Frogs Don't Go Crazy

I'm alive. And I took a picture of this frog. Look at him. He just wants me to stop poking him and leave. Then he'll go eat a bug or a worm or something. He doesn't have a care in the damn world.

His kids don't have dental problems he can't afford to get fixed.

He isn't trying to think up new ways to feed four people for less than $50 a week.

His mortgage isn't getting paid a couple days later every month.

He doesn't have an electric bill.

He doesn't need to buy a car he can't afford.

His isn't trapped under the weight of his family's failure to thrive because of him, because he's a fucked-up loser who can't hold down a job.

He's just a frog.

Lucky bastard.

The Most Honest Thing I've Ever Written

I don't pray, but sometimes I still talk to you. I know it's talking to myself, just like all those empty prayers I used to send up, but I need to do it. I make no excuses for the weakness.

Two years ago, I watched your chest hitch and rise and hold for an eternal second before it fell again. It didn't rise, after that. It stopped. You stopped. Two years ago at dawn, you ended. I try not to think, "You left me." I admit sometimes I can't help it. Sometimes in my small selfish moments I feel like you deserted me.

I still need you. I was your little girl all my life. Those stupid months when we didn't speak, when my teenaged angst and smugness prevented us from being close, I was still your girl. I got older and wiser. I had a daughter of my own. That was what made me realize how little I knew and how much I needed you. The older I got, the more I needed you.

Here I am, aging every day, knowing less and less. Every day I want to ask you something. Every day I have some thought that remains intangible and invalid because I can't share it with you, the only person who'd truly understand. Every day I look at your picture on the shelf and wish I could hear you tell me one more time that I'll be alright. That I'm strong. That you love me.

I have a CD in my drawer with your voice on it, a sound clip. "Hi, this is Lynne, I can't get to the phone so leave a message." I haven't listened to it, not once. I didn't even make the CD, I had B do it. Is that strange? I'd give up anything to hear you again, but I can't listen to that. I don't want a recording. I want you.

It starts in spring with my birthday. We had Easter dinner on my birthday at your house and I think that was the day I realized how soon it would be. I couldn't ignore the weakness in your hands or the pain in your eyes. I think that was the most bitter meal I ever choked down.

Then Mother's Day. It feels silly to celebrate it now. Why would I? I don't have a mother. I have to force myself through it, smile and be grateful for my children, their gentle and thoughtful celebration. I think H knows why I'm sad on Mother's Day. She's more perceptive at 13 than I am now, sometimes.

And then your birthday. Oh god, oh god. How did I get through your birthday? Why didn't everyone there know I was breaking inside? Your birthday comes and the weather gets warmer and I remember I just wanted to be near you. I just wanted to touch you. Be close to you. Stay with you forever.

But forever isn't something people get. I got two more weeks. Those last days I stayed awake. I haven't talked about that so much. I don't think I'm ready to, not even yet. But I stayed awake for three days and I watched you breathe. I watched your chest rise and fall. I was watching in those strange orange hours before dawn when it slowed. Less regular. Longer and longer between those hitching mechanical breaths until I knew it was time. Would being well-rested have made it less surreal? Less terrible and consuming?

No, I don't think so.

Absence, Disinterest

I'm tired of myself. But I went on vacation with Drive to Gettysburg, and we saw this pig.

I think I did well. All panic was kept to a relative minimum, thanks to having my dog with me. I was with people I knew, meeting up with people I had for the most part met before. My back injury didn't trouble me, as I refrained from my usual stupidity regarding when to rest myself.

I remembered that it's not all about me and that I must give people the benefit of the doubt. I think I did okay. There are lots of little situations that arose, here and there, which would probably be interesting to examine. Odd reactions, anxiety, thoughts about life and aging... But I just don't care. I just don't want to think deeply about it and lately when I find myself getting introspective I either have a drink, turn my brain off with Farmville, or take a nap before it goes too far. I don't want to think about it, not any of it.

Haters Gonna Hate

I am my own least favorite subject lately. I'm just keeping myself busy with dogs and kids and cleaning and laundering. Dusting and cooking. Detailed grocery lists and itineraries. Anything to keep me focused on anything that is not introspection.

So here's a saturated picture of my current favorite tree.

Yeah.

The Blob That Stings

I'm treading carefully around myself at the moment, because I want to complain. I just want to wail and bitch and stomp and curl up with some warm self-pity. When I most feel like just whining about How Unfair It Is, I don't let myself write here. I am suspicious of my human need for attention and I don't like to indulge it by unproductive angst-wanking.

Whining is pointless, anyway. Other than letting people know you're a whiny little baby, you aren't accomplishing anything. Not solving the problems, not addressing the issues, not trying to make things better. Self-pity is a loathsome indulgence and I prefer to do it as privately as I can manage.

I've made some tentative entreaties lately, small hesitant steps in the direction of enlarging my community. I don't have any place I can discuss my mental health, unless these carefully restrained blog posts count. And frankly, the rare post that contains actual raw emotion has had unpleasant personal fallout I am unwilling to risk again. That's right, one person ruined it for everybody. The whole class gets punished. Since the punishment is "You don't have to read those uncomfortable words anymore" I guess you'll manage.

Finding fellow atheists with whom I can converse and discuss has been easy. I'm thrilled with most of the friends I've made in various forums online. There's a slew of stories like mine about the slog out of religion.

Finding other BPD "sufferers" or whatever you want to call it, that has proven more difficult.

To clarify, it's not more difficult to find them, but just close your eyes and imagine this. A room full of people, bright-eyed, unusually perceptive in some ways and startlingly oblivious in others. What they all have in common is a diagnosis that in itself means they are by nature hypersensitive, manipulative, unstable and frankly, a little self-involved.

Yeah, I don't want to hang out with them either.

I've always had this difficulty connecting. I think I've found a balance with my mostly-online social life. I love my friends, but no matter how much that is true I am compelled to keep a minimum safe distance. I disappear every so often, fade back a little, not to see who will miss me but more to give people a break from me. (The former, I am ashamed to admit, used to be true quite frequently. "I'm leaving! And if you don't chase me it means you never loved me!")

The drawback: I'm having problems and I don't know where to go with them.

I am not asking for people to step forward and sacrifice themselves on the altar of my emotions. That's not necessary and I wouldn't be comfortable accepting any such offers. I don't know how to be that vulnerable. Besides, there's no solution. There's no practical help or advice that can be offered. It would be a torrent of angst and confusion and hurt that would accomplish nothing aside from the spreading of angst, confusion and hurt.

And I try not to do that when I can avoid it.

Nothing Always Changes Sometimes

A whole month between posts? Great job. Yay.

I don't know how to describe where I've been. Am, rather. Injuries and illnesses, none life-threatening and all bothersome. Domestic chores that need doing every damn day. Children that refuse to be self-cleaning or self-amusing. Restless sleep and uneasy dreams. Endless winter gray.

There haven't been any giant moments of crazy, no spinning flamewheels of rage or chasms of depression. The one "incident" that comes to mind was an obvious hormonal fluke, handled somewhat capably and forgotten.

Spinning my wheels? I'm not that desperate. Treading water? I'm not working that hard. I'm floating. I'm muffled. I'm somnolent.

But I think the fact that I've posted is at least a sign that I'd like to wake up, a little crocus-head of hope that some color will return to my brain soon. I want it back.

Post-Failure Self-Castigation

Disclaimer: I will regret publishing this post, because I'm going to be honest. To make sure I really do publish it, I'm not going to indulge in my usual squeamish hours of editing and second-guessing. I don't really want to talk about it in a "dialogue" sense, though you're welcome to ask questions. I'm saving them in a file with the nebulous plan to answer them all at some point.)

I want to share some things with you.

But I probably won't.

Being "open" about having mental illness(es) turns out to be exponentially more painful for me than I thought it would. I think part of that is the specific dysfunctions I have and part of it is my underlying personality, what there is of it.

I am clinically thin-skinned. "Emotional burn victim." No matter how casual your touch is or what you mean by it, I can come away wounded, infected, re-injured, blah blah blah. You're smart people, you can extrapolate a metaphor. No one that has read one of these posts and responded, either in comment or in person, has been anything less than kind and supportive. That doesn't stop me from wincing and tensing and anticipating the pain.

I am also shy and insecure. I don't know if that's who I am or who my symptoms make me. I am uncomfortable with your concern. You can't help anyway, so I'm going to tell you it's fine.

It's really not fine. I'm increasingly frustrated as I crawl closer to 40 and nothing seems to improve. I'm waiting to outgrow this. It says there on the Wikipedia that people do, you know. Symptoms lessen over time, it says. Could I just wait it out?

I think that one of the hardest parts of being "open" for me is that people who know me "in real life," the people that have known me for so long like my remaining parent or my in-laws or my aunts and cousins, can all read this. I feel constrained by that. These are the people from whom I have been hiding "how bad it really is" the longest. I'm afraid of their concern.

Last and far from least is the humiliation factor. I hate being this way. I am embarrassed and disgusted by myself. I still cannot accept that I can't always control myself. A few days ago I broke down and I'm still mentally engaged in the post-failure self-castigation that will go on for weeks. I am dismayed and ashamed at some of the things that I did and most of the things I said. I can't bear my own company and I can't escape it.

I don't even remember it all correctly.

I remember being on the floor. I do not remember throwing myself there. I remember running down the street. I do not remember leaving the house. I remember the throb of bruises rising and I do not remember hitting myself. I remember being desperate for the end and I don't remember the beginning.

This is why I can't meet your eyes.



(Because I mentioned it previously, I feel obligated to mention I did actually complete NaNoWriMo. I wrote something like 50,150 words in a story during the month of November. I'm counting it as a partial success because I didn't actually completely the story. More specifically, I haven't written a single word since about the 29th. Nothing. It died. It was a desperate rush at the end to at least meet the word count, even though I knew finishing the whole draft would be beyond me. I can feel these shut-downs coming.

There are a couple things I can do to jump start it again but none of them are available to me. Sadly, these are also the things that would ease my desperately symptomatic behavior of late. So I wait and maybe it'll come back. Maybe it won't, this time.)

Pardon my dissonance.

I am calm, dammit.
I don't need sleep.
I don't need peace or quiet.
I don't need anything.
I'm FINE.
I always grind my teeth when I'm calm.
It's white-knuckled serenity.
Zen by fiat.

It's more fun if you put your arms up.

It's nothing like a roller coaster. Part of the thrill of the roller coaster is knowing that drop is coming. You're carried slowly up and swept cleanly down. It's all exhilaration and that giddy not-fear, that happy sort of terror. A thrill ride.

It's more like being shoved off a rocky cliff in the dark. There's more tearing and scraping and screaming and breaking than with the average roller coaster ride.

The worst part, sometimes, is that moment when I think I'm at the bottom. Is this it? Has it stopped? Can I start to climb?

Not yet. More falling, failing, crashing.

There's one horrified thought all the way down. This is my fault. I did this. This is all my fault. They need me up there and I don't know how to get back out.

I'm scared sometimes a lot all the fucking time.

Reluctantly crouched at the starting line...

I feel like my brain is crunching to an inexorable stop, revisiting all the intermittent issues of worthlessness and despair. As many times as I've done this, been here, felt this way, I'm never sure. Should I fight? Should I relax and let it happen? We have always started up again, rusty and reluctant but somehow functional. I wonder if I could save myself some trouble if I just accept that, for a little while, I'll be loathsome and useless. We're just at that place in the road again where we have to coast through the dark.

The hardest part right now is my crisis of confidence. It's impossibly inconvenient for me to have no faith in my abilities. I'm forcibly reminding myself that I must go forward with my projects regardless of how I feel about them now*. I have spent hours a day for the past couple of days trying to pick apart my self-esteem and attain some objective idea of how skilled or not I really am, with no luck. I'm sure everyone will be treated to a hideously masturbatory navel-gazing blog post sometime in the next couple days.

*Case in point, I'm still updating this damned blog quasi-regularly. :P

How Not Write a Blog Post

Ten easy steps to zero productivity with maximum angst, friends.

1. Get really excited about something and experience the miraculous urge to share, to reach out and connect with another human being.

2. Enraptured with new thought / concept / facet of reality, lovingly draft blog post in head.

3. Remember you are too cool to experience enthusiasm.

4. And everyone will look at you funny.

5. You're such a dork. Science fiction, really? A writer? You? No way. Loser. Wannabe.

6. Squirm in tortured indecision for an hour.

7. Decide no one cares enough, least of all you. Right? That's right. We're tough. We don't really care. It's just a stupid story. Talentless hack.

8. Hey, there's beer in the fridge and it is twenty past four on a fine Friday afternoon. Slack off. Fuck this "writing" thing. We'll care later. Privately. When no one can see.

9. Make a note to punish yourself later for being a passive-aggressive attention whore.

10, optional: *sigh* Wish you were braver.

Fuck. You. Too.

"I take the very controversial point of view that cluster B individuals (as they aren't sufferers from their own disorder) should be killed."

From the comment thread on this post on some random blog. Cool, huh? BPD falls into Cluster B. That's me he's talking about, without knowing me at all.

Because I don't suffer, I only make other people suffer.

I swear to you if I thought my loved ones would be better off without me, if it wouldn't damage my babies beyond bearing, I'd kill myself. That's why I am still alive. That is the only reason. Because my husband loves me and my kids need me. If I didn't believe that were true I would gratefully end this--

Oh, wait. I'm not suffering, apparently. Never mind.

This random jackass isn't any kind of a professional. As far as I can tell, he's some smug sociopath who knows everything. But I've seen a lot of doctors, and you know what?

A lot of mental health professionals feel this way too. There really isn't help for me.

Memo

TO: Amygdala -- Putting you in a sack and hammering on you is better than you deserve, you bitch, but that's all I have.

I'd rather panic.

I read an aquarium-keeping book when I was a kid, and it had a whole chapter on ways to euthanize your sickly or less-attractive fish. The author's preferred method was to put the fish in a sack and then swing that sack as hard as possible against a brick wall.

That's what clonazepam (or any member of the benzodiazepine family) does to my panicking brain. It takes it from "swimming frantically in a shroud of formless yet predatory terror" and slams it hard it into "liquefied, possibly smeared all over a wall, definitely not functional." It's not fun. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

Summary

You have a disease for which there is no cure.
There is no truly effective treatment for your disease.
There will be constant pain for which there is no salve.
No one will see your pain; it will be in your head and your heart.
Emptiness will swallow you every day.
Rage will tear at you every day.
Grief will cripple you every day.
Fear will stalk you every day.
Loneliness will erase you every day.
You will not learn who you are; you will be someone different every day. Sometimes every hour.
You will not know what you want for the same reason.
Nothing satisfies for very long. Nothing stops the pain for very long.
You will hurt the people that try to love you. You will drive them away.
You cannot trust anyone, least of all yourself. Least of all, yourself.
You will hate, intensely and passionately, the source of your pain: again, your own twisted self.
It will never stop.

Believe in me. I have good reason to go on living.


(Disclaimer: I've been writing more entries "for later," so please don't take anything you read here as a reflection of current mood or circumstances. Please don't call me, all freaked out that I'm going to swallow a bottle of pills. You should know better; I can't even take a vitamin without barfing.)

I fail at blogging again still always.

Been on something of a hiatus just because I'm turbulent right now. Thrashing. And even though the point of this blog is to wander frightened through the labyrinth of self-discovery, I've discovered more and more that I am awful at being "out of the crazy closet." I have very little for myself, when I'm like this, other than shame and derision. Spraying people with that kind of toxicity doesn't help.

Toxicity

I have "anger issues."

I think a lot of people do, and the only thing that makes mine stand out is that they're writ somewhere on official papers. Oh, and they're "deep-seated."

Nu-cu-lar

Maybe it's the same way the Earth just rolls through every day, able to ignore the roiling magma coursing through the deepest layers. I've found one of the best ways to "deal" with my emotional regulatory issues has been to just disconnect. I am, for the most part, an observer of my own mental state, staring into the crater. I catalog my emotions rather than feeling them.

But the anger is trickier. It's hard to ignore, sometimes. I've reformed a little, I guess. I don't enact violence on other people. I don't manipulate and ruin. I don't smash my belongings or put holes in the walls. I do not harm myself anymore. I've come to terms with those impulses and I do my damnedest not to indulge in my symptoms.

I'm pissed off all the time. Last night it choked me. My arms wanted to swing. My vision was clouded. My jaw is sore from clenching. My muscles ache from the tension. Last night I felt dangerous again, precarious. My crust was too thin last night.

It doesn't matter what triggers it. What matters is this morning. I've got to deal now with the unease and anxiety that results from peering into the chasm of my own rage and seeing everything that ever hurt or angered me. Seeing everything that tried to shape me. Seeing all those scars as new ones grow over this breach.

No one was hurt last night, but I'm reminded that I live on shaky ground. I'm reminded it could topple and burn.

I had to fight hard today.
I didn't win.
I don't want to talk anymore.
I'm sorry.

Excision

Dear Facebook Friend,

I probably don't know how we met. I seldom remember shit like that.You probably displayed sparkling wit, rational perspectives, freethought tendencies, intellectual pursuits, the ability to laugh, a shared fondness for my preferred intoxicants... Any number of things could have arranged this little meeting in space.

I will drop you just as quickly. See, my Facebook wall is my own space. I set it up the way I want, so that I have a soothing space to gather in virtual community with like-minded and challenging people. Of course, my family is on there too, and they're pretty safe from deletion.

I don't think this is an emotional issue. I am trying not to be reactive. This is me, defining my space by carefully choosing the people I have around me, even on the internet.

There are some issues on which I will not bend, nor am I willing to entertain propaganda.

• Arizona: I do agree that illegal immigration is a problem. Harassing people like you're the Jospeph Fucking McCarthy of White English-Speaking Entitled Amerikans is wrong. Go after the employers. I'll say it again. Go after the employers. Your Amerikan sweatshops are the ones getting them in here, you know. And keeping them. If you believe that any citizen should be required to present proof of their identity to whatever asshatted authority figure demands it for whatever rainbow-glittery imaginary reason he makes up, I don't want to know you.

• Abortion. No restrictions. Period. Accessible and protected. Disagree with me? You may choose never to bring it up, to ask some respectful questions, or get your reproductive choice-hating ass far away from me.

• Welfare. Oh, I have a rant coming up on welfare. I support it. Fully. Wholeheartedly. It's a government system and therefore has inherent problems and loopholes. But you know what? If you've ever stood behind a "welfare mom" and made nasty comments under your breath about what she's buying or driving or how her kids are behaving and "Hey, whore, where's the daddy?" you are a hateful person. Period. Because maybe you were doing that to me. Maybe you were kicking me at the lowest fucking point in my life. Maybe that was me you were looking down on.

• Mental Illness. I have had people tell me that I am faking. I have had people tell me I'm crazy because I am not right with god. I have had people tell me there is no such thing. I have physical prolems in my brain that cause a number of symptoms and conditions. I live with this every second of every day, even while I sleep. If you have no belief of or sympathy for people who aren't as "stable" or "reality oriented" as you, let me offer this. "Fuck the fuck off." Oh, and I'm probably still more intelligent than you.

• Religion. I am a staunch atheist. Preach at me just once and you're gone. Keep your beliefs away from me and my children. If you would like to have a respectful discussion and debate, that's one thing, but attempts to convert me will be met with vengeance.

• Socialism. Learn what the hell it means. Obama isn't a socialist. I am.

• Environment. Think Global Warming is a hoax? Think "the earth will repair itself?" Think God has blessed us with dominion over this sphere? I think you're a retard. Please take Sarah Palin with you on the way out.

• Marriage. Everyone or no one. I personally favor the "No One Ever" approach, but obviously there are legal benefits to putting on that yoke -- or I wouldn't have done it. People should marry any number of people of any gender in any state for any reason. If this is an issue that interests you, check out The Alternatives to Marriage Project.
  

• Sentient life. Animals. No harm to them.
  

• Being a self-important asshole. That is, of course, your right. Exercise it elsewhere.
  

A sigh.

Today my desire to be kind is overwhelmed by my desire to alert the mouth-breathing masses to their shallow ignorance and to cast aspersions on their parentage.