Monday
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Read More: Living with My Mother's Mental Illness
Tuesday
Wednesday
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So I phone my dad in hysterics and plead he drive all the way over to my flat to get me. He does. He spends the next two hours carving through steaming rush-hour choked streets to my rescue. Major shouts to you, Dad.Read More: Filmmaker Ida Storm Wants to Change the Face of Borderline Personality Disorder
Thursday
Sure, unsustainable anxiety levels are something I can just about hack… but once strange sounds start gnawing at my skull, I know I'm beat.
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On the drive back to my parents', my mom asks me when the last time I washed was. It's been eight days. Appalled, she totally loses her shit. She busts me for flunking therapy a few weeks back and I try to explain I find it embarrassing, uncomfortable and unhelpful as it fails to fix the problem immediately. We fight. I blame my illness on her and ask her repeatedly to shut the fuck up.By Friday morning, depression has left me entirely immobilised. Not only have I skipped work again, I've woken up to terribly sad news—my sister's friend has fallen seriously ill—and I don't leave bed for 18 hours. I send a few half-hearted mumbles about being sorry down the phone to my mate and shove it to the back of my brain.For me, one of the most debilitating traits of BPD is the inability to put things into perspective. I didn't care about her sister. I couldn't care. I didn't have the energy. I'd been mangled by ferocious anxiety jitters. If you cut me I'd bleed dread. There was nothing else to me. It had completely hollowed me out.I sleep for another few hours and wake up around 1 PM. I weep hot, angry tears. Why the fuck couldn't I be a better friend? I was incompetent in every single way. I hate myself. I am total trash.
Friday
Work send me a crabby email about attendance. I move jobs a lot because I fuck up a lot. I have these sporadic stints of managing relatively demanding and successfully salaried careers in social media, but this malevolent sickness always catches up to me, and I inevitably piss it all down the drain time and time again.Read More: Living with PMS That Makes You Want to Die
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I haven't spoken to anyone other than my parents in six days now. Around 2 PM I'm drenched in anxiety sweats and ordering curry. Two chicken tikka mains, a masala, a korma, butter chicken, four onion bhajis, a shami kebab starter, two portions of onion rice and two garlic naans—racking up to a potent £54.Bulimia has slithered in and out of my life for eight years. When stuff gets particularly abhorrent, I binge. Curry's a great call for gorging as it slips up real easy. While waiting for my delivery I'm unbearably restless, so I knock back four bowls of Coco Pops.Come 3.30 PM I'm back in bed with sharp stomach spasms and a bloated, bleary brain. I sleep till 6.30 the following morning.I manage to cop an emergency appointment with my doctor, who also agrees I am fast becoming an unmanageable, neurotic shit-show. He signs me off work for a week and I retreat back to Mom's with my tail tucked tightly between my legs. I'm home and sobbing stains into my pillow. My boss is going to be so pissed. Anxiety thumps sharply in my gut just thinking about the eye rolls and tuts he'll sling out once he gets a whiff of my absence. I once told him over work drinks that I suffer from anxiety and he called me a pussy. I text him apologizing profusely and splurge promises that I'll make up every minute missed. I'm contemplating raking a razor over my thighs because skin slicing works a dream—there's no other release quite like it. But in keeping with the doctor's orders, Mom's confiscated sharp stuff from the bathroom. I scream until I tremble.Right now I'm voiceless as fuck and stringing this together in between tears. My mom's sitting next to me and telling me everything's going to be OK, and I fucking love her for it. I have no idea where I'd be without the immeasurable support of my family. Retracing my week like this has been both an unexplainably terrifying and mediative process. I guess it really does help to talk about stuff. Who knew?I've noticed there's been a relatively recent influx of BPD accounts, which is incredibly dope. Although I've been in and out of various therapy for coming on eight years, my most recent diagnosis of borderline personality disorder wasn't until December last year. I was told this ridiculously malicious-sounding illness could account for my myriad vulgarities—everything from my shoddy attempts at empathy and blistering anger, to my penchant for self-harming. All my doctor seemed to be saying was, "The problem is not an illness, the problem is you." Regressive as it is, I felt weird and ashamed. As a result I've spent 2015 chugging antidepressants, dipping in and out of cognitive behavioral therapy and sleeping 16 hours a day.
I'm contemplating raking a razor over my thighs because skin slicing works a dream—there's no other release quite like it.
Saturday
Sunday
Personality disorder or no personality disorder, forging adulthood fucking sucks. So, in part I enjoy reading other young people's experience of BPD, because it makes me feel a little bit less alone. The flip side? Their experiences instil within me searing jealousy. I could shit spite. I'm so far from being OK and sometimes, when I read this stuff I remember that. Then I feel like I'm about to drop off into darkness again.I'm not bemoaning other people's extraordinarily courageous experiences with BPD. What I'm making a feeble attempt to get at is the following: I don't have any great advice for anyone going through this. I can't tell you you're going to make it because I haven't yet. Solitary suffering is my vibe. Maybe it's yours too. Somewhat immune to help and intervention, I'm no role model. What I do know is that nothing is as healing or calming as knowing you aren't alone in a painful situation. Knowing that someone else gets it; knowing that someone else is going through it right now and hasn't come through the other side. Sure, solace still seems entirely unattainable, but there is one thing that's helped me inch tediously towards it: Unclenching my tongue from my teeth. I recommend giving it a try.Solitary suffering is my vibe. Maybe it's yours too.