Purpose

Purpose. Isn’t that the purpose of life? Purpose. What’s the purpose? Of life? Of ones self? Of your own purpose on the purpose of life?

When you become a mum your purpose changes. Your purpose is to give them purpose. Your purpose is motherhood. To be the Oracle of every thing for this being you created. No not everyone will agree with me, not everyone manages it, but this for me was a purpose I adopted very young.

I have been a mother half my entire life this year. Half my life and all my entire self knows is to be a mum. I always thought knowing how to get it wrong would guide me into how to get it very right and this was my only guidebook. I have made many mistakes, firstly choice of father. However without I would not have so this counteracts mistake one. Secondly.. I think I just tried to hard. Is that possible? Yes. I put any sense of self purpose aside on the back burner. I tried but when I felt it impacted on my children it came tumbling down. I stayed at home and faced the conservative, society driven hatred of people like me. I didn’t care because these children were the purpose. These children would be different and I would raise children that could have a much more positive and purposeful identity.

It isn’t too failing when they are young. Attachments and bonds were never questionable, I had them and I had them strong. A fierce protector, a fierce love, a fierce emotional drive. This force did not blend onto action. I ended relationships I knew would be detrimental to them never mind me. I walked when my children did not seem to be of the same value to someone else as they were to me. I would never have them do anything that jeopardised their opportunity of childhood, no homework, no chores, no expectation of help or working with me. I made their beds every day (one is now eighteen and I still do this), if their hungry I deal with even if it’s midnight and I have done an eighteen hours day. I will watch them sit as I sweat and wear ill and tired making sure they can do as will. 

Inside as we all know by now I suffer silently, battling my own demons and my own triggers and my own wanted behaviours. I spend too much time at a doctors swapping medications and diagnosis. I sit silently at silly o clock in the morning talking to people I hardly know just to keep my hands from the overdose I actually want to take. I cry silently in the bath. I ache as I walk and I feel older than the ancient I see in the mirror.

Why? My great idea and attempts. My own beliefs and aims. Why would I feel so low with my own agenda? Because it’s painful. Right now they are painful. One turned adult has turned against me, never here, never wants to be, will watch Jeremy Kyle on her pj’s at six at night whilst making faces of disgust at me as I tidy her dinner away and clean a home. She works without paying, without responsibility, without care of impact and with a hidden hate in her eyes. She sits awake all night after work spending wages on take aways whilst I panic about bills and her lack of ability to take any self responsibility.

My eldest son has chosen to live with his dad. A man I left to save my childrens home, to save them from something worse than poverty and arguments. As a result he has managed to make me poorer than I could have imagined, my son rarely is respectful or nice without motive and is regularly at risk. This child I fight in court for, I contend with the hell of social services for, I still try to protect from afar with huge pain and stress. Because that’s what mums do.

My youngest has said his brother is lucky to live with dad. He only stays with me because he doesn’t want me to be lonely. How very sweet and sadly very true. Already there kid. He prefers cyber life to family life and wakes angry and beds sweetly. Not worrrying at all.

I did this. I made this. I Sat tonight putting my cream on and feeling the skin on my body as if it was telling me it had done its all. I looked at the mirror and wondered how many more years I can look at the damaging, possibly co dependant mother I was. How much. I look at trees whilst I walk and feel I have now seen all I need to. My feet hurt because their tired of the steady pace. My asthma is bad because I cannot breath anymore. My skin is sore because I cannot bare the external me any more than the internal.

I wonder alot if maybe they should be elsewhere. I have done alot wrong without the ability to put right. An ability more balanced types have. I don’t, I’m extreme. Brought up at one end and doing the other. It’s destroyed then exactly the same way. None with purpose, self worth in abundance, care, love or even consideration.

Someone for the love of God hook me up to voddieIV and let me face plant the floor. 

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My little lifelines.. Bastard kids.

I write this having consumed a bottle of wine. On a school night. Yes I am becoming “that mother”, but let me tell you something about “that mother”, “that mothers” consume wine and eat chocolate and monster munch not because their bad, but because their saints that have hard days and raised their children and not murdered anyone. They have not had any social services referrals and have not passed on their shite to their children. 

I used to judge such mid week drinking parents. In all honesty at times I still do in some hypocritical manner of making myself feel like the better the parent, but let’s face it, if your not making your kitchen look like something from a horders documentary whilst you search for a bottle opener then actually you are potentially not human. 

I just about managed today without singhing out memories on my skin, I managed with tears causing my skin to break without my children noticing. I managed not one of them saying please of thank you, not one being grateful for my two hour dinner creating and without one of them happy to put on clean clothes. I couldn’t make a doctors appointment for more medication and I couldn’t manage leaving my home for a simple trip to the shops. I didn’t manage to bath normally instead I scrubbed and cried and the pain I felt all day in my arms did not stop me dressing. I smiled when they all returned from school and I protected them from the psychological pain that their own father would have caused them had I not have acted the shield. I even managed to reply by text to many and blend into my own norm despite the fact I think I am having a sodding meltdown. Maybe I should add I have gone on a type of strike. I shall sort out after my youngest and I,  but the older two are going to feel what is done for them whilst receiving a sharp tongue. A near on adult daughter who can just about wash a mug is about to learn the realities of life. 

I have sat and thought about the fact I left my tc four months ago and every day since has felt like someone pours salt onto my wounds, new ones made, fresh and painful. I have no one to unleash my things to because normal people don’t understand and my tc friends struggle like I do. I love my witty nut tc friends and sharing is adding fuel to their already burning ashes. I resort back to a medication I have not required for two years and yes.. Yes I love it, “that mum” loves it. 

So yes. This mum drank wine when the kids where in bed. This mum today does not particularly like having them and this mum today does not actually even like them. I love them. I know this. But today that is all I know. I know I love and must protect and anything else is a bonus and if I want to sit and manage my self with a wine, and use it to reward myself like a true alcoholic then I shall. I don’t feel that guilty, because actually the worst is being ” that mum” that looks like shit and “that mum”whose children are grubby, are late for school and who are not well nourished. Mine had a cooked from scratch wholesome clean meal. So my attitude to “that mum” is actually “that mum” who did it through her pain and struggles and who got them to school late and yes a little unkept, actually tried harder than other mums will ever know, or will ever feel. 

Cheers. Cheers to the clink of wine, the sleepless night ahead as you feel your own pain and the issues your own children have without knowing, cheers to making it through a day and cheers to not letting yourself spill out sideways, cheers to your children having an amazing mum and knowing no different and cheers to how easy you make it look. Cheers to not being noticed and cheers to ever being referred to as “that mum”.  

The BPD heart

Tears are a welcomed reminder that I am mortal, that I feel pain. They pain my skin, my eyes and my chest, a physical response to something internal. I enjoy the pain of my own tears.

Life as a borderline is painful, some describe it to be like a burns victim with wounds on the emotions,  so real it causes physical impact when touched. Maybe this is why self harm through burning feels so right. For me I think of it differently and in different stages. Every single moment of my life I feel others pain, through the strangers I meet, the people I know, a glance at someone in another car in a traffic jam. What ever their pain I feel,raw and no matter the smile. I feel their lives burdens, their insecurities, their weaknesses, their years of tears and negative thoughts. The intensity increases in meeting, every flick of an eye, how they hold their breath and when, where they look and how their mouths move, everything they do tells me their story,  allows me in and allows their pain to shift into my soul. Here I hold it and feel it. If a pain or a thought matches one of my own, one I have ever had, in any day, hour or second of my entire life,then my own comes forth. As raw in the moment as it was in the time. Moments in life that most forget come back, the pain in my veins and my soul returns. I carry my own and theirs. Sometimes more than one person at a time. Sometimes the pains of times present and times gone of a group can be held straining my own heart.

Being a borderline mother is the most excruciating of overwhelming emotions. You parent along side your child ego. You parent your children in a way that protects them from darkness. Dark emotions and dark thoughts. You try but life is life and when the shadows cast down on them their pain engraves itself and becomes part of your own. Darkness that most have never seen,darkness most can’t understand. A deep blanket of black that makes its way into your blood never to be drained.

Often people ask what rules the body, the heart or the mind, it’s the heart, without the heart the mind would never be told to function. The mind is a heart soother, it will talk to the emotions and settle its pain. What if the mind becomes faulty? What if the mind found ways to soothe that utilised trickery. What if the mind needed a quick comforter to offer. It can tell the heart it is wrong, or sensitive, it will tell the heart lies to make it stop.  It can allow the heart to stop beating for a moment and take the body to a new land where the heart returns to its beat of fantasy,  it can remove the pain as if it never happened, totally wiping the moment from existence until triggered again, and when it is all too much to manage it will remind the heart to forget and play. It will throw the heart a child, care free, no sense of consequence, impact, responsibility, or mature defences. Here the heart is rebooted and stripped back to its basic mode. No pain.

When I am in so much pain and am sent a child ego, people laugh and smile at the me that plays, has energy, jokes, brings a lighter atmosphere. I cannot establish their emotions and I don’t care to. I feel no pain of theirs or of my own, even if I tried.  I can be naughty and mischievous, love and live high. I eat without guilt, I make promises I cannot keep, I can dance like I am at a holiday camp, I will not tire and I will forget each second that passes. Rainbows and rain replace the fog and I can see. My inner child speaks to my children with an understanding and offers assistance in their language. My children enjoy the lack of rules. But like any child, my inner child tires and as this happens it allows through the cracks the darkness and with the darkness comes the pain. Eventually the inner child’s peace keeping time is over.

 The pain that summoned the child returns, it is darker once you have gotten used to the light. The mind stops. It has to protect itself having been left holding the pain and now the guilt and the shame,no mind to take it,no detachment, no denial, no make believe, no mania and child ego. The heart will stop or burst. Their are two ways, to stop the heart,even the thoughts of the ways cause more pain, suddenly carrying the pain of others,  the pain of your lack of care, the pain itself invites another pain. To make small gaps for the pained blood,the poison,allowing it to seep and lessen, it is the only option left. For now. If you don’t want to die. Until the soothing mind returns.

  The heart slows its beat, the pain seeps out,the emotions of pain leave. The anger, the sad, the fog. Breathing settles, soothing has returned.

This is when I stand up, I dress and I put my make up on. My eyes shall not leak, I shall ensure life runs in a protective and controlled manner, I shall heal those whose pain I carried. I shall ensure they never feel this again, I shall prevent, I shall comfort, when their minds stop I shall be there.  I shall soothe the black hearts. The fogs around them. I will not let them carry mine or let mine cloud their own.

If this happens I know their is a price to pay, I know life will remind me of my mistakes and lack of care. I know that my ability to feel the pain means I have the ability to heal their pain, I know this to be my duty. To not do so is dark and I must not have more and I shall not allow it out. I shall keep check on how much darkness is in my black heart. If it clouds others I shall punish myself.  I will learn.

This is a bpd heart. This is the conditions of a bpd heart. This is the curse and the blessing. This is a bpd life. A bpd day. A bpd second.

The finish line.

So here I am, two years and two months of therapy later. Three days a week, 24/7 support system, with a team of dedicated psychotherapists and other members  later. As is the tradition of a therapeutic community we write a review at points along the way. This is my final one, which has required editing to preserve confidentiality. It is not the end of the blogs but it is the end of an era and therapy as I know it. The end of old beginnings. 

Name: Sarah Attendance:  Great. Medication: None

Contracts with self: Unbelievably none.

Date of joining: Moons ago

Original problems joining tc: Unable to identify or feel emotions.  Bpd triats. Anxiety.Paranoia.ocd. Harming tendencies.  Suicide idealisations. No self worth. Behaviours that put me at risk.

Short term goals: let people in and show emotions.

Long term goals:to manage my feelings and emotions and find a way to make life manageable.
For a phoenix to rise it first has to burn, over the past two years I have sat and wondered if tc was actually aging and setting people on fire in order to have them rise again from the ashes. Well I can definitely say it’s aging, I have never looked or felt as old as I do now (feeling 35 years of your life will definitely spring a wrinkle)  however they don’t set you on fire, instead they give you the fuel and lighter to do that yourself. Ironically I stopped harming by burning somewhere along the way.

My journey at tc has been a winding pathway. I spent most of the beginning in a revolving door of suspensions, quiet and unable to talk and only able to communicate by acting out,and acting out I did. I did not trust anyone and I was always astounded when people left claiming to be ready for the real world. Others gave me hope and inside hope was all I had left. Slowly I trusted a few, those who were consistent and those who had shared the same hours, days, months and in some cases, years with me. I learnt that even through my fort of protection eventually those that care will see me as if my fort was made of glass. Whilst staring out the peep hole I have very much seen others and feel truly blessed with the people I have had along the way, with the relationships that have been built, some of which I keep although more than not I don’t, but I will always be internally grateful for each and every one. Not feeling alone in the struggles is the gift of feeling less crazy, because surely true madness would be having no one nodding alongside you.

I never expected a cure, I imagine it similar to the fight against cancer, you can treat it, attack it, and win against it but you will live with a permanent shadow of its return, you will spend a life time checking for symptoms,  you will never forget the pits of the fight and you will never imgaine life without a grey cloud again,even when the sun is shining. So whilst no cure is available I do believe, and did believe, that I could be armed with a nato amount of ammunition. I feel I have this, maybe not a nato amount, maybe a Russian amount, I think some grenades have been left out too.

More than ever I feel confident that whilst I can’t feel ordinarily I can work back quicker and trust that what ever started the feeling in my body is worthy of my emotion. I may not trust my reaction totally but I trust it more and suppress it alot less. I can acknowledge when shame is binding me together, I can identify when different ego states appear, I can recognise projection at its finest and I can for the first time in my life think ” what about me”.  I recognise that intimacy is something I struggle with, it keeps me isolated and in places I don’t like, I definitely missed a grenade here because I can’t beat this one as much as I can know it is attacking my mind.

My life outside tc is a lonely one, I don’t trust anyone and I have no confidence to believe that I should. Amongst friends and loved ones I still feel like I am loved for the vacant managing me that they get. I doubt very much anyone would love or like the non managing me I am inside on alot of days. It’s all very well wondering what about me,  when the me I know isn’t a nice one. The non managing appearance never slips, the facade I have built has been unbreakable. Whilst this is good in many ways it makes me unreachable and also stops me from ever reaching out.

I have more anger in me than I have felt for many years, I am livid at the life I have been forced to live. If living is a what one would call this.  I am livid that at times in life people have stepped aside their responsibilities and allowed me to be washed over with trauma and impact. I am beyond livid and sad that until now at the age of 35 no one has ever stopped and seen the wretch, rot and residue I feel I am saturated by. It is sad that not a parent, not an adult, not someone that claims to have loved me has ever scrapped away a layer, cared to scrape away a layer and see what is beneath and its equally sad that if they ever tried I would plaster it up.

Do I feel unfixable? Yes. Do I feel broken? Yes. But i am leaving with more hope and more faith. I never imagined a day when burning, sleeping with abusive men and suicide idealisation did not happen. Yet here I am. I still have urges daily and daily I tell myself ” not today”. Suicide has changed from an impulsive urge into a thought of “aw that would be nice but your not that lucky, keep going”. As if in itself suicide is something I grieve for. As for the men, I still like to keep a couple on a  piece of string for back up but the string is kept at an unreachable height.

My relationship with my Duck is world’s away from the  relationship we have had during my tc journey. I now look back and see everything as clearly as you all had. With astonishment as to why I kept it going. Fortunately for now I did, I think I met someone who was as desperate in different ways, and somehow I think the therapy touched his heart whilst it touched mine. I learned more about myself worth and boundaries,  what I wanted and needed, over time slowly addressing these had a ricochet effect. He is clean, never harmful towards me or himself, thoughtful and until recently was still apologising for his past behaviours. I have trouble trusting this and him, and regularly wonder when it will all come to a screeching halt.  I believe tc saved me from allowing the relationship as it was and the impact of this awareness saved me, my children and Fuck from something that could and would have escalated further. I now know that from any romantic relationship I want someone to care, to atleast try to see me and who will meet the few needs I have and recognise, who knows maybe even more. My expectations before were shockingly low and why wouldn’t they be, if the self hate is high enough any thing more can be seen as generous.

I worry about my future and that of my childrens. I always wanted to end the pain of living but could not bare the idea of leaving them behind to a life I could not protect them from. There was no one I could trust to meet their needs and protect them the way I do. I don’t want the world near them and influencing them in ways that will harm them, once I thought that their world was me and I was the one that would harm and see them in therapy. I truly believed and occasionally still it slips in that I am the truest form of worst mother there is. So what becomes the options when life is unbearable and there is no one better at being a mum than you yet you are the one throwing them the poison? It used to be that taking them with me was the only logical way of protecting them from a world that harmed me, one I lost a fight with and for them i would be an additional trauma on top of a painful and brutal world. Tc has scrapped me back from this belief,  I feel certain I am definitely the best thing for my children and certain that my seeing them and need to protect is, whilst somewhat smothering, is not damaging them to the extent I once had believed ( occasionally still do) I now look forward to watching them grow and am reeping the rewards of my conscious behaviour changes. Between them they have had seven birthdays since I joined tc and when you think of it like that, that’s an amazing achievement from the place I was in just before I joined.

I do still worry about being alone with them with no support, no one helps with the bathing, bedding, dinners, financial strains, the fights, hormones, homework, and the guiding of their minds. No one offers to babysit, or helps juggle their appointments nor asks how I’m feeling about this or that regarding my children and nor does anyone care to hear. Not because anyone is mean but because no one loves your children like you do. It’s just me and I struggle to do these things for myself. I worry the loneliness and responsibility overwhelms me too much one day and I open up the graves of past thoughts. I worry that I stop keeping my self check. It keeps me in a constant of anxiety. I comfort myself with motherhood is meant to be difficult and if killing them was never a thought I may actually never be normal.

So how does it feel to be leaving. Terrifying and sad. I will never forget the therapists who have dedicated years now of their life and work to me, never have I been made to feel like I was beyond anything and whilst I may not have liked the suspensions, discharge procedure and sometimes harsh truths and questions it actually began to feel like finally someone cared enough to stop me in my tracks. I have learnt caring is occasionally saying enough now and having someone think about it all alongside you. A skill I never had as a mother until now. I am sad that the end is the end where these relationships are concerned, but I know your voices are now etched in to my parent ego voice that was once non existant. So technically your coming with me. I couldn’t have had nicer members to see me through my therapy time and shall forever laugh at some of the memories and treasure the love and raw care experienced here. For those members going into other therapies my advice would be, do it with all you have because you have nothing to lose and tons to gain, you absolutely get out what you put in and whilst there may be no cure you aquire a stock pile of ammunition to make life easier and more enjoyable. Who likes perfect people anyway?

I nearly forgot to thank my mum and dad with whom without I would never have been here and all of this would never have been possible.

Relationships with my group. 

• you may actually be the funniest person I have met in a long time. Your so honest,kind, thoughtful and proactive when your here and extremely funny, that I find you brilliant company to be around. You do alot of therapy alone and some times I wonder what would happen if you just let it flow to you as apposed to you dragging a boat against the tide. I have loved working with you and having your ways and laughter around the social spaces. I think you have a pure heart and I hope you learn to cherish it and not hand it to others to darken, your worth alot and you deserve to have people in your life that recognise this. I really hope that further therapy will help you to continue to grow and flourish in a way that preserves something unique and innocent.
• I feel miles away from the you that joined and unintentionally ruffled feathers, your quiet and seem fearful but actually when I sat to write I realised how different you have become and how different the relationships here with you have become. You seem more confident giving feedback and much less defensive when receiving it. I think you have opened up more and wear your heart on your sleeve no matter the vocal range you adopt. I believe having you as chair did exactly what it’s almost designed to do,it brings out the voice in everyone. I remember my first time well, probably required some therapy over that situation that day actually. Recently I have noticed how I can relate to you with regards the lack of recognising emotions and the feeling of being unable to display them.I hope further therapy helps you to continue building on what you have received here, hold on to the relationships that you have built and remember even the tough ones can be overcome and can have a gooey inside. I wish you all the very best I truly do.
•  Instantly I start laughing when I thought about you, why I don’t know, it’s a nice laugh. I remember feeling extremely cautious of you for a while, I almost felt like you came in and a tornado of theatre came with. The Tracey malarkey, Paul, medication suspensions I could go on. You have a gift for bringing everyone together and quickly and confidently had us all doing things we probably wouldn’t have done for anyone else, I’m thinking of the drama games. Any caution or hesitation I had soon began to melt away. I remember when you felt no one rang you and for some time you have been one of the first for many. Your caring and I love and envy how in touch you can be with your own emotions and ability to share and show them. I can only but imgaine it probably doesn’t feel good but I think it’s a wonderful thing. The new group is going to be lucky to have you, any group would be lucky to have you.  I think you will do well from here on in and think of us as maybe a super intense prep group, with the run up you feel you had needed. I will hear all about it I presume whilst sat watching the book of mormons with you in what..  Three months.
•  This is breaking my heart to even think about and I don’t know where to start. You are like a younger brother or something. Maybe God forbid a male friend I don’t fancy and can’t shag. A true friend for who I feel protective of and deep care for. You brought so much life and noise into this community and it was exactly the awakening it needed. Your extremely wise beyond your year’s in many ways and  I have learnt more about politics from you than I did in a two year module. You for me are exactly what the word integrity was made for. You embraced everything tc and some and despite the pain you may feel at the moment the difference in you is hugely apparent. When you harm or let others harm you it pains me, deeply, because I know that place well and I know how pain can meet pleasure, I also know that it leaves a mental scar,scars that are hard to cover. I don’t want that for you. You don’t deserve it and nothing you have or can do would ever warrant it. Living is finding joy in just being you and you bring joy to those around you so take some for yourself. You have offered me so much grit in my therapy and I wish we had had longer together. Your honest and even when that lands badly for others I’m glad you have released it instead of letting it fester. You will get so much from further therapies and they will gain so much from you. I am going to miss you stupidly and can’t wait for a night out and a few drinks/I mean coffees with you.
• I was sooooo worried about liking you, I think anisha left some huge boots to fill which would not have been an easy job. I think you have done extremely well coming in at this stage and made those boots your own. Your feedback is always useful and I find it easy to see when you care and are concerned. I enjoy your company in social spaces and find you easy to talk to and laugh with. Exactly the mix of therapist I like. Thank you.
• it’s your cheekbones. Remember once I said I couldn’t stop staring at your face? Well it’s your cheek bones and your inability to age. Both of which I need and would like. Over time I have lost memory of the you that I found strict and provoking,  since moving buildings I have found you to actually be really funny. You are really funny. I think provoking may have a negative connotation, actually you provoke thoughts and responses extremely appropriate to the therapy. Your feedback is always with thought and somehow you remember things long gone and it’s relevant. I am thankful for having you throughout my journey and you have become a part of that parent ego I was on about.
•  For about a year you would never have got me to behave in art never mind seen me with a paintbrush in my hand. Here I am with a whole folder of art work. Once I started and gave up the fight I realised actually for someone that finds getting in touch with emotions difficult this is exactly what i needed to be doing. Kicking myself I didn’t utilise this earlier. You have always seemed to have a firmer stance with me and once I took it as dislike but now I think that it kept me in check because i didn’t know where i stood. I think you have always been fair towards me and especially my earlier behaviours. The larger groups of gstultz helped me tremendously and I think was a moment when a light bulb appeared to alot of my behaviours nd thoughts. I am truly grateful to have had you as a therapist and know alot of the work done with you I shall carry with me.
•  Now I understand why people get sad. I don’t know what to say and know no matter what I say it won’t feel enough. It took me soooo long to look at you, then to hold conversation, then not to shut down. I have no idea why and presume it was fear of being seen. But I did it. It’s horrible being seen but you have made it bearable and allowed it to feel comfortable most of the time. Your care for this group is so much so I cant find the words and I have seen you genuinely care for every member within it. You have made the hardest things most of us have to overcome doable. Touchable. Trusting someone, feeling worth and importance, not crazy. I think these are the hardest things for almost all of us. Definitely for me. You offer us this. You offered me this. You become that one parent or adult that should have always been there and should have had us at heart. It’s a gorgeous thing to be able to do naturally and it’s a hard thing to accept but a great thing once you do. I am so very grateful for everything, I could name things but I would not stop writing so everything has to cover it. I feel you and tc changed my life and actually the lives of those I love the very most. I say you and tc,  because it becomes one of the same, don’t just impact on the people who walk through the door you impact on their world and the people in it. You will forever be the mother ship in that parent ego state.
• Throughout writing my review I wondered why people got emotional when writing them. Until I got to you and…  Probably why you guys come last in these things. I remember the first time I had you as a small group therapist, I was pissed off and worried about it. Wellll. I walked out thinking ” Well didn’t she show me” . You swiped the rug from right under my feet. You were a fantastic small group therapist, if there was a therapist made for me at times you were it. You challenge and don’t accept any therapy conclusions we may come to by ourselves. You say the needed and in a manner that is acceptable and yet has your head spinning off all at once. In social spaces I found a friend and to be able to switch it back to therapist/patient role is a gift. You keep roles where they should be and it brings a certain something extra. I am so thankful vicky for everything. Every question, every challenge, everytbing. I will miss you and when my parent brain switches on there you will be, probably going..  Really? Really. No.

Cuddle me with gloves.

I do not believe I want for much in relationships,any relationship, be it a partner, a friend, parental and child,even between myself and the dog. What I want is an honest, trustful, respectful,loving relationship. I want to have someone who can reach into my broken shards and hold them together whilst I attempt to fix them.  I would like to share life with someone in all its glory and misery. To investigate the things that have a shared interest or the experiences you stumble across together. I would like to know that my darkest thoughts could be shared without judgements and that I too would listen without my own. I would like to have anothers mind I am so very much in that any triggers of pain would not be touched. I accept the impossible and I accept I have to accept less,  whilst many of you will disagree with my sacrificial statement, I shall explain why.

In my time at therapy I have accepted many a thing. I have built a mental scaffolding to assist me to climb around and build upon things of which I struggle. The one thing I have realised I cannot do is intimacy. I want it. I crave it. Give me it. But I cannot offer it back and I cannot tolerate it when given.

I stumbled across this realisation whilst researching what I perceived to be my Ducks flaws. He cannot be honest, with the best intention and with all the will in the world he cannot do it. His own fears and needs are to great. He cannot talk about his soul and his heart, well actually he can, just not with me so much. He cannot meet needs because he cannot meet his own, he cannot even identify his own. He mainly sources life to obtain his own desires, in a subconscious way I like to believe. There is no real understanding of future life that is together. Holidays are something we do separately,with others but not together, weekend breaks aside. Time together whilst is lovely, has a sense of two single souls unconnected. I am not meaning to sound on a huge attack, that is not what this is. It is an understanding of someone. Someone who will see my exhaustion and despite their own do as much as able to ease the burden. Someone whose own development may have had residues of their own parents lives and struggles. Someone who has experienced a grief unimaginable. Someone whose own issues mirror my own yet are in ways parallel and polar opposite. However and what ever the reason and action it leaves me very insecure, unable to trust, without a being to be vulnerable with, without a partner who I would call a soul mate. I should call a soul mate.

Turns out that I am this person also. I am unreachable mostly, the most present person in a room yet the best hidden away. I do let anyone in, no one shall ever see the true and raw vulnerability. I do not confide and I certainly cannot call myself honest or trustworthy. I work on a subconscious, and at times conscious plane of self. I cannot break it depsite my yearning. I don’t want anyone in because then I do not have to suffer their dislike, disapproval, judgements, ill assumptions and ultimately their abandonment. If there is a locked door no one can get in and no one can get out. So is this projection with a higher layer? Or is this two troubled souls meeting and accepting their lot? Or loving their lot? Or not liking and enable to move?  Is this two souls loving and recognising the others inability and finding a match that can work on a daily basis? Endless bloody questions.

If one perceives behaviours to fit into a box that is marked intimacy then we assume we get exactly that out. However what if obsession is perceived as trust or love?What if controlling is seen as protective? What if having your needs met is acted out in some sexual form that actually is empty of any love or care? The ingredients for intimacy become skewed, you believe you have intimacy when actually you are left holding a box of the ingredients to a concoction of pain,disaster, anger, hurt and disappointment. This is the moment you tear off the labeled box and rename it “scripts”.

 Sex is the go to thought when one says intimacy, actually for myself I have never experienced sex to have any attachment to intimacy. I am prepared for my partner to want to act in a manner that shows their own intimacy,  to act in a way that embraces mine. I do not trust it, want it, like it, and I will not accept it. This is not what they get and this is not what I receive. I will deliberately sabotage this possibility, I will use my powers to instill that this is unacceptable behaviour in future. So in my most vulnerable place I shall build fortresses and I shall remain the unobtainable empress. I want to be touched but please wear gloves because I do not want to feel whose skin it belongs, I do not want your hands learning my body, I do not want my naked self to be organically embraced. 

This I imagine is to be one of my biggest fights in the war against my own mental health. In the war of love and of intimacy. I know the steps to this is to battle with my own relationship with myself firstly and then hope the dominos kick in and impact outwards.

I feel so stuck within my relationship with my Duck?  What if I waste another decade to a man undeserving. What if I destroy what could be a life with a soul like my own? What about those around me that claim to know me yet are kept within the fields surrounding my empire.

It’s painfully lonely and isolating and it has been all I have known to do. I feel robbed of relationships, I feel robbed of my relationship with myself. I feel,today,  totally disheartened that I will ever over come and today I believe I will never truly know what intimacy is.

The growth before the birth.

I have not blogged for ages, I have been close many a time but I was not sure how I could possibly put into words the work and pain that comes with the final stages of therapy. I could not pin what was happening to me but something huge was occurring inside. Firstly I should mention that coming to terms with my IPDE scores was a wake up call, a painful one. On paper I thought I was un fixable, on paper my scores read higher and more erratic than others. I have the highest scores possible in paranoia, Schitzotypal and borderline personality disorder. I also score high with schizoid, avoidant and antisocial. It was the high bpd and antisocial that concerned me most. Maybe it’s true. I am a psychopath?! However with the help of many therapists who have dedicated themselves to me for two years, 18 hours a day and members with their 24 hour support, I have accepted that whilst this is the case, I can choose to accept it or fight it,and fight it I did,fight it I have,fight I will every second of my life.

Within weeks of receiving confirmation I was not improving, I became angry. A deep dark anger that I could not shift, I could not ride, I could not tolerate walking around with. Every day I thought it was possible I could murder, others or myself. I withdrew in therapy and found speaking made me ache. I had poison sat in my mouth, a poison I wanted to spit at everyone, I wanted to break, infect, seep the rot from within out onto the world. I sat with it for longer than was bearable. I hate anger, I hate the emotion, until therapy anger was an emotion I felt others made me like and if it was not productive then it was pointless. Who was I kidding? I had anger in the core of my system, probably forever, maybe if you believe, causing angry eczema and illness throughout my life. I had suppressed anger and pain so deep I had spent my adulthood wondering why I lacked emotions correctly. Wondering why I was so inept of displaying them in a form that would not see me under the crisis team. I lived in this pressure cooker with a contained anger, it was not, can not, ever work, eventually the lid will blow and the fire will explode and the sparks will hit out. 

I have learnt to voice it. Not to anyone as I had thought I would need to, just to the world, to my self. I am pissed I had little chance of building normal core beliefs because of abuse I suffered so young. I am pissed that I had parents that failed, parents that for me were at times physically, mentally and emotionally neglectful and abusive. I am livid I cannot tell them for various complex reasons, I am so beyond mad that I think alot of it would have taken little effort to get right. I am furious they never learnt to see me. Who I am! My needs! And I am seriously forever mad that I will never be able to turn back time and manage something I never got. I cannot blame them for the life that became! Or can I?  Well I do. I needed things, I needed protection,  I needed to be cared for, I needed all of the times I acted in a way that was sideways to be noticed, I needed to not feel alone and so confused and angry and uncared for. Because sadly, the pain for this I cannot word, the outcome was some seriously fucked up script behaviour, an absence of a parent ego, shame binds, critical voices, emotions and feelings so complex that they embedded deep into my soul and grew and grew and grew. Rippling out and resulting in continous traumas.I am also mad that the growth could not maintain itself and it unleashed itself into my world,my childrens world,my family,my life and my relationships. So that everywhere and everyone became untrustworthy and I would reign down until I smashed everything. I would enter relationships that would feed me like a Christmas feast could fill the starved, feed my scripts, feed my paranoia, feed my belief that I was so infectious I would turn it to black. When it did on a deep level I believed that the awkward, manipulative, difficult, nasty and awful child I had been brought up to believe I was, had won. The one that deserved it because ” you just can’t learn to shut up” despite the extreme of an injustice, had won. I did it. Everything is me.  This can sound as irrational and as unbelievable as you like. But for me and my therapy I had to accept that the damage was done before I was capable of doing it to myself. At a stage fundamental to my development,in my childhood and adolescence when someone was responsible for me.

So what happens with this anger? You accept the driving force is sad. Actually when you shout at your fellow members about how bullshit life has been,  behind every word is a lump in your throat,tears burning behind your eyes. I don’t actually cry in front of anyone, however my bathroom and my pillow have seen endless tears in recent months,tears that just would not stop, sometimes for nothing. I am hurt, pained that I felt no one cared. I am bitterly hurt that I didn’t and couldn’t love myself,like myself even. I am pained I have never been able to achieve the things I have wanted to with a person I have been deserving of. I am hurt that I have been let down and neglected by those who love me yet where unable and unskilled. That as a result I turned off any sense of self and spent my life dedicated to trying to meet the needs of those nearest. Trying to protect my children and my siblings in ways I felt fit,it hurts that actually I probably failed. I just tried to be an adult that would maybe meet some needs that I knew they may never have had met. I would try to be the home my brother felt he didn’t have, I would try to be the adult that would rescue my sister from walking home late from the park, or bringing her back from university when she was homesick. I would try to listen, rescue, offer some solitude whilst raising children in my own difficult situations. The sad fact is I am just a sister and I cannot stop, undo or prevent, any harm from the rest of the world onto them. No doubt in fact I am probably responsible for some of their own issues. This fact makes me sad. My own children who I vowed to be a good mum for, hell I know how it goes wrong so sure as shit I should get it right. I don’t. I try. I try! I take comfort in the knowledge that I may actually be more aware than most about minds,mental health, needs, about showing care,so the getting it wrong is cushioned occasionally. I’m not super woman I still fail, I still learn, I still have one out of three awake and pushing his luck at midnight. The putting energy into others is one thing, the sacrificing myself however makes it something else. No one can ever hate me the way I hate myself. That is until the anger unleashed and the tears came. It has seen me physically ill,my voice has not been the same for a while now, I get sickness, headaches, pain in almost all of my body, I don’t manage to toilet like “normal” people, I tear patches off of my skin with my nails because I get itchy. My ankle is always covered in scabs as are my wrists. Yet.. I don’t burn. I don’t bruise myself. I don’t want to die. 

That’s right,I don’t want to die. Where did this come from? I still get waves of cravings, but I can tell myself it’s not me,it’s either the mania or depression,sometimes it is the panick of  the overwhelming.But it is not me. So I ride it,not how I did, not with the longing or idealism I did. Now it’s more with an  appreciation for how wonderful it makes me feel but actually…not today thank you, today I don’t want to die. 

I could not tell you when this change occurred. I can look over the past months and see very clear interchanges taken. Mr Duck for example. A few months ago something happened that totally and utterly crushed everything I thought he was, we where, it threw myself into question. Something ultimate and wounding. Never before had I ever thought, you should care for me,you should love me,you should respect me. Never in my entire thirty five years have I ever stopped and thought “what about me?” past relationships despite the treatment have always been terminated on the basis of my children. Ultimately. Suddenly with Mr Duck, I had had enough. If you can’t ship up you ship out,I want for little and if you can’t meet basic needs and show basic care and love for me then that’s not ok. Now I stand by this, I will never accept less than what I deserve, which is a rising level. Every day I consciously think to myself “do I deserve this because miss sassy you are worth alot”. I keep inbedding the new pathways. As a result I confidently feel he has seen that actually I am worth more. I have told him so ruthlessly,in a manner I did not predict but was with conviction.  Recent months has seen him in his own type of therapy, seen him trying, seen him really learning himself that actually life is worth having the way it is. That he too can have what he wants and deserves and that to have it you have to work at it. The man that never wanted to get old now talks about our old age together,the man so drenched in his complex grief is regrowing and fighting hard at his own battles so that the “us” we want is possible but also so that the “him” he is, is enough. Therapy did not just touch my soul, I believe it helped to touch his. 

Also. My alcoholic ways have eased, I still love a drink, what mother with peace on a Friday doesn’t celebrate making another week with a wine? But I do not care to get off my face, it bores me, watching others and actually those I love doing what I did, hurts. It hurts to watch. I don’t like it, I don’t like knowing their subconscious ignorance to their pain drives them to destroy themselves. I still love a night out with the duck and with the girls, it is just purer. My awareness of myself turns my drink sour if I start crossing my own boundaries. 

The ex. What a prat! No more do I let this sad, manipulative, angry man press my detrimental buttons. He does not have power to change my world or my internal world. Admittedly I still have times when I hope he wakes up to a bad bad day, but he will never have power. I now have mediation under my belt, requirements I had met unquestionably by an external organisation, that forced his hand. Social services fighting for me and the  police recording all of his attempts to claw me back into his games. I love the children this man gave me however in my own silent way I shall always feel sad that it took therapy too help me see his damaging impact on me and as a result my gorgeous babies. 

I also have few friends left. Some it would seem are what feels like me years ago and I pity the journey ahead of them. The ones I keep close are true, pure, loyal and in their own ways good for me and have always been my biggest supporters. I do not want or need friends that sabotage those around them, myself included, for personal gains,however they find fit to make the justification. I am worth more because actually I try really hard to be a good person and a good friend and no situation will throw that into jeopardy. 

When you wonder what you will be left like after therapy, it’s daunting and terrifying. What if the you that you know is stripped because all that you are is a broken, badly behaved, vacant, shell of a person. Now I know that the you left, is the same you that walked into that room in the first place. I still laugh at the same things, I am just more aware of my dark humour protecting my inner child’s emotional self. I still love to sing and dance, because once upon a time my clever little brain used it to escape and now my adult brain enjoys it to release negativity and soak up new vibes. I still feel, but now their not as overwhelming or confusing, I know what those feelings are and why I may be feeling them, if not still with a bit of work. I accept I may not show them like others but that’s okay, every tc member has learnt to read my stone face and so I assume and hope the same happens with my loved ones. It may not be a conventional way of expressing ones self but so long as communication is possible.  I still struggle to do the things in life that comes easy to others, I still become child like when in need, I still zone out, I still have days of spending, I still have days when I’m not quite sure if I will make it out of bed. Thats just me,the same me. But I manage and I don’t fail to understand and I fight. I cap my spending, I use my tools to zap me as close to the room as possible, I get out of bed and dammit I put my make up on and smile and I mean the smile. Because here I am.. In life, with its ups and it’s down and I manage and I look forward to managing tomorrow. 

Once you have lived in such a broken, complicated way eventually you have to choose. Ultimately are you in or out. You can do this without death or with. Personally living whist dead is worse than death. I chose to fight, I was ashes smouldering, desperate for ignition or to be extinguished. 

Bake me a cake she said…

Two long ass years I have been attending my therapeutic community, members come and go and more than not even with the best will in the world you never see them again. It is peculiar considering you spend so much time with these people and know them more than anyone in the world could possibly. I am quite grateful really as I find myself disliking more than I like, but the care is always there. Until I met Pats,her name actually isn’t Pats, the nickname derived from the fact we liken ourselves to Patsy and Eddie from absolutely fabulous.

Pats and I were trouble, a nice kind of trouble, boundaries we equally pushed, rules we broke, suspensions hit us so frequently it was as if we were in some revolving door. Discharge procedures within the community are a rarity yet we both achieved having one in our time. Mine for some drug smuggling within Europe that was totally blown out of proportion, it sounds much more exciting than it actually was. Hers for..  Well..  Confidentiality. I will say hers was much more fun if not traumatic. Pats and I have shared the whole journey together, in her I found not only the best therapy buddy but also a best friend. She is genuinely the funniest person I know, the most honest and the one person I get and who I know gets me. This is not a beat the patsy drum blog however, as much as I could, but I will sum up how her incessant need for me to bake changed an outcome hugely for me.

Patsy left community yesterday, her growth was complete and the world is awaiting. When someone leaves having achieved this intense therapy we like to spoil them and celebrate in a retarded fashion,every one is expected to bring food to provide a feast of calories. I am not a Baker. I hate it. I loathe it. I hate the doing. I hate the mess. I hate the outcome. I hate the waste of my time. I hate the end result. I hate cake. Any cake. Yes I said it.. I HATE cake. 

Pats has spent weeks and weeks harassing me ” bake me a cake”, ” Eddie bake me a cake sweetie”, ” I mean it, you best be baking”. You get the idea. I refused. I kept refusing and disputing and this became somewhat of an amusing tussle for others to spectate. The day before she left she explained herself ” I want you to bake a cake, you don’t and never have, it is because I believe you can and it’s about doing something different,making a change,trying something new. That was all. I know it sounds silly”. I wish this made sense to me at the time. I went home and my home became a floured mess as I baked her a bloody cake, I cursed the cake and I cursed her. I did it for no other reason other than I did not want to let her down. That was it. Her last day she gets her wish. The cake was the heaviest thing, it broke, it was held together with icing,the icing was held together with buttons. A mess it was and a mess she got. Patsy was delighted!

Away from tc in my “real life” things had been spiralling out of control, my relationship despite the love has been pulled to its very limit. Both of us mentally requiring support, both of us with habits and behaviours that we use to crutch our immature emotions and none of which come easy. My children have been subconsciously beginning to show their need for more security from me and their father and his new family ( pleb head of a girlfriend) have intentionally been putting one thing after another in my way or my childrens way.

I returned home after my cake sharing shame to receive a call from the police regarding my own historical abuse. This issue was dealt with in court twenty years ago so the call interested me as much as it did frighten. Hopefully I will hear this week if I can finally bring charges to an institution that failed myself and everyone that domino bastard hit. As I hung up the phone in walked a Duck. A duck with his tail down, with a quiet quack and an understanding in his eyes. He met my look of acceptance and that yes..again.. I was going to do something else today different.
You see when you believe you are not worth much, you take the crumbs people offer,you accept more than you should, and until you truly believe it is not the case scripts will continue no matter with whom the relationship. On top of this I have other scripts, the ones where I feel such huge empathy I will love and support. I will set myself on fire to keep others warm. Hell as of late I almost set my children on fire to keep others warm. I also do not like to end anything. Change?nope. Leaving? Absolutely not. Failure? Over my dead body.

Calmly and with conviction ” you need to go now Duck. For now. Until you are better, until others are in your mind, until you can help yourself and for the right reasons. You put my children and my home at risk and for that I shall not continue. I will love and support you but not here. You leave tonight”. He nodded, he cuddled me and he kissed me. He told me what little I know to be true which is he loves me, will do this and will be back. That was that.
None of my normal rage, my normal defence, my normal drama. None of his normally high defensive behaviour and resilience. That was that. Good bye. For now.

Wow! I baked another cake!
It was not easy and the night followed with a huge range of emotions that had me making support call after support call. I turned it in on myself, I hated myself, I hated me now, I hated me then, I hated the responsibility, I hated what I had allowed and what I hadn’t. I hated him and I hated him then. I felt proud, I felt strong, I felt weak, I felt relief and burden. I felt everything.
I have and had no Pats to share this moment with. No Patsy to thank for now, no Patsy to know she changed my world, my future, my childrens future, my own growth, his own growth, all by making me do something different.

It could be coincidence I hear you say? There is no such thing in therapy land. Everything is linked. In one day I had baked a cake, my past and the first domino that fell in my life began to offer an opportunity to tie it up, I stopped a snowball that was so big it was crushing myself and my family. Would I have done this if something was not asked of me to change? Would I have if I did not see someone I love finish therapy with no more void in their heart? With belief in me. Knowing my capabilities and knowing I have power to do something different?

To love is not always to be kind, and love alone is not enough. Not for the mental and not for the well. To love is to believe and encourage the best. To love is to say enough, stop, change it. To love is to embrace the good and help it flourish, to nurture the parts someone hates and teach the other to do the same. To love is to watch growth and water it occasionally. To love is to not allow someone to do anything that will cause them upset or pain. I never understood that you can’t love anyone until you love yourself and this is so very true. You can love.. But to really love has to start within. If you do not have the skills to love yourself you certainly do not have the skill to love another. If you find that too much to achieve then you can start with something like a cake

It does not have to be perfect, you just have to try. Or at least change a little something.

I learned this lesson today. Patsy loves me! Slowly I am beginning to grasp loving myself, I hope that this helps to teach my children something I never understood to teach. Inner love. I also showed duck that love is not always kind. I hope this be the first day into a new journey and I have one nutter and her coffee vodka to thank.