I've got a war in my mind.

People like myself with BPD to get overwhelmed and discouraged more easily than the average person. We are emotionally unstable and feel anger and sadness more intensly than most. You may feel anger in a situation and the borderline instead will feel rage. We are very "black and white" type of personalities. All or nothing and no middle ground, no grey area in between. As a person with BPD I face daily challenges that aren't obvious. As Lana Del Rey says in her song Ride "Been trying hard not to get into trouble, but I've got a war in my mind." My behavior may seem strange at times on what I call my "bad days." I find that feeling extremely stressed triggers me. Change triggers me as well. I become highly irritable and short tempered or maybe I will do what I call "hibernating" and become antisocial. It's a toss up. You never know what you're gonna get. It's that unpredictable, impulsiveness that makes it hard to try and understand the Borderline. 

Time will heal you.

Why would you stay in a situation where you are not happy? Why would you choose to exist rather than live?

Don't wake up one day and realize that you wasted years of your life. Don't stay in a relationship with someone who doesn't care about your well being. You deserve to be happy. Change is hard and it's scary...believe me I know. It's difficult to imagine life being alone again and doing things by yourself. There may be tears and you will feel overwhelmed at first. Once you rip the band aid off things will get better. Time will heal you and you will discover yourself again.  

Loving the alcoholic

A person will come into your life, steal a piece of your heart and leave. It's those people that we can never seem to fully get over. Memories play like a movie on late nights as you lie awake in bed. You miss them so much that you live for those memories. It is a curse. There are the "what ifs" and you continuously question every angle. It's madness. You cannot stop it because in every quiet moment to yourself...you can't help thinking of what could have been. 

He was a good guy who never felt good enough. It was pointless to tell him any different. Hell bent on destroying anything good...one day he gave up and reached for a bottle. He purposely lied to push others away. Nothing would or could change his self destructive behavior.  It was beyond anything that one could comprehend. He took a few people down with him. All the begging, crying and getting angry could not change it. They asked themselves how could this happen? How did this happen? He couldn't love himself and certainly wasn't capable of loving anyone else. 

Let me tell you this my friends...it's like a loved one dieing. A death. The death of someone you knew, adored, cherished and loved. It's like having the wind knocked out of you...a sucker punch. A devastating hurt that cuts so deep that it NEVER goes away.

Such is the life of an alcoholic...

You try to sabotage what's good because you don't feel worthy of good. You have spent countless hours convincing yourself that you are worthless. When someone sees the good you are quick to deflect and focus on the negative and you go into sabotage mode. You have a lot of unresolved hurt stemming from an event or events in your life. When you feel this hurt you drink it away. Just as a cutter would cut their wrist to release the pain, you use alcohol.  You are unhappy with yourself and you use humor as a mask and to deflect from the real issues. You will avoid talking about your deep seeded issues because the unresolved hurt is too painful to acknowledge and bring to the surface. You get so overwhelmed that you can feel you can barely function and you're running on fumes. You live in a cycle of drinking, avoiding your feelings and negativity. Your pain is slowly destroying your life. 

"Alcoholism is a well documented pathological reaction to unresolved grief."

- DAVID COOK, Psychosocial Issues in the Treatment of Alcoholism 

Take control of your life and face your fears!

Are you letting fear control you, your emotions or even your life? I certainly have been guilty of it. Fear causes us to react in ways that are self harming to our quality of life. 

 

I have a friend who is so scared of letting someone love him that he will purposely at any cost use whatever words or actions necessary to keep love away. He has not learned to love without expectation. He has a fear of change and these fears simply cannot and will not lead to an overall happy life. He does not love himself so how can he possibly be capable of loving someone else? Like a broken record he plays the "I'm not good enough" record over and over in his mind. He has been living in a dark place for a long time and playing that record over and over...and believes it.  He has worked very hard to make himself believe he is not worthy of his own happiness. He has spent years building a wall...a fortress around him that prevents light and love from reaching him.  He has placed himself in a deep, dark pit and sits in solitude. At times he puts on a mask and ventures out only to save face so that he may keep up the façade that he is happy. They do not know the real him and he is ok with it. He gets up, goes to work and on weekends drinks himself into oblivion to numb any feelings he may have...whether they are good or bad.  See, on a Monday he is a self proclaimed "fall down drunk alcoholic" and by the weekend he is saying "it's not that bad." It is a sad, lonely existence indeed and he thinks he deserves it.

 

So many let fear stop them from achieving love, success and personal goals in their lives.  Face your fears head on because you are worth it. Do not spend your life trying to live up to others expectations of who they feel you should be. Stop playing the "I'm not good enough" record and get up, get out and find yourself. Carve your own path out and follow your instincts. Face those fears and maybe you will find that they are not so scary and intimidating after all. Learn to love the wonderful person that you are and let love into your heart. Take control of your life, stop making excuses and face your fears!  

 

   

Lost souls trying to find their way

I want to ask that you stay humble. Be patient with those trying to find their way. Always leave a guiding light in your heart on for them. Anticipate that they will find their way home through the storm...eventually.  Remember that you too were once lost and struggling to keep your head above water in an seemingly endless sea.  Never give up on them.

- Peace for the Tortured Soul

Hitting rock bottom and climbing your way to the top

There you lay at the bottom of a deep, dark pit of despair.  You have never felt so down and so low.  This is it... you have hit "rock bottom." You know that this is IT. There comes a time when those who are struggling find themselves at what society calls rock bottom. Years of depression, struggles, traumatic events...they all have potential to drag you into that deep, dark pit. Then before you know it there you are at the lowest point in your life.

Now as bleak as this sounds some do not make it out.  You have two sides to the story.  Those who hit rock bottom sometimes choose an out.  That out is suicide.  Heartbreaking for those who lost their way. Then others who hit rock bottom choose life. What drives someone at the very edge to crawl their way out of a seemingly never ending pit? I can speak from personal experience and I will tell you what...the will to live. I can remember so clearly the feeling, that tiny voice inside me screaming. I did not know it at that time, but it was my soul crying out.

Why do some make it out and some not?  Perhaps there was a bigger plan for those dear souls. Can anyone really answer that question? All I can say is that I am here.  I AM ALIVE. When the chips were stacked against me I somehow made it. I have been to hell and back and from it learned empathy.

I feel that healing cannot start until you have hit that low. You have to live it and feel it and see it. You have to want to get out of that pit and never return to it again. Now the real work begins. Blood, sweat and tears. A journey into self discovery. Accept that you need guidance and seek out that guidance whether it be psychiatric help, group therapy, books, message boards, online communities or just telling a friend or family member how you feel. You may just happen to find yourself 14 years later writing a blog about your experiences of hitting rock bottom and finding your way to the top. 

You have to walk through the storm

Think about situations in your lifetime that have prepared you for who you are today. What has conditioned you for present day situations? Back then they may have had you asking "why?" or "why me?" You may have thought you were having bad luck and felt you were at a low point in your life, but somehow you made it through. Think about connecting the dots from the past. What people or situations were placed in your life path? How did those people and/or situations teach you lessons for future situations? 

 

You have to walk through the storm...

 

"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."

 

Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

Awakening, signs and self discovery

I was raised with no religion.  Growing up I did not have a belief system and I was ok with that because it was all that I knew. 

 

Initially, when I had my awakening it started with a series of events that happened over two years time.  At first I disregarded, made excuses and ignored certain signs. As time passed and certain people were being placed in my path I started to question a lot of things. By the end of the year I realized what the purpose was of all those people that randomly came into my life with similar messages.  This was no coincidence. 

 

Often when one is awakened it starts like a door has been cracked open.  Soon the door opens more and more and then you have a snowball effect.  The more the door opens the more you start to notice signs that you wouldn't have noticed otherwise.  This is what I mean when I say "awakening." Soon you feel like you are living life and thinking on a whole other level.  I call it the next level. 

 

I felt robbed at first...robbed of being not being able to see the world in such a new and beautiful light all these years.  The various people who came into my life planted a seed.  It was up to me to feed and water that seed.  At first, I was not ready as so many are.  Sometimes it can take years to fully become aware and accept that you are having an awakening. 

 

Recently, I spoke with an old friend and he explained that he was in a dead end relationship, depressed, having problems with high blood pressure and going down a path which he felt was leading to alcoholism. A visit to the dentist office ended with the dentist saying that he must be under a great deal of stress because he was grinding his teeth in his sleep.  Apparently grinding to the point that he needed a lot of dental work because of it.  He is what I would call a "people pleaser." He is full of kindness, empathy, love and helping others.  Often in his past he has encountered blood sucking opportunists who used him. He admits that he is kind and generous to a fault. He has been dating and living with a women who stifled his creative and eccentric nature.  To the extent that if she felt he was rambling and talking to much she would tell him to stop talking. She had suggested that if he met someone and wanted to have relations on the side he could.  She had crashed and totaled her car some years ago and had been driving his car since the accident.  He had brought up to her over the years that she needed to look for a new car, but she continued to drive his car.

 

Many years ago I knew him as a creative, free thinking individual.  Now he is shell of who he once was.  He is currently working on his self worth and his own awakening.  He thought he was ready to move forward and change.  He even went so far as to end his dead end relationship and guess what...within a few weeks she went out and purchased a new car.  Initially, his ex asked to stay with him for a month to have time to find her own apartment.  He agreed.  Now, she is still living in his apartment and he is staying in the second bedroom.  This is an example of having an awakening, but not yet being ready to accept it and change.  If you cannot be the change you wish to see then how can change happen? 

 

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.”

   
― Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym

Practicing kindness and paying it forward

A friend of mine has been going through the motions in his life. He admittedly has not been happy in a long time. He explained that he feels emotionless and almost robotic in nature. I proposed that he complete a "pay it forward" and focus on how he feels afterwards. I wanted him to be in the moment and present with his feelings. Initially, my suggestion was to "pay it forward" by paying for a strangers beverage and/or food who is behind you in a drive through line. If you are unfamiliar with what I am referring to please take a moment to read this article: http://m.wikihow.com/Pay-It-Forward

I followed-up and asked if he had completed the pay it forward. He hadn't. Then a few days later I received a text message from him: "Does letting people pull out in traffic count as a pay it forward?  I used to never do that but I let 2-3 people this week." 

I was thrilled that he took a step forward in his journey to find happiness again. It is not an easy task to pull yourself out of a self-loathing routine. Misery loves company and often one can feel hopeless and overwhelmed. Practicing kindness is rewarding. Being kind to others can create a ripple effect. Small steps can eventually lead you down the path of self discovery.  

What is empathy?

What is empathy? Well, in my opinion it is a gift learned over time. Not everyone knows the feeling of having empathy for another. People who have suffered a great deal in their lives know all too well the feeling of hurt, loneliness and despair.  Out of that struggle you find yourself relating to others who have been to hell and back.  For me empathy is a blessing and a curse. It is the overwhelming emotion of sadness and compassion for people time and time again. There are times when i am learning about a person's experience in life and I am filled with emotion and the tears start to flow. The overwhelming feeling of that individuals pain and sadness consumes me and for a moment we share that energy...that moment. 

The ability to have the gift of empathy is quite possibly the only positive thing that came out of my traumatic childhood. 

The next time you see a homeless person begging for money I ask you to contemplate this: that maybe that person was not able to come out of the struggle and live a normal life. Try not to go to that dark place in your mind where you just see the homeless beggar as an alcoholic/drug addict who is doing nothing with their life. It is easy to judge when we do not know a person's personal struggle.