When will my nightmare end?

When will my nightmare end? When will I feel good again? Happy? Joyful? Hopeful?

My illness awoke 5 months ago after being bullied by my boss at work. I had been stable for over 8 years after nearly 4 years of hell. I foolishly thought I had beaten it. But my BPD and Bipolar has erupted with a vengeance and I don't know what to do. It started with the bullying that manifested in extreme anxiety and then was triggered into full effect after being involved in a minor car accident that resulted in a severe panic attack. I have since left my job after a period of leave of absence as I was unable to return to work. The anxiety then threw me into a frenzy of mania which lasted a couple months. But now I'm in the throws of rapid cycling and splitting. I am in a severe depression with spikes of fits of rage. I am unbearable to live with and just want to disappear from the world. This all consuming bleakness has left me empty inside and completely broken. I keep trying to fill the hole in my soul with things that should bring me joy. But like water through a sieve, nothing sticks. It all is wasted on me. The joy, contentment, and appreciation I once felt for life for those 8 years is completely gone.

I have a wonderful husband that is doing his absolute best to support, love, and care for me, but my illness is pushing him away. Between my intense sense of doom and frantic fear of abandonment, I am unconsciously (and sometimes consciously) pushing him and all those that love me away. I have lost all hope. I feel as if I am in quicksand trying desperately to keep my head out, but the harder I try to escape, the deeper I sink. I am in so much pain all the time, every day. I try to grasp onto moments of levity, but they are fleeting, and as soon as they end I feel more empty than before. So I have pretty much just given up. The fight is too much for me to take anymore.

This fear abandonment and dread of hurting those around me came to an explosive head a couple nights ago. My husband took me away for a break to a city I have been wanting to visit. It should have been wonderful and would have been if weren't for how ill I am right now. I couldn't find any pleasure in the sights and sounds of the magical place we were at. I let the alcohol flow and drag me into what culminated into a hateful fit of rage directed at my husband. I verbally pushed him and pushed him until he couldn't take it anymore and said something hateful back. That was all I needed to unleash my pent up physical rage on him. I punched him in the face. In reaction he hit me back. I turned into a flurry of fists flying at him wanting to make him hurt and feel my pain. I wanted him to experience and understand where my illness has taken me. I wanted to scare him away. I wanted him give up on me so I could let go and walk away.

He feverishly grabbed at my flailing hands, trying to get me under control. I tried desperately to get away and when I finally broke free, I ran. I ran and I ran, trying to find somewhere where I could jump into the icy waters of the city river. I wanted the cold water to extinguish the burning pain that was eating me alive. My husband managed to chase me down and drag me away from the edge of the dock and drag me back to our hotel. He had to hold me down to keep me from escaping and I eventually drained my energy and fell asleep.

When we awoke the next morning, I felt an overwhelming sense of deflation. I wanted so much for him to let me go. Let me escape the world that is killing me. He said he will never let me go and never give up on me. I know that should be comforting. It's not. I feel horrible. I am a cancer devouring his beautiful soul. I hate myself for this. I hate what I am.

When will my nightmare end?

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We are all merely actors here...

As it is October, and I have been thinking about what I shall be for Halloween, I found myself pondering what is it about Halloween that I love so much? I've always loved the excitement of choosing a character to play. My birthday happens to be one week before Halloween so I've often been able to incorporate the hallowed night into my parties. But why do I love it so much? For starters, the lack of expectation. With Christmas there is always the air of obligation to family. And as someone who has never had a stable family unit in terms of mother and father, most holidays are filled with anxiety and dread. But Halloween was always mine.

I loved figuring out what I wanted to be and how to create this character out of things I already had and using items creatively. But why have I always loved it so much? I started thinking about it in relation to my illness. It suddenly became very clear and then I wondered if other 

Borderlines, as well as others with personality disorders, liked Halloween as much as I do. I realised the reason I loved becoming a character is because I didn't have to try and be something I wasn't.

Let me explain. Those of us with Borderline Personality Disorder create personas to fit whatever situation we are in whether it be for work, a social gathering, particular circles of friends, etc. We learn to adapt and conform.  BPD's are all actors in this thing we call life. We never develop our own personality. We are the chameleons of the human world. It enables us to survive in a world we don't understand. And we are very good at it. Sadly our souls remain hollow since we never are able to develop and maintain true relationships. (Footnote: of course years of therapy and support can help us overcome our identity crisis, but even if we do, we still find it very easy and necessary to revert to our chameleon state if needed.)

But there's Halloween. The one day of the year we don't have to pretend to be something we aren't. We get to choose our character. I realised there is an amazing freedom in that. Not HAVING to be someone but rather CHOOSING who we are for one night. We don't have to think about the emptiness inside and struggle to be something we aren't. We get to drop the charade and easily blend in without the exhausting effort, because everyone is something they aren't. It's our one true night of freedom.

I then expanded this line of thinking to actual professional actors. There were times in my life when I thought how easy and fun it would be to be an actor. To get paid to do something I found so easy. Hmmm... How many actors out there are like me? How many have Borderline or similar personality disorders which make them easily slide in and out of fictional roles? I can easily think of a few off the top of my head that surely do based on things I've read about regarding their personal lives: manic episodes, drug abuse, cleptomania, sudden desire to shave one's head, etc. It does make me wonder, how many are like me? And is that the reason they chose acting? Because it comes so naturally.

Just my random thoughts of the day. And for those wondering about what I will be this year for Halloween, you'll just have to wait. But here's last years character... Who am I?

Hi. My name is Kay. This is my story...

Greetings and salutations! Welcome to my first ever blog about living with mental illness. As anyone who suffers this affliction will tell you, the stigma can be unbearable. Most people attempt to hide their illness (which only makes it worse usually), because the general population doesn't understand it. Even in today's day and age of Internet, people don't get it. And frankly the fact that everyone and their brother is taking Zoloft, Paxil, or the like for what is essentially a temporary case of mild depression, is actually making the situation worse if you ask me.

If I had a penny for everyone I know who has taken an antidepressant for a short period of time, well let's just say I would have a pretty big jar of pennies. These normal, average, healthy people are not mentally ill. They do not have an illness that will be with them forever. They will not be learning coping mechanisms, defining boundaries, and accepting limitations. They will take their low dose of whatever for a little while and keep on going. They will realise one day they hadn't taken the drug for a week and still felt great and will forget why they took it to begin with. I am not one of those people.

I can remember not feeling "normal" all the way back to early childhood.  And as I got older, it only got worse. By my early teens, mood swings, severe depression, and anxiety were becoming the standard. I had no idea what was going on and I knew it wasn't normal. My friends weren't like this. When it got really bad I isolated myself. The rest of the time I created a facade for friends, family, and strangers. The character I created was very self-assured and charismatic. Everything I wasn't. Most people had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. But playing this part was exhausting and in retrospect probably exasperated my mental deterioration. The cracks started to appear to close family and keeping up the facade became more difficult so I went back to isolating myself. It wasn't long before I had my first complete breakdown at age sixteen and was subsequently hospitalised for five months.

Prior to my first institutionalisation and even for years after, whenever I was in a depression, my mom who clearly had no idea how to deal with me, would just say "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and keep going. It took her some 20 odd years to realise it wasn't that easy. And frankly, if you are like me, someone trying to simplify the situation like that just makes things worse. If it were so simple to just "be happy", don't you think I would? Who would choose to be mentally ill? I didn't choose this anymore than someone with diabetes chose their disease. If they could just wake up and will themselves into having normal insulin levels, I'm pretty sure they would.

Well mom, my bootstraps are broken. But I'm still alive and kicking!

This is my story, my life. I am bipolar with borderline personality disorder. I have panic attacks and I get depressed. But I've learned to live with my illness. Most of the time now, I'm very content (I say content because to me that's a state of being, not just a raw emotion like happy). I still have bad days or even weeks, but I'm surviving and thriving. I have embraced my "crazy". I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist, but I have spent the last 25 years learning to live with my illness, educating myself, making every day better than the day before. I'm not an expert. I'm just a woman with a story to tell. And I hope it helps someone get through another day.

Let's begin...