I hope you’ll tell me.

And finally, I really am thankful to people who take the time and interest to visit here. I’d like to know what you think, for you to ask questions, or share your own experiences.

This journey is in no way the course I thought my life would take and I did not choose it. And I cannot see far ahead.  Perhaps that is a good thing in some ways – though I may want to, often the little I do see of the path frightens me because it seems insurmountable.  Yet I hope that this blog is one way that it can be a fruitful path and a shared one, and a way to keep taking just one step more.

Thank you.

Ginny x +

• Introducing this Blog