Tag: mental health and relationships

Do you think hope is a choice?

Two things were said to me yesterday which have given rise to strong feelings and thoughts for me.

The first was that hope is always there and it’s a choice and we choose whether to accept or deny it.

The second was that healing of even awful pain is possible but we have to want it.

These statements and what they imply and the thoughts they lead to are very hard for me.

Tomorrow I will post again on this topic. For now I’m really interested to know what you think. Do you agree? What do you think? Do the statements imply particular things for you or give rise to strong feelings?

I know it’s a bit strange without the context but I did not want to cloud the issue with my own strong interpretations and what I felt. Tomorrow I’ll write about that…but first I’m really interested in any thoughts you may want to share in the comments.

Thank you.

Ginny xxx

Why did the goose cross the road, and other stories

Q – What’s the difference between a Scottish man with a slight cold and an English man with 7 days’ holiday?

A – One has a wee cough, the other has a week off.

I hear you groan 🙂 That was one of the first jokes I learnt to tell as a child. (The other was what do you call a lavatory that keeps coming back to you? – A loomerang. Yep sorry about that. …)

Moving swiftly on! I’ve just had a week off myself and go back to work tomorrow. It was exceptionally bad weather until Sunday afternoon. On the news they said it was colder in my region one day last week than it was on Christmas Day! That same day my bus was delayed because there was a flock of geese that had escaped onto the main road and caused pandemonium. The bus driver said it was a shame it wasn’t really Christmas as we’d have got rid of the problem quite quickly (goose anyone?!)

My friend came to stay for two nights. She was my first overnight guest since I moved to my flat over a year ago. It’s a big step on for me that I was able to have someone stay over. My anxiety has always previously been so high that I could not cope and had to be able to escape from company after a few hours. I did have times I struggled and I was very tired from trying to make sure I stayed “okay” but we had fun together. My friend is in her eighties – she’s my friend L’s nan and I’ve been blessed to come to know her family over the past few years. They really make me feel like an adopted family member. I’m so thankful for all of them. We don’t see each other as often as we’d like as we don’t live very close by anymore but still the friendships have stayed strong and readers of this blog will know that true lasting friendships are rare and precious to me.

Also in my week off I’ve been able to make an effort to get on top of housework and clear my very tiny garden which I had not cared for properly since the winter. I am not a gardener and don’t enjoy it but I’m thankful for my outside space and try to keep it tidy. It really is very small.

Dad came to visit yesterday afternoon.  We had a coffee and walked through the park in the sun back to my flat. We had pasta bolognese for lunch (second in my Ten Dishes challenge) and a good talk in the afternoon. He’d just been on holiday with my step mum which they’d enjoyed. I’m thankful that I feel closer to my dad again now and more able to be curious about his life and express how things really are in mine.

This coming week I need to start a creative project. One of my colleagues is retiring at the end of this month. My other colleagues and I are putting together a scrap / memento book as part of her leaving present. We are going to decorate a page each for her. Some people are sewing, some embroidery, some photo collages – I’m going to put together some decorative text and decoupage based around one of her favourite songs. Updates to follow!

I hope you’ve had a good day. What do you like to do in your holidays?

Ginny xxx

 

 

 

Not that girl

Alert for stupid self indulgent sad post :/ …

I wrote this post a few days ago. It’s a struggle to admit to these feelings and to how it’s hurting me. It’s one of those times I feel so childish and needy and that I should just get over it. I’m taking a risk and posting this and maybe I’ll see what happens and see what you think. Maybe it’ll help me let it go too.

….

I’m trying to accept that my ex has got married. That though he left me saying the thought of marriage made him want to run, and he never wanted children and had no understanding of the meaning of marriage or the idea of being open to having children, he didn’t want the changes to his life that a relationship would bring, he didn’t want the personal social or financial implications – despite all this he now has a wife and two young step daughters and an extended step family and he’s arranging his wife and daughters’ immigration to the UK.

Everything he told me he wanted and believed he now has the opposite. He was so utterly against having children and he now has two. He was against any change or disruption to his routine but he’s maintaining a transcontinental marriage and arranging all the immigration process and naturally bringing his new family to his home, which will completely change every part of his life. And so on.

At the same time as I learnt this I learnt he saw me as a financial drain. He resented the slightest extra expense he saw our relationship (ie me) as causing, even a taxi or bus fare because with my disabilities I couldn’t walk everywhere as he would. He thought I drove his friends away and cost him his friends and lodgers  (at one point I along with two other people rented rooms in the house he owned and we did not always get along and there were arguments and as my and his relationship progressed ams so did that of one of the other lodgers with her boyfriend, she moved out). He resented time I wanted us to spend together. He was more and more angry if I wanted to try to build the emotional side of our relationship or pray together.

I don’t think there was anything good for him in the relationship apart from the physical side. He admitted he was physically drawn to me and had been for some time before our relationship started, and that he continued to be since. That terrified me. And I felt used too. That he resented anything emotional or spiritual and saw me as a drain and source of anger, yet had some physical want for me. I feel revulsion the two are separated and disgust at myself that I was so repulsive to him as a person but there to be taken physically. No we didn’t go “all  the way” or go against our faith’s teaching but there was intimacy and it is enough to terrify me. I don’t understand it properly yet. Perhaps it’s something to do with my childhood abuser’s hate of me but control and use of my body.

Anyway. … it’s also harder to accept because I found out the lady he has married has been a close friend and correspondent of his for over 10 years, that is to say well before my relationship with him began. I knew of her and thought she was an occasional penfriend. I didn’t know the depth of their friendship. I don’t think he was unfaithful but all the bonds that were lacking in my relationship with him were there between him and her all along. Everything he resented and wanted to run from with me, like time spent together or having children, he had and wanted with her. So it felt like it was so clearly me that he wanted to run from, not the things themselves.

It’s ironic that I found all this out at a time I was already thinking that my mental health had greatly affected my relationship with him (my Borderline was not yet diagnosed at the time). I had been planning in any case to tell him about my diagnosis because I did already feel responsible for a lot of why our relationship failed, because of my emotional instability, crying, anger, intense need of his presence and reassurance. So what I found out should have come as no surprise. Yet it is still a shock.

I’m not that girl. I’m not the right person to share his life or bring him joy. She’s got him. She always had him really. I am glad for them. I am happy for them and for the stability they will share. Despite his resentment for me I still feel an ache and painful sadness when I think of us or hear of them. Despite how much he disliked me, basically, and how little it seems we shared from his point of view, in my heart I can’t accept we didn’t share anything genuine in our companionship.  Then again it seems we didn’t from his point of view. There is not going to be an answer to that really.

I told a trusted friend about how I’m feeling and what my ex has now told me about our relationship. She said he sounds like a complete jerk. And the thing is, reading this,listening  to me, perhaps you would think that. But I don’t think he is. A lot of the time I was with him he acted understanding and kind and generous. That was partly why it was such a shock when we broke up. He was committed to his work and the church and gave a lot of help to several people in need. It was only when we broke up, and then now as I’ve found out about the wedding and his wife and daughters and he’s admitted what he actually thought of me, that I feel both used and guilty he resented me so much. It feels like nothing I thought we shared was genuine somehow because all the while he was feeling something totally different from me and totally different from what I thought he was feeling. I don’t want to make out he’s a nasty person. I was so sure he was and is a good person. I’m so confused.

When he brings his new family to the UK, there will be another wedding ceremony over here, and this will be important, as this ceremony will make them married in the Church body as well (at present they have had a civil ceremony in the law of her home country; they have not sealed their vows in the church). I will hear of it, I must be prepared and accept and learn to wish them well. I do wish them well.

I’m not that girl and I must not allow myself any more self indulgent lingering in the pain I’m feeling. There are many questions that won’t be answered. They have found each other as it should be. There is another place for me. I need to give them to the Lord now and keep looking forward to the good relationships that I’m in today and what I can do, not back to the questions and pain I can’t solve.

Ginny xxX

 

I wish we knew we’d get to the end of this together

I feel so sad today. Too many people are leaving in all areas of my life.

Someone has left our therapy group and will not be returning. I can’t post too much about it so as not to break confidentiality. I’m scared for her. We don’t know why she left. We did not get to talk with her about it because she stopped coming suddenly a few weeks ago and then the therapists told us today that she isn’t coming back. I miss her. Already. She saw herself as so bad but clearly had so much good about her. I really really wish we could have helped her. I’m scared for her – for what will happen to her, where she’ll get help and what she may do. I felt a lot in common with her. Often she spoke what I was too afraid to. She had been so so hurt by terrible experiences in her life. I so wanted to keep her safe but feared she was so hurt and kept running into so many circumstances of further pain and not being able to trust people, that she would not be really happy this side of heaven. I have to accept her decision and know I can only give her into Our Lord’s hands and pray for her now.

In the last couple of sessions people have been leaving group early because it has been too distressing or unhelpful for them. I panic when someone leaves. Or people withdraw and don’t want to talk anymore. Again I panic. I don’t want anyone else to go away. So often it seems to be my fault and so often I’m flashing back to being a child and my mother threatening to go away because of me or that she and my dad would be taken away because of me. ..or to the times she stopped speaking and I couldn’t elicit any response or her “absences”… and I wish, please please don’t go away. I wish we knew at least in group that we’d all get to the end of the course together.

I miss N, I miss two other people I thought were close and I’ve lost in the past weeks. I miss the hope there was in the existence of that relationship that I could do some good for them or be needed. I miss what little sense of safety there was that I wouldn’t be left that time and wasn’t doing harm.

I miss any sense of there being a few narrow circumstances at least, where I could think I did a good job or the right thing. The last part of that was lost with my failure in my last job and the loss of so many important relationships.

I cry and cry again but it doesn’t go away.

Ginny xxx

“Have you ever thought of getting a cat?”

I think I’ve officially entered crazy cat lady territory 😉 !

I’ve been trying for months to get to meet up with a friend who lives just the other side of town from me. She’s never free as her time is completely taken up with home schooling her three children and many voluntary activities at her church like teaching marriage preparation courses. I’d stopped asking for a while but thought I’d try again and said how much I missed her. She emailed me back, again declining and asked me if I had ever thought of getting a cat! (Or a hamster or some such.)

As it happens I have been considering getting a guinea pig but I think possibly her response is further evidence that my friends find me too needy. Time to get a cat instead. … bitterly I have to laugh 🙂 I’ve nothing against cats, actually I love them and hope one day to get one (maybe rehoming a rescue cat), but I’d kinda still like some contact with friends as well! Hoped I had a while yet before becoming crazy cat lady but who knows.

So much has happened lately to tell me I’m too needy. Losing N. especially, and what I learnt about my former relationship with my ex. I know I haven’t posted much about that yet and I want to soon. Sorry.

I miss my friend above. I miss N, my ex, I miss (though it isn’t really miss but long for,  as I don’t think I ever had it) being able to trust someone and know they will not leave; being able to know (this is only in my dreams) I will not do them harm, will not be too much for them, they would see the worst and most broken of me and love me still and more importantly still allow me to love them; I wish the relationship could be to them what it is to me.

I miss my friend and I know now that to her as well, I’m too much and our relationship does not matter as it does to me. It does not bother her that we do not meet and live so close but see each other months apart when someone else chances to invite us to the same church focused gathering. It does not bother her that we no longer share in each other’s everyday lives or know what each of us is facing or feeling; it does not matter that we’ll grow further apart as you can only be so close with occasional emails and texts and more major events and more daily but significant experiences go unmentioned, unshared, unspoken. She has no need of me, no desire to share or talk or find support.

Her life is full. She takes on great commitments not only to her family but to her church and community, teaching courses, volunteering, looking after other people’s children for weeks at a time when they are going through a rough period, traveling all around the county and further to meetings and activities and retreat days. In no way do I fit. To come over one evening even though it’s just across town, or meet up just briefly one day, have a coffee for a few minutes, or me go over to see her – that would be far too much. Although she takes on so much for everyone else it would be too much to spend a few minutes with me. Whether it were because I need her or for me to help her or just for fun, for no reason, to share a bit.

I do not fit in her life and it’s no loss to her. I have nobody who needs me. I have nobody close to me who would come and be there when I need them. (With the notable exception of my friend L. however she lives a long way away so cannot be in touch face to face ever so often.) That hurts.

Ginny xx

 

So much I can’t get out

This hasn’t been a great week. There’s so much I want to write but can’t get down. Two really important relationships have turned out not to be at all what I thought they were. The two people who ever made me feel a little bit like I might not be all bad inside, told me what they thought of our relationship and of me. .. and these only relationships and only people told me I was a drain, resented, to be run from, too much, dominating everything,  nothing, not wanted, nothing had ever been shared.

I want to write but the words spiral through my head and get lost and I feel as if I’m spiraling too, falling uncontrollably away from my last hope of belonging or doing good, full of pain and doing only wrong, or dissociating and watching numb actions from a distance. I try to give my feelings a name but somewhere between the hurt, the fear, the spiraling thoughts and the words, it all gets lost. In any case,  I’m scared to talk to anyone and do not want to even step outside but at the same time I’m desperate for someone to hold me.

What do you do when you find out the most important things you thought you shared with those you cared about most,  were not shared? When the people who gave you hope tell you what harm you’ve done? When you trusted someone enough to tell them the most shameful, painful parts of your story- then they leave,  or tell you you had no close bond at all? And they walk away and you never do, ever.

xxx

A shaky week

This week I planned to get all caught up here on comments and visiting your blogs. However as so often happens, things took a different term and I seem to be as useless as the proverbial handbrake on a tortoise. And moving at a similar speed too!

This hasn’t been a very stable week. I had a meeting with my new support worker, a difficult consultation with my GP, two relationships breaking down very painfully, an important but emotional group therapy where something that occurred brought flashbacks of a frightening incident in my childhood for which I feel responsible. Also I got some very unexpected news and had a conversation that seemed to throw everything. I’ll post about it in due course once I’m more able to cope.

Not big things in the grand scheme but I’ve got behind again. So once again, I’m sorry for being so slow to answer messages. I care and I’m praying for you and I’m sorry for how I struggle to write.

Ginny xxx

A walk and talk with S

I went for coffee with my friend S this morning. We went for a walk along the river, watching the swans, mooched round an antique and bric-a-brac store and a couple of charity shops*,  and had coffee in a sweet cafe with dressers displaying vintage china teasets.

S was my boss in a previous job and we have kept in touch. I have always respected and liked her very much and actually we get on even better now than we did at work. With the exception of my friend L (my goddaughters’ mum) and her immediate family with whom I lived when I needed support years ago, and those work colleagues I get on with but would not yet consider close friends, S is possibly the only friendship I’ve managed to sustain for several years – and I mean a meaningful relationship, sharing honestly how and who you are. It’s a friendship very precious to me. First because I care about S and think she’s a lovely,  interesting, empathic, fun, genuine and… I can’t think of the word. ….she has strong beliefs about what’s right and important and is very dedicated to doing the best by everyone, if that makes sense. When we talk she often brings perspectives I’d never thought of. We share a similar sense of humour. Secondly, it’s precious because she doesn’t judge me. She cares about keeping in touch and continues to share her life and thoughts with me, whether I’m in a good or a bad state with my mental health. She doesn’t judge and doesn’t dismiss me as unable to cope or engage, and doesn’t push me away if there are certain things I’m finding hard or not always able to be “normal”. Thirdly, she doesn’t require me to be in a particular state or way in order for us to be in touch. That is a really rare gift. There are few people I can say that about and that I’d trust as I do her.

I do have the same fears about losing her, being too much for her, harming or hurting her without knowing it, as I do with other people I care about. S and I don’t get to meet that often, maybe every couple of months or so, and it is often in my mind that if we saw more of each other I’d be too much for her just as I have been for everyone else. However my relationship with S seems more stable than most of my other relationships. I’m not sure why. I’ve wondered if it’s because she’s particularly empathic and she has previously worked in mental health, as have I, so she’s very reflective and has also got more understanding than many of us (me included) may be in a position to have about how PD and mental health conditions in general affect us. She’s also older than me. Or I wonder if it’s to do with having come to know her gradually as a boss first. Perhaps all these things help. I think it’s also an important fact that when I’m more ill, she doesn’t treat me as if that makes me useless or not able to participate in anything and she doesn’t require me (implicitly or explicitly) to be in a different state than I am.

I would think some of the difference must be down to me as well, though I do not know what I do differently with her from in relationships I’ve lost and/or discovered they were not at all for the other person what I thought they were – usually because I’ve hurt them or they resented me without knowing. I probably should try to figure out what I do differently!

Anyhow, this was a nice morning after a very sad, low, shaky week. Tomorrow I am going to meet with L and my goddaughters and the family, as it was my eldest goddaughter’s birthday this week. I’m very anxious about the travel there as unfamiliar or unpredictable places, routes, timings and so on are hard for me; I’m also feeling overwhelmed because there will be 8 of us in total. I don’t want to dissociate, get anxious or get upset which could harm the children and spoil it for other people. Whenever I go to something like this, the thought repeats in my head that I must not let my problems take over everything for other people and they need me to be more together. I was once told by someone I care about that this is what I do, when actually I was doing everything I could to hide what I was going through and self harming repeatedly to deaden my feelings. Now it’s a big fear that I ruin everything.

However, the only way forward is to do it. I really care about L and the girls and their family and it’s worth all the anxieties to get to see them and celebrate with them.

It’s a blessed weekend.

Ginny xxx

A closing drawbridge and a silent cry: too much; too big

 

A closing drawbridge and a silent cry

Eating disorders and personality disorder

My body becoming too much

WARNING: this post contains potentially triggering content on the topic of eating disorders, weight, body image and emotions. Please proceed with caution. Please note that in this post I express my distressed thoughts about my body and the relationship between my body, needs, emotions and relationships. I’m aware that a lot of these thoughts are part of my personality disorder and historic eating disorders. I am not advocating or encouraging these perceptions and feelings but describing what the process of trying to live with my body and face emotions is like. I think the stage of therapy I’m going through is bringing a lot of this distress to the surface. 

My body is changing. It’s out of my control (or so it feels, though the angry punishing eating disordered voice in my head says it’s me that’s out of control – disgusting fat b*tch – and my own disgusting failure).

I have gained so much weight in the past 2 years. I have tried hard in the last few weeks to lose and done all the things that used to be my trusted go-to solutions, with the exception of using illicit medications. I have failed and no matter that I succeeded in restriction, my weight has hardly dropped. If anything, now I feel more out of control. Sometimes I wonder if any of it is to do with being in my 30s now (quarter aged spread instead of middle aged spread?!) and my mobility being poorer with so much physical pain just now.  But that does nothing to justify the gain or calm me. Many people taking the medications I take report weight gain as a side effect even when restricting.  I think it increases my appetite but I know so does my need for comfort and my lonely emptiness and my…feeling. Feeling that’s dangerous and unchecked and explosive.

Anorexia meant I was never alone. I was cold and numb and empty and hurting, but needs and unbearable feeling stayed where they belonged and I dissociated, living somewhere whiter, higher, safer, always with the twisted pleasure of bitter success in my spiral to greater protection and greater weakness. Anorexia was my companion, that reassured me all would be well if I did not deviate from this path,  spurring me on with wild energy to control and deprive and make dangerous need and demands unreachable. Soon enough I would detach and dissociate totally then maybe disappear.

Anorexia left me. Abandoned me. I failed yet again. Just like my friends, even my family, my protector and guide left me. Found out I was a vile disgusting greedy failure, undeserving of that whiter place. Anorexia too abandoned me, and sped away to a place I can no longer reach, now that it is proved yet again that really the evil inside consumes and demands and if anyone else thinks differently, it’s only that I’ve tricked them into staying and caring. They’ll leave soon, when they find out.

I could take it if it were only for my protection that I needed my friend anorexia. But the thing is, it was to protect everyone else, first and foremost, from the danger and “too much” “too big”that I am. Without my friend I hurt beyond control and I hurt others beyond control.

I look in the mirror and I’m frightened and recoil from what I see. I wish I could rip myself away from the “too much” in the presence that I see, hating every part of the space I occupy, the weight, the body that absolutely does not seem to fit together right and screams too much, too much. I cannot escape. I cannot get rid of this body and these needs. I cannot stop what it contains, the out of control, the demanding, aching. … alone without my friend to starve and cut and numb and leave this place, I cannot stop the damage I will cause to everyone I so care for and so wish to save, protect and love.

Ginny xxx

Losing her

Warning: this post contains one very brief mention of suicidal thoughts and overdose.

(Also I’ve a feeling it’s a load of rambling junk. Sorry.)

I’ve lost my friend. It really feels like a loss and hurts like she’s gone away, disappeared, except it’s worse because it’s entirely because of me that she’s chosen to go. She doesn’t want to be close anymore, she said; not close like she says she tried to be or like she says I wanted us to be. My personality disorder, me, my thoughts and needs, have made our relationship something stressful she doesn’t want.

I really care for her, I still do. My feelings for her haven’t changed. I still love her as a friend, want to thank her for all the times she has been there, want to do something to make right the hurt I caused, want to be able to be there for her when she wants or needs me – except she didn’t and doesn’t.

I don’t know exactly how long she’d been feeling she didn’t want to be close anymore before she told me. I’d suspected it for a long time. I really hate what I’ve done to her and that I’ve stressed her and been no good to her. I hate that my illness, essentially, me (my thought, my feelings, my needs, my actions) have been too much. Another person has gone away. Another relationship has gone. I’ve hurt someone else.

You can read a bit morehere (around paragraphs 5, 6, 7) and  here and here about some of the history of what happened with N. Our contact had been strained for several months.

After another period of not hearing from her following my last letter, call and texts, last week before my operation I decided to be more open than usual. I sent N an email, thanking her for forgiving me and explaining I was still really worried about the hurt and upset if caused her, and saying that as I wasn’t hearing from her and she hadn’t said anything beyond that she forgave me,  I was not sure if she wanted to stay in touch. The way I see it, N forgiving me for the hurt I caused did not have to mean she wanted to have contact with me going forward. I directly said I wasn’t sure what she wanted, and asked her.

Also, I took quite a risk and explained to her some of the thought process I talked about in my last post on this topic. I explained how when I don’t hear back from someone I really care about, when they stop communicating, or cancel plans, or don’t show without making any contact,  my thoughts are instantly either: that this proves how they can’t possibly want me around really (who would?) and as soon as I start trusting they leave because all along they knew I’m an evil fake really;  or that they are seriously hurt, or ill,  or got in an accident, and it’s my fault. Often both one after the other. Usually I never admit to these thoughts. I know it’s crazy. I know it’s weird. I know it doesn’t make sense I have these thoughts then get angry with people. I don’t want my friends to feel obliged to take into consideration my weird ill thought processes and make allowances for them in what they do. For example, I don’t want them to feel they have to be more careful what they say to me or to keep in touch more regularly with me than they would with another friend. (Paradoxically I don’t know if, in the way I think and what I need, I do require of people an abnormal level of contact. I’m diagnosed Borderline but I think I have features of dependent personality disorder too!) However things had reached such a point with N that I felt I had to be explicit about what I was feeling and why I had found it so hard to cope when over a few months she stopped keeping in touch and seemed to be restricting contact and canceled or altered several plans to meet (this was one of the things we first fell out over a few weeks ago).

I explained all this as well, as my hesitancy to explain it because I didn’t want to pressure her. I said I know that I make it too complicated and I need too much and my illness makes it too hard to be friends. That I really wanted to be there for her but it was clear I totally failed at that and it’s my fault there’s nothing good for her in the relationship. I said I’d rather know straight if it would be better for her not to be in touch with me.

I’ve never been that open with someone about my thought processes about my relationship with them, outside of my therapy group.

N wrote back a few days later. She was empathic – she said she is sorry there is so much distress going on for me. She said she doesn’t keep in touch regularly across the board when she’s busy. She said it’s stressful for both of us to communicate, when there is so much meaning for me in each interaction. She thinks it’s too distressing for me to cope with the likelihood of her changing plans. She said she can’t be as close a friend as she tried to be or as I want her to be. She offered that we can still meet sometimes or email – which surprised me, actually.

I know it isn’t a total end of the relationship. I’m hoping we can in some way keep in touch and I can remember she doesn’t want to be as close. I hope I can do that and not need too much. But I always need too much. Maybe this whole thing wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t. Never would have happened if I didn’t.

One of the things that hurts the most is that I can never now make right the hurt I’ve caused N. I have made her and needed her to be closer than she wanted to be. I have made her stressed and upset when she’s done so much for me. It has been as I feared. I was too much, yet again;  I needed too much, asked too much, my thoughts and my behaviour made everything too much for the other person.

I told N some of that briefly too, and I thanked her for telling me honestly. I tried to tell her I’m sorry and thank you. I fear it appears it has little meaning now. I really meant it. I need to thank her for so much over the years I’ve known her. I don’t know if she knows. It seems to me all I’ve done is stress her. I don’t know exactly how long I’ve been making her be closer than she wanted. She doesn’t know it but she has possibly literally saved my life. One night I was on the brink of a massive overdose. She happened to call me at that time and as we spoke, she and her husband gave me some hope back and pulled me back from the edge. She knew I was distressed but not how close to ending it I was. I didn’t tell her explicitly at the time or afterwards, because I didn’t want to scare her or make her feel responsible for keeping me safe from that in the future if she knew how unstable I was and the potential influence ordinarily insignificant interactions and events could have on me. Now I wish I had told her.

Some while ago someone I care about told me, “look at what your friends do for you, why isn’t it enough for you? It’s nobody else’s responsibility to make you feel better,” and they told me I have to be more together so my emotions don’t dominate everything. Yet again I’ve acted on the basis of my weird thoughts, I’ve needed other people to do more than they wanted to, more than normal, and I’ve needed them to make it better.

I’m going to stop now. This post is a mess. I’m feeling so empty, hurting for losing N, hurting and angry for the harm I’ve done her, desperate because of how my PD and just …me….wrecks relationships and makes me too much.

Ginny xxx