I'm right back there, looking at the abyss. Theres a big black hole just beckoning me, calling me come in. I just want there to be nothing. No-one. No tomorrow. No bills, no stress, no pressure, none of these feelings of absolute despair and worthlessness.
I woke this morning and I just lay here, wishing I was not awake, wishing that I was NOT. When I feel like this I just don't want to exist. I want to cease. I want to be swallowed, by the jaws of the malevolent universe, and drawn into it's acidic stomach, and melted to nothing, with no memory or pain left behind.
The only thing that holds me on this earth is my kids. I so wanted to go, even this morning. I have the opportunity. My partner has gone out to golf, the au pair is not awake, and my son is still sleeping also. The only thing that stays my hand is the thought of my beautiful ten year old son finding me, and the trauma that would cause him. I don't fear what his life might be like without me, he has an excellent father, and lots of loving family and friends around him, he would be fine. But I don't want him to be scarred by finding a bloody or mangled body and realising that I was dead.
I do worry about my daughter, and who would be there for her if I were gone. Her father is far away, and she is not completely independent yet. She's very good, and has another job now - but she still comes to me for help, and for food. I helped her to pay for something for her car the other day. My partner was angry, I'm sure. He's angry and resentful about all the money I spend, but I don't know what else to do. How can I refuse her when I have money in the bank? She is my child. She is trying to make a life for herself, but isn't quite there yet. She does so much for herself and it's been so long since she's been under my roof. She shelters elsewhere, only eats with me sometimes, mostly clothes herself, and manages to be independently mobile nearly all of the time. When she does come to me for help, I am just grateful to see her and that she feels she can ask.
My big son is overseas, and he is fine now. He's pretty much completely out of the nest, and has a life of his own. I don't think my presence or absence on the planet would affect him very much at all.
So I live for the younger two. I go to the naturopath, the doctor, the psychologist and the chiropractor, and even to my chinese lessons, to try to make myself well enough to continue to exist on the planet, to do the things I need to do for them.
Up until recently, I had worked to pay my passage on this planet, for the time I need to stay here. Then I became so unwell that full time professional work was no longer an option. It was going to kill me. So, by agreement with my partner, I stopped. And now it's an issue. I spend too much. I earn too little. I don't budget. I have no thought for the future.
Of course I have no thought for the future! It's a miracle that I am alive today. The statistics for BPD sufferers are not that great. Death by suicide is hundreds, if not thousands of times more common for Borderlines than it is for the general populace. And I'm here to tell you, it's a huge temptation. The pull of the knife, the bathroom medications, the cord, the veranda rail ... the road, the sea, the rocks and forest offering up spiders and snakes ... it is great. The wish to slip away into nothingness, to not have to deal with any of this anymore, it is strong.
I woke this morning and I just lay here, wishing I was not awake, wishing that I was NOT. When I feel like this I just don't want to exist. I want to cease. I want to be swallowed, by the jaws of the malevolent universe, and drawn into it's acidic stomach, and melted to nothing, with no memory or pain left behind.
The only thing that holds me on this earth is my kids. I so wanted to go, even this morning. I have the opportunity. My partner has gone out to golf, the au pair is not awake, and my son is still sleeping also. The only thing that stays my hand is the thought of my beautiful ten year old son finding me, and the trauma that would cause him. I don't fear what his life might be like without me, he has an excellent father, and lots of loving family and friends around him, he would be fine. But I don't want him to be scarred by finding a bloody or mangled body and realising that I was dead.
I do worry about my daughter, and who would be there for her if I were gone. Her father is far away, and she is not completely independent yet. She's very good, and has another job now - but she still comes to me for help, and for food. I helped her to pay for something for her car the other day. My partner was angry, I'm sure. He's angry and resentful about all the money I spend, but I don't know what else to do. How can I refuse her when I have money in the bank? She is my child. She is trying to make a life for herself, but isn't quite there yet. She does so much for herself and it's been so long since she's been under my roof. She shelters elsewhere, only eats with me sometimes, mostly clothes herself, and manages to be independently mobile nearly all of the time. When she does come to me for help, I am just grateful to see her and that she feels she can ask.
My big son is overseas, and he is fine now. He's pretty much completely out of the nest, and has a life of his own. I don't think my presence or absence on the planet would affect him very much at all.
So I live for the younger two. I go to the naturopath, the doctor, the psychologist and the chiropractor, and even to my chinese lessons, to try to make myself well enough to continue to exist on the planet, to do the things I need to do for them.
Up until recently, I had worked to pay my passage on this planet, for the time I need to stay here. Then I became so unwell that full time professional work was no longer an option. It was going to kill me. So, by agreement with my partner, I stopped. And now it's an issue. I spend too much. I earn too little. I don't budget. I have no thought for the future.
Of course I have no thought for the future! It's a miracle that I am alive today. The statistics for BPD sufferers are not that great. Death by suicide is hundreds, if not thousands of times more common for Borderlines than it is for the general populace. And I'm here to tell you, it's a huge temptation. The pull of the knife, the bathroom medications, the cord, the veranda rail ... the road, the sea, the rocks and forest offering up spiders and snakes ... it is great. The wish to slip away into nothingness, to not have to deal with any of this anymore, it is strong.
I've been trying. I feel like I've been trying so hard. And up until last night, I had been feeling that my partner has been really there for me, really supportive. Last night, I felt like he felled me like a tree. Then he walked away. At the time when I needed him most, he walked away, saying "I can't handle this" and he closed two doors between us.
I was trying so hard not to self harm. I lay there and told myself: nononononononononononoo. I gripped my hands between my legs to try to stop from hitting myself. I clutched the pillow. I cried. I was alone. I felt completely abandoned and worthless. I hate myself enough, without having the person I need approval from more than anything else in the world denounce me, then walk away.
I did go to get him, in the end. I had to. I was going to really hurt myself. I went to him and cried you are supposed to help me!! He did. But somewhere in all of this, he also booked in to golf for this morning. When I went to bed last night, I asked him: 'what are you doing tomorrow?', and he replied: 'I don't know'. Yet somehow, today, he got up and went. He says I am better off without him around when I am like this. Perhaps there is some truth in that, but I always come back to that saying:
IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE ME AT MY WORST,
THEN YOU DON'T DESERVE ME AT MY BEST.
I keep thinking - we can avoid this all we like, but it's not the same as dealing with it. He can go away and wait until I am feeling better, and come back when the coast is clear. It works, in the immediate term. He can slink off and leave me to sort out the mess of my feelings. Sometimes I really do work through some stuff, while he skirts around it. But there's not much point me being whole and healed if the relationship is still bent and broken. It won't do us any good. It doesn't work that way.
If the relationship is my biggest trigger, then the relationship is what needs to be worked on, even if my partner feels like he is not the one with the problem. He does have a problem, a really big one. ME. And the fact of the matter is, if he wants to keep US, then WE have to work on fixing ME. If I do it all by myself, it will only work when I am all by myself. He can give me the time, and the shelter and the financial support for me to heal myself, and perhaps to a degree I will be fixed, but WE will not be fixed, and so the relationship will have no substance, or meaning.
I've walked that road before. I've accepted in a past relationship that I was the problem, and I worked and worked and worked, to fix me. I had tried to fix the relationship prior to that - but I was doing it on my own, and as the (another) saying goes, it takes TWO to tango. When you do some things alone, they are meaningless, worthless. There's not point fixing myself by myself if the only (or major) bit of myself that is broken is the bit that has relationships with significant others. That's something I can only work on in PARTNERSHIP with a partner.
If I have to fix it by myself, I may as well be by myself, and then I wouldn't need to fix it anyway.
So what am I doing? Sitting here with a raging headache, a sore, raw throat, and a wish to die, faced with sorting it out by myself, yet again. It gives me no hope for a future, or any desire to be with the partner who abandons me at my times of greatest need.
Where do I go from here?
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