Tag: Borderline Personality Disorder

WHY. (This ends tonight.)

I have been wondering for a couple of days whether to post about this or not, considering various thoughts about whether this would be too triggering or disturbing and whether potential dangers would outweigh the benefits.

However, I think this is so personally specific that I hope it isn’t triggering, if you see what I mean. Also I’m bearing in mind the advice that acknowledging and talking and asking about suicidal feelings doesn’t cause people to become suicidal.

Something else prompted me to post this tonight, which I’ll explain momentarily.

This post attempts to describe a tiny bit of what I was feeling on Saturday when I overdosed and why I did.

Someone I know has just essentially described my overdose as drama because of a cancelled coffee date. This is so incredibly far from the truth of what led to my overdose and what I felt. It was massively painful to realise that is what it was for her. She is not by nature a judgemental person. She has herself suffered with mental health problems. She is highly intelligent. She is medically trained.

I’m not posting this to tell her she’s hurt me. I don’t understand how she could possibly think that’s why I overdosed.  Perhaps my “why” is equally incomprehensible to her. I do wonder if anyone wanting to understand more about why people overdose or attempt suicide may be interested to read this. But as I said, it’s only very personal to me. Every person’s story and pain is different.

I want to be very clear I am not glorifying overdose or self harm – I am describing what I felt. I am not describing a solution. At the bottom of this article I’ve listed a couple of details of organisations that I think can help towards getting support.

In italics below I’ve tried to describe some of what happened to me in the days and minutes before I overdosed. Though factors and thoughts had been multiplying over days and weeks and months, the actual “1000th last straw” kind of feeling and the final loss of control and “snap” came very suddenly that night.

I guess this comes against a background of mounting external stresses – numerous cancelled appointments, lost support, lost relationships, lost job, financial hardship, threats from my landlord, debt, endless difficulties with numerous benefits and being stuck in hopeless inextricable messes with error after error on the authorities’ part despite my best efforts, poor physical health and constant pain – as well as the internal stresses of my mental health like hallucinations, flashbacks, reexperiencing, voices in my head, memory gaps and dissociation.

Because:

Because everything is utter pain and nothing else exists. All of me is lost outside it. Because nothing, no cutting, no purging, no screaming voices or obedience to their call, is enough to rid the sick evil inside me.

Everyone knows I’m a fake, a liar, foul, ugly, greedy, everyone knows what I’m really like. But I can never stop the evil.

Because the voices do not stop and I so badly need to sleep.

No matter how much more you say, just one more day, one more hour, there really is a limit somewhere, don’t they see? And I know it’s weak but I passed it long ago. It’s true when I say in tired. Let me sleep.

Because I’m screaming, crying, and no one ever came and no one hears today either.

Cruellest – every person has left me when I was most raw. They tricked me to trust, they got at the most bad and vulnerable – then they left. [Like my abuser.] First this hurts with utter fear. Utter loss yet again of all I am. Loss of any hope.

Then rising anger boils and it is just one sick joke or cruel game too many, where they delight in punishing me, I can never win, tricked and tricked again, delighting in hurting me – like HER abuser] – and God delights in my downfall and hurt and he has crushed me to the ground and taken all of me.

No good is visible, no hope exists; no caring is possible, only no more; no more; only sleep.

Then in one moment, comes blinding rage and tears. From numb, dissociated, to intolerable existence to exploding anger, cutting and smashing, no hurt enough. Fears of this exploding monster turning outward now, to someone else, no longer just assuredly to me?

This is all now. ..

In some vague place in another part of my mind, knowing and hoping my heart will stop now I’ve taken the pills.

Running.

Blank.

Slowing.

Tired and the screaming pain is silenced and the voices gone. I can sense my heart, my breathing high and caught and slow but rising. ..

So. This is it now. After that unbearable state consuming – …. the end seems very simple.

 

Of course, it is not at all simple. One most bitter thought in my mind right now, after the comment that it is drama over a minor thing and can’t be dealt with, is that having reached this absolute end point of not being able to go on, even in this I am causing anger and harm and manipulating without wanting to, because to others it’s not real, just drama, trouble, unnecessary, manipulative, can’t be dealt with. I cannot go on and I cannot even stop. Twisted, but definitive, proof ending it isn’t the solution.

FOR HELP, THE FOLLOWING NUMBERS AND SITES COULD BE OF USE:

Samaritans, call for help 24 hours – 08457 90 90 90

http://www.stopsuicidepledge.org

http://www.mind.org.uk

http://www.b-eat.co.uk (eating disorders support)

Ginny xxx

 

Losing time

I know we all lose track of time and sometimes time flies by, other times it drags.

When my emotions are very high or when I’m rocking between dissociated and cut off and very distressed, I lose time. It’s not the normal “time flies”. I do not know what I have been doing. Impossible-feeling amounts of time pass and I don’t know how or what I’ve done. Or large periods (maybe half a day or sometimes as much as 2 days) vanish from my memory. It usually precedes and/or proceeds a time of intense distress. It’s frightening. 

I thought it would get less as therapy progresses but if anything it’s more.

Also, I feel a greater dissociation between different states of need or emotion and rock between them more precariously. I thought the distance would close with therapy, not widen.

Does anyone else feel in this way? If so do you mind me asking what do you do to cope with it?

Ginny xx

How do you keep on trusting?

I’m really struggling at the moment with the fact that whenever I’m really counting on something it gets taken away. When I’m already at breaking point, things that should be simple are made incredibly difficult so I don’t get help I need or have to go through complicated, draining processes I can’t cope with.

I’m not even talking about more “abstract” ideas like complex relationships or values but very basic things like urgent appointments repeatedly being cancelled, having appointments for support booked but being told the wrong time or the booking not being made, completing lengthy forms for Benefits only for the wrong decision to be made with the wrong information, on and on. I suppose the apparent rejection, lack of care, implication I am undeserving and not allowed help, behind all this, makes it worse.

Most recently it was being discharged from 2 days in hospital after I’d overdosed at the weekend, having had a lengthy assessment with the duty psychiatrist, who discharged me on condition I would be seen by the psychiatrist at the personality disorder team the next day and my CPN within 24 hours, a report had been sent straight to them, and that I could hope for more support. So off I went to the PD team at the hospital on Monday. No report had been sent. The psychiatrist would not see me. The report has now been sent this afternoon. There is still no intention for the psychiatrist to see me despite the duty doctor and actually also my GP requesting it. They actually asked why did I think the psychiatrist needed to see me! No more support is forthcoming although I have had telephone support. The duty workers say haven’t I got any friends I could stay with to be safer. My 2 friends who are nearby have made it clear this is not possible.

There is an absolute pattern of this happening over and over, week after week. I can guarantee that if I’m desperate, just trying to hold on, relying on my next therapy appointment – I’ll get a call to say it’s canceled.

How do you cope with this kind of thing?

It feels like a cruel trick or a sick joke and spikes my anger and hurt out of control and I disintegrate and the feelings I was struggling with already explode as well.

I do not think it’s only me it happens to. In fact someone else in another online forum was saying a very similar thing and that it’s as if we’re never allowed to rest, it’s always the next test and the next thing to go wrong.

How do you keep trusting when you feel like this? How do you stop resenting and being consumed with anger? Becoming more and more self centred?

It is really hard to try to keep trusting the hospital and the doctors when I can’t count on anything and repeatedly hope then bang, it gets taken away again.

I shouldn’t put my trust in anything or anyone and I should detach from the need for it and not depend on anyone or anything. But how do we even start to reach that point?

Ginny xxx

I’m so sorry but so angry too

A relationship I cared about very much has fallen apart. Another one. I had started to trust someone. I cared and still care very much for her. I’ve hurt her. I am so sorry for this, ashamed and guilty and disgusted with myself. Yet I’m also hurt too, angry, left, and in a lot of pain because of just how I was left this time. How I can feel both those things makes no sense and doubly emphasises to me how bad I am.

Not only is this friendship apparently over but even worse, I don’t think anything that I counted on or any good I thought I could do in it was actually real. That hurts even more.

I hate the girl in the mirror

 

The Ladies’ facilities at work have mirrors all along the walls right above the sinks. Inescapable. Two more full length mirrors in the locker rooms, one of them again inescapably right by the door out to the shop floor.

I hate what I have to see in the mirror.

Fat first of all.  Fat, ugly, just Too Big. Too Much. Ugly, wrong.

Nothing matches up and I don’t fit together.

Hate. Look at yourself. Hate. Fat, bulging, disgusting. Foul, no wonder they don’t want you, no wonder, who’d want you?

Remember they’re watching. Remember they know. Everyone knows really. You’re a fake. You’re a liar. They all know how weird you are and what a nasty little thing you are. Listen –

No. Stop, please. I don’t want to hear it again. I wish I could cut the evil out. (Go on, purge, get it all out.) I wish I could go back. Disappear. No more demands of my disgusting body.

Rationally I know these thoughts are always strongest when I’m unstable for a long period. But it still hits me every time I have to look in the mirror and hate.

She needs someone to hold her

Tonight I’m aching. Physically with my back hurting and a stabbing pain all round my hips and stomach with the endometriosis; inside with something I can’t soothe like a loss that’s pulling me apart. I know it’s childish. .. the little child I turn back into when I’m as drained and feeling as… left …as this really needs a hug. I really need someone to hold me as if that would stop me losing it, stop some of this fragmenting.

Nobody ever held her. Not when she needed it. She doesn’t want pity. She knows it’s no great wrong in the scheme of things and her problems no greater than anyone else’s, in fact far smaller. But she wishes someone understood and accepted and held her.

Aching and doubting

I’m aching. I want to curl up right now and I probably will soon under my blanket… literal comfort blanket. ..

I wish someone would hold me. So much it hurts. I’m scared. Of these feelings and just the state of hurting and all the thoughts and voices.

It’s very raw and very childish.

I don’t expect anyone to believe me. I know everyone thinks I’m fake. I can never be sure I’m not evil and I think I am and everyone knows but I can’t stop it hurting everyone. Some little part of my head knows that’s maybe psychotic.

Longing is dangerous. I’ve really really hurt someone who is good and who has been generous to me beyond what I deserve because I needed too much and asked too much and though I know I don’t deserve it, I really needed help. I know it’s her choice to not be there and that’s her right and I’m not her responsibility but in my version of trust she always absolutely left me. At the very point I trusted and needed most. How can I have those two ideas? Knowing she had no need to be there and the choice had to be hers but also desperate longing turning into violent hurt and anger and consuming desperation when I was left? How can I be guilty but still angry?

She hasn’t contacted me. I have no idea what to do. I’ve hurt her so much and I need to make it right and I need to tell her it was my choice alone and my responsibility alone what I did. I need to try to make the hurt right. But what about the fact that I’m still angry? She hasn’t contacted me and she knows what happened the last couple of days I think. So that means definitively she doesn’t want contact, I think. All at once it’s very final. If she knows I was at the end and she says nothing? Doesn’t come? That means she definitely doesn’t want to know anymore. And she shouldn’t. I’m almost sure, despite hurting, that now I’ve done this I mustn’t contact her again and I must stay away because now everything has too much risk and meaning and I would manipulate her without wanting to because I was and am so out of control. I’ve needed too much. Always that’s my wrong.

I was so angry when she said I can’t have anyone now, some point in the future I’ll be able to have normal relationships. That i have to learn to be independent. I’m not allowed anyone there now? But I think she’s right maybe. I always need too much and cause hurt.

Ginny xxx

Stupid little things like coffee

Stupid little things like coffee

It’s evening. I got to the end of the day at work. I told myself if I got through my shift I could get a nice vanilla latte on the way home. Not always the coffee I choose but the kick and the warm sweet milk is comforting for some reason.

It doesn’t really make sense. I’m still feeling confused and like it isn’t quite my life. It doesn’t seem to make sense. Not that it didn’t end exactly. But just that it doesn’t make sense. Therapy and the crowded bus stuck in the traffic; getting out and feeling I couldn’t make my legs work right because the balance and weight was all in the wrong place and I wanted to curl up and hide; pushing and pushing;  work – faster than I thought it would go, though staying listening to the real world was hard; out; coffee. It doesn’t make sense. How can this be when yesterday and Saturday and Friday were what they were, when it so “was” the end. I’m not expecting to get an answer to that or not right now anyway. It’s just a state that doesn’t seem to make sense. I suppose. ..the answer is that even the worst passed. The answer is I was helped. God is merciful and I have such need of His mercy.

Ginny xx

Somehow

[TRIGGER WARNING FOR SUICIDAL THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS, SELF HARM AND OVERDOSE This post may be disturbing please read with caution if this may be unhelpful for you. ]

Somehow it’s nearly morning. Well, it is morning. I’m numb and “out of it” like it’s not really me, but everywhere at the same time. I thought I came to the end. That was supposed to be it. But I’m still here.

I’m scared to write this because it makes it real. What I did. And what is. And that I’m still here and that it’s morning. No question.

(“The watchman counts on daybreak and Israel on the Lord” I can’t remember what Psalm that is right now. ..)

I’m scared to write because I don’t want anyone to hurt and it was noone’s fault but mine and no one’s doing but mine and my responsibility. I lost it, I snapped and gave in. I didn’t deserve it but they cared for me.

I know I was so nasty to someone who has only cared for me. I needed too much. I still do. I’m so sorry.

But I have to write this. I have to write this in order to go on. I’m scared and I can’t remember chunks of time.

So…

I got to the end on Saturday. I screamed. I smashed things in the kitchen. I cut. I took an overdose. A lot more this time. This time it was the end.

But it wasn’t because I’m still here. And I have to get up soon. I have to get up and get dressed and go out and get something to eat and then go to the hospital to see the psychiatrist and my therapist. I promised I’d do it.

I’m okay. I don’t want to scare people. I’m okay physically. I got help. I’ve been in the hospital Saturday and Sunday. I came home late last night. They monitored me – blood tests and ECG and blood pressure and everything – so I’m fine physically. They were kind. They looked after me. I ate. I saw the duty psychiatrist. They’ve sent a report to the personality disorder team. I already had an appointment set with my therapist this morning and I’m to go early to see the psychiatrist too. So I’m safe. I don’t want people to worry.

I’m going on. Nearly time I can get up. It’s cold this morning. I have to decide what to do about work and what do I tell them. I’m meant to be in this afternoon.

“The watchman counts on daybreak and Israel on the Lord.” Keep saying that and get up and it’s morning.

Ginny xx

I’m scared

I’m scared. I’m scared of the memories and scared of the hallucinations. I’m scared of what SHE did to me and the thought she got pleasure in it and what she accused my father of…

I’m scared of what I hear and see and remember and I don’t want it and I’m trying to block it out with the TV always on. I only know after that it’s not real and after I’ve been so scared.

Am I going to stop knowing they aren’t real?