I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Some days are so full of confusion that all I can do is almost nothing. Is that OK?

I think I magneted books to my hands and my eyes all throughout my childhood because they were who I was. I just sucked onto whoever I was reading. It’s why I like movies, too. They don’t involve me, so I can be them. 

I think the reason I sit and fixate on things that I own or whatever is because of that distorted sense of self–and that I can’t really just SEE myself. Where am I? Where do I exist? I don’t attach myself to the way that I look, which is why, when I look at myself in the mirror, I something feel as though I’m looking at something that has nothing to do with me. I don’t know which of them I am. Unless I’m listening to myself closely and accurately, which is almost never, I will ALWAYS check a mirror or reflective surface as I walk by it. Sometimes the reflection catches me off guard, that there even is one there. That it looks the way it does. I try so hard to attach myself to her. And it might be getting better, but other days, it’s worse. I guess that’s the nature of mood swings.

Here’s an excerpt that I ran across a few years ago. I could not articulate even to myself why I felt it so hard, but I’m glad I held onto it, because it makes a lot more sense these days. If it wasn’t huge, I’d have it tattooed.

“On some level she knew she was an intuitive person, but she hadn’t learned to trust herself, too cautious, as if there were a very strong force at work inside her all the time that wasn’t allowed to come to expression, like all that sun missing her house, all this foliage in her head, that was so pretty and interesting and alive, but how much it got in the way. She suspected that her mind had evolved in some distorted fashion, different from the rest of the world. And now here she was, trapped in this stagnancy of glass, that had become by all its clarity a blur, itself a distortion. She couldn’t forgive herself, though she supposed she’d suffered enough to be redeemed of any number of sins or crimes. She cursed her intuition, because she’d never have stayed with him if she’d weighed, considered, evaluated. On the other hand, she’d never do anything if she always weighed, considered, evaluated; that was precisely what so often kept her from doing any number of things, things she felt a genuine desire to do, but couldn’t get over this habit or obsession of getting stuck, nothing resolving itself. She felt the irony of the whole thing as deeply, as physically, as a metallic taste in her mouth: that the only time she’d ever felt not removed from her body, when will and act had meshed, was with him; it had felt right, but clearly had been wrong, as wrong as anything could be. She slid the tab of the zipper all the way up and fastened the button at the waistband of her skirt, then leaned against one of the mirrors as she dreamily repeated the motion of button through opening, gentle grasps and pulls, all the way up her blouse. If only there were as simple a motion to secure her exit. He had said she had only to figure it out. And there had to be a door; somewhere there had to be. She thrust her weight hard against the mirror as she leaned, then moved forward to tuck in her blouse. Had the mirror seemed to give a little as she had pressed? She must be imagining it. Perhaps if she pushed against every mirror, one of them might yield.”

I’ve had several what I thought were out-of-body experiences, where I thought my spirit was leaving my body or kind of seeing it from outside. I remember an adult explaining what was happening to me in that way. 

I guess it’s a symptom. I found that out today. 

As I always try and remind myself and other people, I’m lucky enough not to experience many of the regular symptoms of BPD as regularly or strongly as some people do. Although they are stress-related and do flare up when I haven’t been taking care of myself. And sometimes, some of them seem to be steadily getting worse with age, or better. 

I can’t really describe well what it feels like to stumble across symptoms, over and over again, that I’ve dealt with and observed in myself for years. It’s such a relief. At the same time, some days, I feel more and more like I belong in a place that doesn’t exist as far as I’ll ever know. That there’s some planet somewhere full of people who are kind of a collective being as opposed to one singular individual. And at the same time, it is FUN to discover symptoms. It is amazingly, almost hysterically fun to read about myself. Feels like Stranger Than Fiction. She knows that he’s currently brushing his teeth, and now I know that, not only am I disassociating, but that the WAY that I am is pretty common amongst people with certain personality disorders.

“You may be cooking and then suddenly feel “freaked out,” because you see your hand moving the spatula and sauteing the mushrooms, but you don’t feel as if it is you that is doing it. You feel as if you are observing someone else, or as if you are having an “out of body” experience. Or, you may be in the shower and then suddenly realize that you are going through the motions of washing your hair, but again, you feel as if this experience is happening to you or you are witnessing it rather than actually doing the actions.

Everyone dissociates pretty much on a daily basis, whether they have mental health issues or not. Driving home on autopilot is an example.  Daydreaming is another.  For those with BPD and/or PTSD, the experience is a bit more severe. It often lasts longer and can be quite frightening for the person experiencing it.“

There’s that. Happy Wednesday. 

Disrepair

No apologies for this. Not a single one.

Your face folded up into the most alarming display of guilt that I’ve ever seen, or maybe I was just going into shock. I did go into shock. I shook. It was the first time that someone in the community tore me directly from head to toe, gutted me, without being roundabout about it, and I’m still sore. You heaved a sob, your face turned electric pink, and your acne burned a bloody red, which was kind of gross-looking. Tears got out the corners of your eyes. Thanks for being honest, though, you pathetic fuck. 

Questions: were you crying because you were ashamed of your brother? Crying because telling me what he’d discovered would make me upset? Crying because you, too, felt I was unworthy? Crying because you felt that his problem with me, and consequently, yours, was justified? Crying because you didn’t get to be the first to stamp my lady parts with your name and address? Crying because you knew that after your brother’s wife made the rounds with some friends and reported back that your family would never let me marry you?

We were in the TacoTime drive-through when you told me, and I’ll ask myself regularly, for the rest of my human life, why I didn’t immediately exit the truck. Run like hell towards the Olive Garden, or something. Call the church office building. Call down an angel to explain the Atonement to your awful brother–maybe a nice soup of the Atonement, human decency, rationalism, and realism. Hit you with my fist. Walk briskly to your brother’s house and kidnap his children so that they would not grow up into filthy, weak bigots like the two of you. 

I asked you to pull into the driveway of LDS Motion picture studios. I asked you to explain. You continued to cry, and I continued to shake. I drew more information out of you. 

Your brother took you to lunch that day to talk about my virginity. How I didn’t “possess” it any longer, that I hadn’t for quite a while, and how he heard that information through friends of his wife–friends of mine. How I had the frosting licked off of me, because I am a cupcake (I don’t mix food with sex, thanks). He warned you that marrying a girl (me) who had no virginity left (none) was probably going to end up being something you’d regret. He told you that I would probably cheat on you. He told you that if I’d committed the act, that my testimony was a scrawny little worm–not worthy of a future worldwide priesthood leader like yourself. He told you that I’d be a bad mother. That I wouldn’t know how to teach your children the basic principles of the gospel and of virtue.

Your parents–stake president who did the whistle from Fantastic Mr. Fox all the time and stay-at-home mother who wore sneakers–later agreed. 

The first week we went on a date, you laid on the carpet, wrapped your arms around me, and told me that I was safe with you. That you would take care of me. That you were glad I had such a rounded-out and colorful, beautiful view of things. Feelings. Love. I see now and even did then that those kinds of said things are things that, if they’re true, need to be waited a while to say. But I still took it. I soaked it up, greedily, because I was so afraid. Entranced by your holiness. 

In that parking lot, while the grease from the takeout bag seeped, dark yellow, into the lap of my jeans, you told me that you loved me, that you were sorry he’d said that, and that you weren’t going to cancel our eternal union because of what he’d said. You begged me not to leave you. You told me his worries were justified, and that you were trusting me to change into a new person. You SCREAMED for me not to leave you.

 

And I didn’t leave you.

We visited your brother and his wife at home in the same week to talk about that lunch meeting. I shook and wept, and his wife cried, but said nothing. She cried of embarrassment, and inner conflict. And he did not back down. He did not apologize. His face turned bright red, too. I guess I turned him on or something with my sexy nature. 

I ended up trying to give him a lesson in forgiveness–you know, the point of the restored gospel? You defended me. Their unknowing toddler was asleep in the other room. I wanted to carry him out of what felt like a meth house. Your brother told your whole family all of my sexual history that he knew, throwing in some amazing details about my sexual choices that I sure didn’t remember, that I watched R-rated movies, and that I occasionally used low-grade swearwords.

After he told them my sexual history–what he “knew” of it, anyway–I wanted to cry and tell them that, not ONLY did I live with someone for a month or so–that we’d had a vegetable garden with snapdragons, been in love–that he’d taken care of me, made me homemade cheese sauce for my pasta, wrapped me in a yellow quilt to sleep, watched the Music Man with me in the middle of the night when I had a bad spell, and that there was this awful forest-green carpet in our little house. That the day we finally did it was the most relieving day of my life. 

That the next man (of the two) on that list and I were together for almost two years before we held each other so close in screaming, frantic frustration because we knew it was all horrible and that we were going to have to separate. I didn’t know what was wrong with me then. I couldn’t get a hold of it. I held onto him. I could hold onto him. 

After that talk at the meth house, everything was horrible. 

I waited, five more months, throughout the witch hunt instigated by your siblings and parents that ended in a fiery crescendo of “revelation”–AKA, you screaming and crying in a car that you knew you had to leave me but couldn’t live without me, then leaving me twice, stalking me during those break periods, and then coming back, keeping it from your family.

I waited while you felt around under my clothes and breathed hot against my neck. I waited while I learned what you thought sex was about–at least, with someone ruined like me–which was absolute filth. I waited while you continuously told me that I was dressing like a skank and that it was making you crazy. While your requests for what I’d call deviance went further and further into the dark.

I waited for five more months throughout which you smeared your sexuality all over me, because you didn’t feel good about experiencing your natural man with someone who you thought deserved to be with you forever. That’s speculative, of course. I waited through bitter mouthfuls in the back row of movie theaters and insides of cars. Through nights that you told me that you hoped I would dress like a little girl. Through many, many moments that I told myself that you’d stop being unbelievably worrisome about sexuality and just enjoy it and appreciate it, and accept it. I wanted you to be happy and different which is, I guess, also what you wanted from me.  

I waited until your bishop told you that you wouldn’t have much luck marrying one of “those girls”–a bishop who had married his wife thirty years previous when she was pregnant, out of wedlock, with someone else’s child. I waited until you did the ultimate to me while I laid there, frozen, and I asked you, afterwards, why in the world you had done that. You said,

“I was curious.”

I waited until your bishop counseled you to share with your entire family that I had taken your virginity. I’m so sick of people saying “taken”, like it’s something to take. He told you that this would help them forgive you and help you get you away from me.

The night before Christmas Eve, you laid me on a couch and you turned on a movie, and you rubbed yourself on top of me, and you put yourself inside me. I think my legs were kind of numb. We were watching such a nice movie, too. 

And I just laid there. Frozen. My skin was so cold. Sad. I cried later, and you asked why I was crying. I cried partly because I was worried about your future and partly because I knew very deep down that you would never have to go through the repercussions. I thought that if I let you do that, you’d understand. That you’d feel the love behind the act. That you actually might be capable of love afterwards. That you’d forgive me and let me be a part of your starched, shiny, rich, safe, evil-smelling world. I didn’t stop you. I didn’t even try.