Too Many Angry Thoughts (unfiltered)

I haven't posted or written in quite awhile.  I don't really have any good excuses.   I'm mostly just lazy, and emotionally drained.  Plus it seems like there is too much to say, and not enough at the same time. I will now take a stab at digging through my jumbled thoughts enough to come up with something worth sharing.  Wish me luck :)

I have been struggling with feeling angry more then I would like.  I  remember being a young child and becoming extremely angry which would lead to punishment, and should have led to learning a better way of coping.  Instead it led to extreme guilt and denial.  As I'm sure you know, this can cause to some not so fun explosions.

I am angry at myself for being this way.  I hate feeling so broken, and helpless.  I am angry that I have a mental illness.

In some ways I'm mad at God for letting me hurt this badly, and for the fact that I don't feel like I can be close to him.  I'm mad at myself for being messed up, and so despicable.  I am also angry at my birth parents.  As irrational as it is, I'm mad at my mom for dying, and my dad for giving me away. I'm mad at my adoptive parents for making me feel unloved, and like I don't measure up.

My therapist said that they are a big part of what turned my attachment disorder into an actual mental illness.  I probably have a learning disability that they never realized and I have asthma that went undiagnosed.  I am really struggling not to blame them for my poor physical and mental health.  If I do in fact have a learning disability that would explain my struggles with school.  Not just that I am "lazy and unmotivated."  My asthma is very bad and might not have gotten as bad if it were treated.


If they had taken me seriously maybe I wouldn't be sitting here right now typing this blog about my mental illness and my life that makes me want to die.


I am so mad.  I don't like anger, it is strong and scary, and turns me into a person I don't like.  I am so mad that I have a mental illness.  I feel like my parent's ignored so many of my struggles choosing instead to focus on some of the external symptoms and to chastise me for failing.

I am mad that every time I did something wrong it turned into a talk about who I was and how that was ultimately a bad person.  I am mad that they caused me so much pain, then were angry when I tried to end the pain with a razor blade.  They never really seemed to listen.  I am mad that they don't want to have a relationship with me unless I act a certain way.  I don't want conditional parents.  I am not a daughter, I am an orphan.  I am choosing to be alone, because every parent I have had has caused me terrible pain.

I can't take feeling this way.  I can't take all of the anger, and all of the guilt towards the anger.  I seek out other emotionally abusive relationships because they feel safer to me, more familiar, and they represent love to me.

Family, love, and commitment do not mean the same things that they do to other people.  I can't love, because I can't love myself.  All that was communicated to me was that I am beyond love.  I am subhuman.  I am a narcissist.  I think that I am above others, but also below.

 I don't like things that tie me to reality, like mindfulness.  I don't' want to be aware of my dependence on food and air.  I don't wan too feel the chair against my skin.  I can't be aware of anything without forming an opinion.  I envy those with hallucinations.  Reality is too painful.


 I think that if God actually loved me he would let me die.  I'm in too much pain.  I'm too mad.  I'm too Broken.

On Opening Doors and Handless People (How Not To Judge People With BPD)

OK, so this isn’t a great analogy on many levels.  Physical and mental health don't correlate perfectly. It could be argued that Handless Man is at fault for not wearing a prosthetic (but let's just assume that for reasons beyond his control he just couldn't -ahem- handle it on this particular day). Also, hands don’t regenerate (unless you’re the Tenth Doctor) the way emotions and mental conditions seem to have half a chance of doing so it would be truly absurd to yell at a double amputee for not getting over it.  But still, there is some truth to the absurdity of this attitude when applied to judging someone with a significantly less perceptible disorder such as BPD.

As feelings are not necessarily continually worn on ones sleeve (or interpreted correctly when they are), someone who is mentally ill can blend in quite well a good bit of the time.  This means that when you do need help or start acting a little, well, crazy (or emotionally unstable as the case may be) there may be a certain lack of grace or empathy as compared to someone with more obvious symptoms. Surely you can open that door with your own "clearly” capable hands!  There may come a point where you are as stuck emotionally as the handless man at the door but because no one else can easily see or perceive what you’re going through they find it ridiculous that you might need them to hold said metaphorical door for you.  Just get over it already!  You're obviously a fully-functioning human.  Except not really.

Expecting someone with BPD to be able to “get over it” the same way as everyone else, is as ludicrous as telling the handless man to grab the knob and open the door.  BPD is a very real disorder that involves controlling an abundance of strongly felt emotions, fears, and beliefs that may appear to be unreasonable and completely invalid from the outside.  The reality is that sometimes BPD can be as emotionally handicapping as being handless would be physically. Expecting someone with BPD to act or react normally in emotionally tense situations and judging them when they don't is akin to expecting Handless Man to use his (nonexistent) hands to open the door.


*Disclaimer: The intent of this post is not to belittle or otherwise make fun of people without arms. Handless Man is simply an illustrative tool attempting to show more tangibly how debilitating the emotional aspect of non-tangible mental illness like BPD can be.

BPD Episodes

The other day I received an upsetting letter, which I opened when I was alone in the living room.  I sat on my bed, emotions turning in my stomach, unable to even think clearly, just needing to not feel, to slow it all down.  I wanted to regain control over myself.  So I went onto the balcony where I knew there was a glass with green water and a dead plant in it, I picked it up, poured out the brackish water and the carcass of the plant.  Then I knelt on the concrete balcony and smashed the glass against the ground, and proceeded to cut my left thigh with the broken glass.  Melinda found the letter and immediately knew that it would mean some bad days ahead for us.  (also me cutting is in no way her or her fiance's fault) She cleaned up the glass, found the pieces I had hidden, and held me while I cried.

Something like that would be hard for anyone.  But for the depressed, suicidal it tends to mean suicide thoughts and attempts.  I then later argued about the letter with my best friend, who tends to be very good at not triggering me.  She is the person that I share practically every thought with.  I talk to her pretty much every day, and she is really good with my condition.  Only this time she was tired, and not in the emotional  place for this conversation.  The end result was, me stealing a glass, leaving the apartment in the middle of the night, and hiding near the pool cutting.  (although please realize that in this situation pretty much any course of action taken by Anna would have triggered me.) Melinda and Trevor wound up finding me, bringing me back, and dressing the cuts, because Anna could tell she had triggered me and contacted Mel telling her to check on me. (Oh and Trevor and Mel are going to replace the glasses with plastic cups.)

Then the next day, I took off again, couldn't find a better way to hurt myself, so wound up punching a tree and staring at traffic weighing the pros and cons of walking into it.  (which was the second time that day I had stared at cars rushing by wondering that.)  I sat under a tree by the side of the road, shrouded in shadows, until headlights would swing by shining on me briefly, giving me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I imagined what it would feel like to be hit by a car.  I imagined the impact, the feeling of being plastered on the asphalt. What it would be like to be in that amount of pain for the last few moments of life.  I worried about giving the driver PTSD, and about wrecking their car.  I wondered if they would see me in the headlights and try to break, maybe I would just wind up in another hospital hooked up to machines, as doctors and techs surrounded me working hard to bring me back, even though it would mean more physical and emotional pain for me.  I thought of owing my parent's even more than I do now in medical bills.  I sat there paralyzed by emotional pain, and racing thoughts until Melinda ran by looking for me, and I called out to her.

Some days are so hard that I curl up in a ball and cry about how much I "can't do this" and how I just want to die.  Sometimes I beg Anna to absolve me from feeling guilty for committing suicide.  I ask her if she would forgive me for being weak, and unable to live.  I beg her to let me go.  I cry about how much pain there is in the world, not just for me, the whole world is crying out.  I lie on the grass wanting so much to stop breathing.  Some days make me want to violently lash out, to break things and scream as loud as I can.  To learn how to throw a better punch so maybe I can impact something.  To share some of the thoughts that I keep to myself.  Some days I just want to be happy, to go shopping, the be the "normal" 21 year old girl.  I want to listen to my music too loud, and drive too fast.  I want to dance, until I forget why it hurts.  I want to drink until I can barely remember my name.  I have all different days, I guess mostly I want to matter.  To people, and to the world.  Just to have a place, and to have worth, to not be so incredibly sick. 

On Bad Days

For this blog we have been trying to post on a daily basis, which when multiple people are sharing the burden really isn't too bad, however recently we have dropped the ball a bit.  On my part when I have bad days I'm less likely to write, or post because most of my energy is directed towards surviving the day.  My promise to any readers we may have is to be honest with you, even when it's not pretty and it doesn't make me look good.  I will try to be as real as I know how to be.

First of all when we say bad days on this blog we don't just mean a day when things go badly, but a bad day in terms of  my  BPD.  Much in the same way someone with a life threatening physical illness will have a variety of good and bad days.  Bad days are entirely exhausting, not just for me, but for my poor support system. They usually have to jump into action watching me more closely, and being emotional support. As people say when it rains it pours, generally "bad days" are exactly that, " days" plural, until by the end we are all pretty tired. It takes deliberate work to turn the trend around.

I feel like this post should end with something hopeful.  I'm not sure what though.  Oh I know, if you are going through bad days, they don't necessarily have to be endless or entirely bad days with no redeeming value.  For one thing you could always listen to the Daniel Powter song "Bad Day" just to giggle at the irony.  Or do what I did and pick a wildflower bouquet, lie in the grass to think, or eat massive amounts of chocolate.  Let a friend hold you as you cry, put a tiny hat on your cat, or run just to feel the wind on your face.

On a side note, if you attempt the grass one wear bug spray... I'm pretty sure every bug in the state came to sample me.