Too much.

It's too much right now.  All the things.  Everything seems overwhelming.  It's like being Borderline all over again.  I know it's a moment in time.  I'd have to go weeks and weeks more before this meant anything serious, but sometimes these moments last forever.  I hate them.

I think, in the way that these things seem to come to me, that this is because I'm on hormonal birth control again.  PMS week is now a thing of fear and dread.  I can tell it's coming.  Nothing keeps me happy for long.  The bad things are SO.  BAD.  It's intolerable.  So much hurt, so much pain, so much fear.

I'm waiting these last few days.  Waiting for the hurt to happen.  I hate this.  I want to crawl out of my skin and just curl up until it passes.  I feel crazy.  Not fun, good crazy, but out of control.  I need someone to cry on, but there's no one right now.  I vacillate between fine, happy, angry, sad, terrified, and all over again.  I need to be held down, and restrained.  I need to have someone physically take control, so that I can let go of the mental anguish.  I want to hand this all over to someone, and beg them to make it go away.

Oddly, at the same time, I hate that thought.  I need to be in control.  It's my body, my brain, my responsibility.  I need to be so strong, so in control, because that's what men are supposed to want.  But I'm also supposed to be vulnerable and weak, because they want that too.  I can't do both, not and feel safe.  How do I balance it all in my head?  How do I make it work?

Getting in to a serious, and what looks like very long term, relationship again wakes up all of my fears.  I feel the need to hide them from him.  It's not his fault I'm so damaged.  He shouldn't have to take that on.  But I don't know how to handle it on my own.  One little phrase today, and I fall apart.  It wasn't meant to hurt, I know, but it kicked up a whole other mess of past damage that I thought I was over.  Clearly not.  Stupid, stupid brain.  I think I can't let him know it's in there until the crazy passes.  It's too hard to tell whats the moment, and what's really an issue.  I know, I should talk about this all with him, but I'll just end up worrying I'll scare him off.  I want to heal...it's just hard to know where to start.

Anneal me.

Things I Can't Say

It's New Year's Eve.  I may as well put all the fear in my head in writing and let it go it's own way in to the ether.

• I'm scared.  So scared.  Not always, but when I think too much, when I've had a bad day, when I'm too tired, there it is.
• Why would you want me?
• I'm so scared this is all a lie.
• I feel like this is all my fault. 
• I'm not pretty.  When you tell me I am, I wonder why you feel like you have to lie to me.
• I'm not a good person.
• I don't know if I'll ever trust anyone again if this goes wrong.
• I should run.  Far, and fast, and away from where I can be hurt.
• I feel like I need someone as a back up, for when you realize you were insane to ever love me, so I can be safe.

Now go away bad things.  I have a life to live.

Sneak away, fly away. Watch me as I get away. Anyway, I can runaway.

It's that time of the relationship again.  You know, the one I always have when I'm getting too happy.  Things are amazing.  Nothing is going wrong.

Run.

Don't wait, don't give them a chance to hurt you.  Because it's going to come down to that.  It always comes down to that.  The one person, in the past history of my dating who didn't hurt me, who told me I was beautiful, and never said anything but wonderful things to me, I cut out of my life and made sure to burn that bridge so hard he'd never want me back.  Why?  Because I couldn't stand the idea of waiting for whatever was going to happen.  Because when he did what everyone else had, it was going to be that much worse, and ending it early was better than letting it happen.

Now I'm in the same spot.  Almost 5 months in, and things aren't going wrong.  Not like they always happen immediately, but...  And now I have a little, and if things go wrong again, he's going to be hurting, and I have no desire to put him through that again.  Losing the ex-asshole was really, really hard on him.  I can handle my own hurt.  I've got plenty of practice at that, and a therapist who will lovingly kick my ass all over the place until I'm better.  But he doesn't have my experience or practice, and I never want him to go through that again.

Part (most) of me wants to pack up and run.  See if I can get a transfer somewhere, and get the hell out of here.  Nothing works better to get out of these moments than running.  I've been here so long, that sometimes the urge to run is overwhelming.  I never loved Georgia in the first place, but there's something about being stuck here (yay divorce!) that makes it even worse.  I know I can't, and it's a bad example to set, but I just want to be so very far away from here.  It's never felt like home.

I think the worst part is, there's nothing he's doing wrong.  It's all in my head.  I know it's all in my head.  (Sadly, my head is a creative and terrible place some times.)  But I constantly watch, and wait.  It's the stupid self-doubt.  Who could love *me*, and why?  I've never found myself attractive (the entirely of my school career was me getting bullied about how ugly and worthless I was, so you know, understandable), I spend so much time around brilliant people that I end up doubting my intellectual worth, but mostly, who on earth could possible want me.  Me with all my insecurities and doubts.  All of my overpowering emotions.  All my fears, and half-assed dreams I'm never going to realize.  I can't possibly imagine *anyone* who would want that.

The Day After

So, got all brave this weekend, and went to a party full of people I didn't know.  Please understand, when I say brave, I mean, this took every ounce of courage I had.  I lied furiously about being excited.  I was terrified (especially given some of the extenuating circumstances going on), but if I never push my limits, I never grow.  As a socially phobic introvert, you've got to understand that I'd generally rather perform my own anesthesia-free appendectomy than do something like that. It's an act of love and extreme trust in my friends when I do.  Excursions where I know people and am going to new places can work, provided I have a momma duck.  I will follow and cling to that person pretty much the whole time.  Literally, some form of physical touch is nearly constantly required.  It's how I stay grounded.  Leave me alone for more than about 10 minutes, and it's a pretty quick downhill slide to badness.  No place to escape to where I feel safe breaking down enough to let the stress go?  Extra bad.

Yes, I "face" it generally really well.  People have no idea how hard it is for me to survive group dynamics.  I haven't put myself in this situation in a Very Long Time, and I was reminded of why this weekend.  I'm still absolutely livid that I let myself get to that point where I had to dig my nails in my arm to keep from some gloriously hysterical weeping.  Could I handle this situation better next time?  Very probably.  It's not all new and overwhelming.  Once I get past the first time or two, I can usually manage.

I did great at the party while I was drunk and hopped up on Xanax, but the second I got too sober, and the Xanax was the only thing left in my system, I crashed.  I even had fun, but for me, the absolute humiliation that comes with that kind of loss of control is...personally unforgivable and overshadows everything else.  Most people there didn't notice, I think.  Honestly, if they did, well, fuck that.  The one person who did notice is the last person I wanted that to happen in front of, and that made it so much worse.

I don't judge other people for being upset/offended/worried or whatever about my attacks.  But I judge me for being weak in front of them.  My attacks aren't me any more.  They're so, so rare.  But I still hate them as much, if not more than I ever did.  They intrude.  They splash their hateful reminders about how shattered I used to be all over me.  High on the list of things I never want to be is that utterly, helplessly crazy.  It's funny, people will tell me that it's not my fault...but since medication never worked, and training my emotions did...  I just want to be normal.  That's really all.

My therapist tells me we do what we have to do to survive.  I know for Borderlines, untreated anyway, it's all survival, all the time.  I sometimes sift back through my memories to try to figure out who the hell started this, and why I ended up so horribly broken, but there's nothing that comes to mind, given how old I was when I started being Borderline.

I'm not sure this really had a point, other than for me to remember this next time I decide to go out.  I need to be much, much more clear about what I need when I do things like this, and have a better backup plan.

Jack's Story

I got pregnant for the second time when Mat was 13 months old  I was terrified, but overjoyed.  After 11 months of trying with Mat, it was like a godsend to get pregnant on one oops.  I remember watching the stick change color, and feeling so excited.  A new baby.

Chris, however, was not excited.  He was upset.  He immediately jumped to getting an abortion.  It was a fight.  I don't get abortions.  We fought for three weeks before I agreed to get one.  He sent me to my therapist, who literally said, "Are you crazy?  Just go check yourself in to Peachford when you're done, and save yourself the ER trip for the attempted suicide."  So I went home and told Chris.  He agreed with her.  For two whole days.  Then the fighting started again.

I couldn't sleep because of Mat nursing, and the stress.  I was slugging back caffeine and anti-nausea homeopathics.  The fighting went on.   He said I couldn't handle it.  I had so much to do.  Money was too tight.  Everything was so rational with him.

I agreed again at 8 weeks to have an abortion.  Every place I called refused to do the pill because I was nursing, even though I had documentation that it was safe.  Planned Parenthood, but the wait was over two weeks.  I didn't want to wait that long.  One place told me not to let anything stop me from what I wanted to do, and I remember wanting to scream at her that killing my baby was the last thing I wanted to do.  Instead, I thanked her.  It was humiliating.  I had to make all the calls, because Chris was too busy.

I finally put my foot down at about 9 weeks, because I wasn't aborting something that looked like a baby.  We decided to keep it.  Midwife appointments ensued.  We couldn't find a heartbeat, but she wasn't worried.  About 11.5 weeks in, I went to Ikea with my friends Mark and Heather.  I had Mat in the Moby so he wouldn't run off.  I was exhausted all the time and queasy.  He wanted to nurse CONSTANTLY.  If he wasn't nursing he was sobbing.

I had to pee, so we trotted off to the bathroom.  I remember wiping, and seeing brown blood.  It was scary, but I knew my stuff.  Red blood bad, brown blood okay.  It didn't stop.  Days of that.  Just a little, though.  I had a 12 week appointment, so I didn't make a faster one.  Besides, I was already feeling a few flutter kicks.  My mom went with me to watch Mat.  We tried a Doppler, because she knew I didn't want ultrasounds.  We couldn't find the heartbeat again, but she wasn't worried.  He was in a weird spot.  I agreed to an ultrasound.

I waited for a while, in this room full of pregnant women.  Big, gorgeous bellies surrounded me.  Soon that would be me again.  I got called back, and mom stayed with Mat again.  They put you in this big room, and coat you in cold jelly.  I got to see my baby, not just on a little screen, but HUGE.  Half a wall.  I was excited.

I saw it right away.  I was 12 weeks pregnant, and that was an 8 week fetus.  I only had an 8 week with Mat, and Jack looked exactly the same.  I didn't even notice there was no heartbeat.  I just knew he was too tiny in my gigantic womb.   I did the math.  He died the day I agreed to the 8 week abortion.  There had been no baby flutters, just my uterus starting contractions to expel my dead baby.

I asked for a picture.  My midwife told me it was really sweet.  I walked back in to the waiting room.  It was still full of bitches.  Hugely pregnant bitches who would be meeting their babies in a few weeks.  Bitches rubbing their tummies.  I could see the kicks through their shirt.  I hated them.  I hated every single goddamn last one of them.  I remember walking to mom and Mat, and I showed Mat the picture, and I remember saying, "This was going to be your baby brother."  Then I lost my fucking shit.  I was screaming and sobbing.  My poor mom looked horrified.

We were going to Thailand in two weeks.  I didn't want to miscarry in a foreign country.  I also hate being sedated and surgery, so I opted for misoprotol.  I took it the next day.  It was a Thursday.  Chris took the day off.  I took the first pill early.  Mom came over.  I ached.  It was early labor.  We went to the library, and it was starting to get very uncomfortable.  I asked him if we could please go, but he kept putting me off, and getting irate that I kept asking.

By the end of 12 hours, I'd made no significant progress, so I took the second pill.  Chris told me he had to go to bed because he needed to work.  Half an hour later, I was nearly screaming in agony.  It was so insanely painful.  Mom stayed with me.  I remember getting up to go to the bathroom, and when I sat down, my water broke.  Did you know you have an amniotic sac at 12 weeks?  I sure as hell didn't.  Then I spent the next four exhausting, excruciating hours pushing out everything I'd grown to nurture my baby.  I passed fist sized clots of tissue.  I bled constantly.  And I was covered in blood.  Covered, because I caught every last thing I passed, to frantically look for my baby.  My mom, bless her, was handed things as I desperately asked her if she thought it was my baby.  She never flinched.  At around 1am, I found Jack.  Tiny, but clearly a baby,  I held him in my hand, and kissed him, and told him I loved him.  Then I gently wrapped him up and put him in the fridge so we could bury him the next day.  By 2:30 or so, it calmed enough so that I could sleep.

Chris went to work like normal.  Mom and I picked out fabric, and made a shroud.  We buried Jack in the back yard when Chris came home.

I was numb.  Patrick and Timmy sent me flowers.  A few days later, I was spiking a fever, and still bleeding and passing clots.  I was worried I had retained placenta.  My parents watched Mat, so we could go to St. Joe's.  I waited for hours, only to be told no one would perform a D&C because I might have had an abortion that went wrong, and they were a Catholic hospital.  After 6 hours, they found a doctor who would.  By that time, they found out I had the flu, and was almost done bleeding out tissue.

But what if I never drank all that Coke Zero.  What if I'd gotten more sleep.   What if we'd wanted the baby.  It took me two years to get over it.  I'm tearing as I write this, but I've taken this out of the box so, so many times that I can do it without sobbing.  I miss Jack.  I was supposed to still be married, and have two wonderful children.  But I don't, and I have to move on from there.  I have a beautiful son, and I have finally stopped blaming myself.

I love you, sweet angel.

Chinese dolls, boxed in boxes...

I've been sitting on this post for a while.  I just have been busy and lazy, and really, had no good excuse.  I was trying to explain to someone the other day (trying seems to be the keyword for 99% of the shit that happens when I try to explain the inner workings of my brain) how I manage to keep from being overwhelmed by things that upset me.

Every painful event I experience gets felt intensely at the moment it happens, and then it's allowed a chance to run its course quickly.  If I still hurt as strongly the first day as the third or so, I pull out an empty mental box, stuff all of the emotion related to it in that box, label it, and tuck it away.  I just don't think about it or process it, or I never let myself heal.  I can sit and beat myself up about every fraction of every possibility of everything that might have been done differently.  If I just...  If I only...  Maybe if...  If I was stronger...  If I was better...  It's amazing how much I can blame myself for.

When I have a strong moment, or forget to watch how much I drink, I can take one off the shelf, open it up, and let the emotions come streaming back out, and feel it all over again like it was the moment it happened.  My goal isn't to deal with it, so much as it is to process it until the pain is manageable.  I've found that after 15-20 rounds of taking things out of their boxes, they become deal-able.  I can start to logic through them instead of just feeling the intense agony of it.

I could probably go to my therapist, and tear through a lot of it a few sessions, but I've become proud of my ability to deal on my own.  I'm pretty sure this is some version of compartmentalizing, but really, I like the boxes idea a little better.  A good visual explanation for a girl who's not really visually oriented in her mind.  Go figure.

And suddenly, this rambling, and pointless post got to the point in my head.  I need to write out Jack's story.  I've mostly forgiven myself, but I want to write it down, so I can have it saved somewhere, and take the last of it out of my head.

Well, that was silly.

Your worry feels like agony to me.

Today at my Listening Circle facilitators' meeting, we did our obligatory check-in.  Everyone went around.  I think I had something planned to say, but what came out was the story about how about three weeks ago, I picked up a razor blade for the first time in six years, and cut myself 45 times before I realized that it wasn't going to make things any better.  When I got done, to punish myself for cutting, I washed the cuts out with salt water.  That was closer to the pain I needed, but still, neither gave me the relief I needed.

Before this happened, I'd spent the two days before uncontrollably sobbing any time I was alone.  My situation was agonizing, and there was no end in sight.  I needed it to stop, and none of my techniques were working.  Maybe I forgot how to do them after so long, or I wasn't doing them with the right intent...I just don't know.  It was horrible.

I had to tell someone in the group who offered support that I just wasn't good at reaching out.  There's two reasons.  One is that I Do Not Trust people to be around me when I'm that vulnerable.  I love my friends, I trust them with a lot of things, but there have been too many people in my past who have proved to me that when I'm vulnerable around them, all I'm doing is giving them something to use against me later.

The more important reason is that the worry that kind of honesty generates is exhausting.  It's bad enough carrying around the worry I feel for myself when that happens.  It's oppressive.  But when I tell someone else, they get this look, their tone changes to something I hear as concern or pity, and then it's like the weight of that worry comes crashing down.  Now not only do I have to worry about me, I have to worry about them worrying about me.  I feel terrible.  I feel like I then have to spend months proving that I'm really okay.  I can't stand the tone and the look.  I worry enough that I'm breaking, but when someone else seems concerned like that, I get this sense that it's worse than I thought.  I'm broken, and they're worrying I'm going to do something else, something worse.  I don't want to have to prove that I'm okay to anyone.  I know I'll make it through this.  I don't need that doubt weighing on me.  I don't need pity.  I'm not weak, but I feel that way when I tell people.

I did reach out to one person, so that I knew I wasn't going to hide away and never deal with it.  He handled it exactly perfectly.  He's the first person I've ever talked to about it, other than my therapist, who didn't just make me feel worse for telling.

I know people mean well.  I'm not heartless...but I also know how it makes me feel, so I don't speak.  I don't speak so I don't have to worry about you, and myself.  I don't speak so I don't have to worry that I'm worse than I imagined.  I don't speak so that I don't have to be angry about feeling burdened with someone else's worry.

I wish there was a way to make this easier for everyone.

Aside:  Yes, I will be fine.  I've reached out to my therapist.  No, my son is in no danger.  I'll voluntarily commit myself if I have to to protect him.  He's my biggest priority, and I put him and his mental health above my own.