If reading this gets confusing or starts to give you a headache then I will have made my point. The point of the way this is written is to try to give the reader an active sense of what it feels like to live within the confines of borderline dilemma.
If you are borderline, you may relate, and this may help you to understand that you are not the "only one" who experiences the way that you feel. If you are a non-borderline perhaps this will serve to give you a peak inside of what the borderline in your life is living through.
Rage from nowhere, attached to nothing.... floating-freely from deep within me and ready in an instant to spew forth in what seem like instantaneously-effortless bursts of unbridled entitlement to give me a sense of power amidst the feelings of helplessness that are my every waking moment. If I am helpless you are too powerful, no, I will be powerful. I will take your power away so you can be helpless. I don't do helpless. I am power. I must have the power. We can't both have the power. I want what is mine. You are mine right? I am not yours though, I cannot be anybody's because I am not even my own. I gave myself to you. We are each others right? I mean, what's the difference?
Fear strikes me from all corners of my being. What, what is it that I am not seeing? Is not what I perceive what is really real? Why is it that I am the only one who sees what I see, just the way that I do? What does this mean? Surely this is what is wrong with the world right? I mean it can't be my problem. I am not afraid. I am not scared or weak or vulnerable. I need you..... NO!! ....I am strong and I don't need you. If you let me need you I won't want you anymore. And if you say I can't have you then I've got to have you. If you let me have you then I don't want you anymore. I want you when you don't want me and I need you when you won't help me. It is the biting and the pain of this cold distance that I know that somehow is familiar and is the feeling that I need to give me the illusion of safety. If I were truly safe I'd be exposed and not safe at all. Get away by coming closer and come closer by getting away. I am exposed most when I hide and hidden when I try to be who I think I am.
Feeling alone, again, abandoned as always, alone, again. I am everyone and everyone is me. Who am I again? Oh yea, that person, and that person, and what this person, and this person, want. Where does that leave me when I am alone? Who am I then? Do I cease to exist if I am not in the company of someone off of whom I can bounce my existence and from whom all of my validation must come?
What is wrong with the world? Why can't they see my pain? Don't they know how incredibly much I hurt? Can't they see that I need them to hold some of this pain for me, validate it, and take it away; for my soul runneth over with agony? Why should I have to bear my own agony? It is not my fault. I didn't do this to me. I didn't choose to hurt like this. I am beside myself with all of this pain and anger and grief as is an infant whose mother is angry with him or her. What do I do with that angry face? It is not acceptance, it is rejecting me.....but I NEED it.....what am I to do? I don't know what to do so I put it beside me. Whatever it is, I leave it to sit there....and it builds over the course of a lifetime. It builds and it always hurts. It hurts even when I don't feel it at all. I need to get what I need. I'll die if I don't. I'll just die. I am dying to live and in my attempts to live I die.
And so I have remained trapped inside this isolated and insulated place of youth stunted in my emotional growth. I am a victim. It is not my fault. I hurt and I hurt and I hurt. Why don't you care? Why don't you care? Make it go away. Make it stop, just love me from over there. Love me, but don't you dare really care. It would hurt too much if you were to care. I wouldn't understand who you were caring for or about because I don't know who I am. I hate who I am and what I am. I hate whoever the hell I am. I have come to hate what it is that I might be, or sometimes am. I don't like the voided vacuum within which I feel like my being exists under a glass bubble. So close, yet so far away from others am I. So close, yet so far away, from whoever I am, am I. Who are you trying to care about? What does that mean, that you want to care about me? It would mean that I needed you to care. I don't need you to care but I am dying for you to care. Still, care from over there and don't act like I need you.
Rescue me, by leaving me alone...it'll kill me. Leave me alone but rescue me. I need you to rescue me if I am to live. I am not alive. I am dead. I am dead when I try to be alive. I am alive when I act like I'm so dead I can't feel anything. There is such a sharp feel to the pain of numbness. Feeling the absence of myself like this. Where do the feelings go? Where does all of that pain hide? I dissociate from all that hurts. I give it to others. It is their fault, and their problem, not mine. Help me, while you leave me alone. Leave me alone while you help me. NOW!
I am the center of the universe. Yes I am. I am it and it is me. I will act this way too, if I feel like it. No, you can't win. I will win. I'll get you coming and I'll get you going and there will be no way that you can win. I must always win. I need to control because I feel so helplessly out of control, but you can't know that. You can't know that okay, you don't know that about me. I don't know that about me. I don't know you and cause I don't know me. You can't know me either. No, I won't let you in to a place that I have yet to gain access to. No, me first.
Who am I? I thought I knew just a minute ago. Then, suddenly nothing felt familiar anymore. Nothing felt okay anymore: nothing felt SAFE anymore - nothing felt as it had before. Why does this happen and what does it mean? What do you mean you don't know? You are supposed to know. I expect you to know. And if I expect it then I have a right to demand it from you. Don't go asking me for anything, NO, it depends how I feel, and what I believe in any given moment...you just never can know cause I never know what I'll do or say or feel. Every moment changes and shifts from one to the next. What is real, what is truth, whether or not I think I can take care of myself or what I feel, or right or wrong, from minute to minute changes, so I really just don't know. I don't care to know. Don't bother me about it. Leave me alone, just stay here. And be quiet while you talk to me. Talk to me silently. Words can hurt. Don't be too quiet in your silence though, because silence can kill a soul. I know, it killed mine over and over again. Dead, time and time again, risen hopes, only to fall and to die, unanswered, arms outstretched, never reached for, never grasped, arms that hung outstretched while a little girl screamed in terror and fear and had more need than any infant could possibly bear to hold. Arms...that had to hold themselves, suspended in mid air, left alone, ignored. Arms that would take another 36 years to ever dare to reach out again. So hold me, and rock me -- rock me to stillness -- gently okay, just don't touch me really, you know?
Truth, you want to talk truth? Whose truth, yours or mine? Is there a truth between? No, my truth is truth. Your idea of truth is a lie. I don't lie. If I don't lie and our truths aren't the same that makes you a liar. Does so....just does. If I am right then you are wrong. Yes you are. No I'm not. If I am good then you are bad if you don't agree with me and or see things my way. My way isn't just right; it is the only way. What matters is what I want and need. That's my truth. And my truth is the truth. Don't you even try to lie to me, don't...
I know things but they seem fleeting. What is real and important one minute is fragile and or gone and or misunderstood-misperceived and misinterpreted by me the next minute. I don't know why? You were here a minute ago and it mattered. But then you left. While you were gone for three minutes and fifty-four seconds (clock time -- forever in my own sense of the reality of time) I forgot that you mattered to me and now I find it incredibly impossible to believe that you could love me and leave me just like that for three minutes and fifty-four seconds...to wait and to suffer like that, alone, isolated and afraid. Don't ever do that again. Promise me! Do you have any idea what you put me through? My parents left me like that. It's not alright for you to just be you and not be me -- while I'm being you too. I know things seem fleeting. Things keep changing. I can't hold anymore than I am whether I am holding anything or not.
You live in a "big picture." Life, so I am told unfolds in some "big picture" of reality. I live in millions of little pictures. Millions of pieces of reality. Snap shots from the whole, fragmented seconds of minutes that seem to encompass hours. I can't tell what is going on around me like you do. No, it does not make sense to me. Part of this picture lined up with part of that one...what am I supposed to see? What can I know from these mixed up jigsaw puzzle messages? I get part of it. I don't understand the rest. First you seem to make sense, and then you don't so I get angry and frustrated. In one part of the picture I care about you but in another part of the picture I remember out of context when you said this or that and then I can't trust you anymore, or not until the next moment when two picture pieces fit briefly together. This is my experience. So one minute I want you close, from a distance and the next minute I want you distantly-close. This is what is going on inside of me. I don't want to hurt you like I do I just don't know how to make sense of all of these jumbled messages and fragmented pictures that bombard my mind constantly with images and thoughts that do not fit together, not now, not ever, hardly ever anyway. If memories are pictures of the way things were (or the way things are?)then my memories, like strewn screams, echo to a voided-abyss in a cavernous canyon. Imagine all of that sound overlapping itself. Could you hear me then, any better than I can hear you now?
A.J. Mahari recovered from BPD and has many articles like this at
http://www.soulselfhelp.on.ca/borderpd.html
An absolutely brilliant piece of writing about a disorder and how it affected her. If you are in a Borderline relationship you have to try to understand why these things are happening. You see an issue and to you that means X but to your BP it had nothing to do with that, it was because of Y. My ex used to always ask me if I still loved her and of course I answered yes but what I needed to think about was why was she feeling like that? Knowing what I know now I should have answered "of course I do but tell me what makes you think I don't?"
Introducing, Number Four - Our Story but His background (by Sebastian Knight)
I’m not suggesting it was love at first sight but I cannot sleep with a woman with whom I do not have some connection. So I gave of myself hoping to forge a stronger attraction and link. And of course that was my mistake – well only in so much as I climbed aboard a slippery slope. I opened a part of myself, my heart to give and in so doing allowed her to sneak in.
Now I’ve had many girlfriends, too many – and if I’m honest with myself and with no criticism intended to some who were just not my type, my history has been one of quantity with little very quality. I’ve been married and I’ve had a “life partner” but there had been only three occasions when I ever felt that I had lost myself in the love of another. I was head over heels in love with three of my first four girlfriends. And in each case they broke my heart. I think the final one was responsible for the council moving in and boarding up my heart. Or at least limiting the access of visitors. Sure I loved others; I certainly felt strong love for my wife and Germaine. I was probably even in love, no, I was. Just that I was not totally besotted. With Germaine, I was singled minded and dogged in my pursuit, she seemed the most amazing woman, and all of the feelings I had were strong and healthy and normal. But until I fell for Ruby, I had forgotten how much of my heart had been off limits for 17 years.
And so it was that she became known as Number Four.
Incidentally, it was the girlfriend during those first four for whom I have the most fond feelings still. This even includes my ex-wife, Mavis was a wonderful woman and I realised when I met up with her recently that she was almost the perfect combination of my ex-wife and Germaine. Yet I was a complete khunnt to her, what I did was bordering inhumane. I wonder if it was coincidence that I should meet her again when I was in the midst of pain from a separation from Ruby. She reminded my of the pain I had caused her – it was awful, I was worse than awful. So what was happening to me then was perhaps karma? Fair enough too.
And I should also explain that Numbers Two and Three were massive mistakes. Mavis pointed out, quite rightly that No 2 was just trailer trash – and that was more a statement of fact than an insult (her Dad was returning to his wife after a week of straying and the mistress took the opportunity to all the wife and tell her “when your husband gets home, smell his cock cos I just fucked him”. I don’t think No. 2 fell too far from the tree. And my nickname for Number Three is Dead Horse, because whilst I pursued my relationship with her (including declining a ticket to see Nirvana at ANU Bar!!) it was akin to Flogging a Dead Horse. So whilst I was startled by the behaviour of my heart it didn’t bode well.
Number One is exempt as she and I were too young to really understand what it all meant. Sure she was my first true love and we had great relationship, as best you can when you are allowed a sleep over at each other’s house with parents present. I suspect that the agony I felt when we split was more than just love and aroused our abandonment issues too.
Enter, My Sanctum - Our Story Pt 3 (by Sebastian Knight)
When I got there, with a massive lump of fear in my throat, I was still kidding myself I could turn back. For here I was on the verge of massive infidelity. It’s one thing to have a one-night stand, a spontaneous act to regret when sober inth e morning, but to take time to care fully plan the act was another thing entirely. And at that moment even the planning could be dismissed as a flirtiong version of chcken. And I think eithr that day or at that time we boith expressed surprised that the other was serious She was just going along with it to see how far I would go, and i was doing the sme, I wanted to see at which point she was joking. So
So she met me at the door, in “those” pyjamas. She wqws drowsy, form the painkillers. I suggested that she may be too unwell to proceed but she threw the challneg back to me as she climbed back into her bed.
I thinmk at the time I was starting to thinkin that it was all a little tawdry and that perhaps this was not her firsdt time doing this. Indeed her suggestions and diurections forth plans seemed to be without any reservation, nerves or uncertainty.
Oh well, what the hell me thinks. Even a dodgy root was better than none (that is one of the phiosphies that I have had had the misfortune to carry through my life – a sex life that is based based on quantity not necessarily quality or if there hass been qualities they are not virtuous ones associated with e sacred act).
So I undressed, probably down to my jocks and jumped in.
The first thing that I found was the softest skin I have ever felt. It was like nothing I had every touched before. She was aware there was something unique about her skina nd said something about hair eithr the lack there of or it’s type. A genetic thing that her dad I also had (or maybe I got that wriong). And her curves, she had aamazing curves.
As I recall the act was nothing amazing but certainky not disappointing. There was definitely some promise. But her manner was indifferent and detacthed. I stayed in bed with her for a while and we spoke, I told her a bit about myself and a few dreams etc. She listened, or at least didn’t interrupt. There was a relaxing vibe about the situation and before father time took our time away I managed another quick session.
I seem to recall that she denied me when I tried to go down on her. Her excuse was that it’s beverf very good and she’s not a fan. On subsequent occasiosn, Once I had priven myself worthy and the act worthwhile for her, she would occasionally deny me with excuses about not showeringand feeling dirty. This is understandable but it was used inconsistently such that I later came to the conclusion that when I was denied it was because she was worried that “the room had not been properly cleaned since the prevous occupant had checked out” – yup, I was not alone. Over time, I recognised that her inability to be exlusive for part of something much biiger, and such was my conern for her that any jealousies were cast aside as I tried to help her. Don’t het me wrong, she wanted to be faithful and her heart was faithful (at least to me and GRegor *(TBC)).
But I diverge and we will explore that side of Ruby and me later on.
I think after that first time there may have been an awkaward silence between us for a few hours or even days as we digested what we had done. Knowing her now, she would have been filled with both remorse as well as hope. More of that revlentaion later too
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