Can it just be 2014 already? Without the whole “WOOOOOOO, welcome to the new year, life is something wonderful to look forward to!!!” ceremony and whatnot? Because it’s not. Wonderful, I mean. Not for me, not right now, not very often of late.
On the one hand, learning about/trying to understand a BPD diagnosis can feel like a step in the positive direction. When things are going relatively okay, you get a fleeting sense of control and purpose: “Maybe things have been horrible for a reason, and I’ve learned and grown in ways that have helped me, and now things are looking up, etc.”
On the other hand (my current “hand”), recognizing BPD for what it is – a vicious, cyclical mood disorder – can offer a very jaundiced perspective of a situation about which it is already easy to be cynical: “Wow, this is happening yet again, just like it always has, and (at this rate) just like it always will because THIS is evidently my enduring identity.”
I hate being wrong. Like, really hate it. I am the annoying, Hermione Granger smart-ass who went to ridiculous lengths to learn, know, memorize and recite all the crap that made me feel “right” in school. I hate feeling wrong so much, that I frequently insist upon being “right” at the expense of being happy/successful/healthier. How stupid is that?? Yet I feel myself trapped in it even now. I feel like I’d be a pathetic, delusional chump if I let myself believe things can get better. Or that I’m not always going to suffer like this. Or that I can change my life by resisting this exact thought pattern.
Even as I’m writing this I know that my left-brain logicizing (?? too lazy to google whether that’s actually a word) is just a defense mechanism, a wall around my right-brain emotional self, which is still going nuts over the holidays. Expectations are everywhere and involved in virtually every interaction I have lately. And we all know that expectations, for a borderline, are like grenades: the longer you hold onto them, the more likely they are to explode in your face.
Tomorrow evening is New Year’s Eve. Tomorrow evening marks an occasion that, for much of this year, I honestly didn’t think I would live to see. Tomorrow I have to deal with that as well as my roommate who blabbed to my parents about my BPD, my suicidal thoughts, everything. We haven’t spoken in days and I’ve been crashing at my parents/visiting a friend. But a confrontation is going to happen eventually and what better way to ring in 2014 than with yet another blow-out over my constantly injured feelings? :-S Sigh.
Hope those reading this are faring better and having more auspicious premonitions for the new year….
oh p.s. … how sad is it that I mostly just want it to be 2014 so I can find out how Sherlock faked his death? Seriously.
Half of a Soul - Life with BPD 