The Next Chapter

I’ve been debating back and forth as to what I should write my next post about or if I really wanted to write anything. There was a few things sure, but they were stuff based on impulsive feelings I had while still trying to figure out what to do next after. However, this past month has been a very eye opening one for me and not in a “wow the future is starting to look a little brighter and things are starting to seem okay” kind of way. But instead in an ugly and brutally honest kind of way. I was clearly in a harmful and destructive pattern that I was stuck in for years now. And while I never said it out loud or even really liked to give the thoughts any serious attention, I blamed my stagnation on my situation mostly to avoid looking within. The easiest scapegoat for not dealing with something I should have gotten help for 6+ years ago, was the one friendship I was stuck in a cyclical loop with. I blamed my trust issues on the one person who had repeatedly broken my trust, I don’t think respected me enough to take what I was telling about them hurting me seriously, just agreeing with me to calm me down and I’m sure also because I had instilled a fear that if they didn’t I’d leave… In the end I was just trying to ask for them to not be deceptive towards me, which was something they apologized for and I had hoped was in the past but some habits I now know are very difficult to get rid of, especially when it’s with someone you associate those bad habits with so closely. I’m a perfect example of that. None of that matters though as far as the reasons for the way I acted, not really, I had just used all of that to justify this. The impulsive actions, the emotional scenes, the running away.. I said it was all because of that and how I hadn’t coped with that. It was never really about that person or my relationship with them. Nothing to do with any exes, as horrible and manipulative as some of them have been. This has been going on way before them, so the problem didn’t start with any of them it started and came from me, and seeing that for the first real time felt like all my memories I thought I had had now just been eviscerated. But in sifting back through them I started getting clarity.

Fuck. It’s taken me so long to get to this point. I kept complaining about how unstable my whole perception of people and even just my own reality was and I wanted to desperately know why or how I could stop that because I didn’t like having this big revelation and wanting to change to only feel completely different the next hour. And not just in a lack of motivation but my whole view of that situation will change too. There’s actually a lot I’ve written in here that had an open ended “why is this happening to me?” kind of feeling when I talked about it, but I see now a lot of it were symptoms of something I already entertained the idea of having but never took it seriously. Not enough to think “if I don’t get help for this this will ruin my life and those around me.” I should have because that’s eventually what it did but I suppose it needed to in order for me to finally see that. My best friend, one of the people I was probably closest with years back talked about having BPD and how that affected them. Everything they told me they were dealing with I related to 100% so in some way I kind of absorbed that label but really only as an identity and a means of fitting in with them. I spent so much time in that journey to seem normal, to just fit in and here came this person that was just like me and I didn’t feel like I needed to do that anymore because I did fit in. Just not where I thought I had. When that friend left, really when all my friends left at that time, I rid of that identity to try and move on and also because I didn’t really know for sure if I did have it so I wanted to stay with the diagnosis I had gotten for sure: just the two Social Anxiety and Major Depression. I thought those two things would be easy to manage, everybody deals with depression and anxiety not everybody feels the need to shut down when it becomes overwhelming and I just needed to learn better habits to prevent me from going in that next depressive state. And there was weed for the anxiety…

So now that I’ve had to get help. It was clear I wasn’t going to be able to do any of this on my own, I now know that I do indeed have Borderline Personality Disorder, and I might have had it for a much longer time than I thought I did. It’s shined a new light on certain situations, like my obsession with meanings, symbolism, and just so much that made it difficult for me to face reality. I desperately wanted to make sense of the world around me and I tried so many things. Insane things at times just to try and get rid of this intense feelings of emotions that often I never really understood. Having that diagnosis and actually having my therapy specifically directed at preventing these emotional outbursts, being more aware of unhealthy relationships I found myself in, and being honest about what I want in a relationship. For once it feels like this is actually something I can take on now because I’m not taking it on alone. Not just therapy, but I’ve also made new friends who right off the bat are aware of this and well, was given a summary of all the shit I’ve dealt with lately. And with that came this wonderful and truly refreshing feeling… acceptance. Not just tolerance which is often what I felt in the past. That was my golden standard.. I hate that it took me a really ugly depressive spiral to get here and I’m sorry to the friends I either outright left during or haven’t been very communicative with because of it. The scenes I made… god I’m so incredibly ashamed of the way I acted.

So what now? Well it’s not going to be easy, and this isn’t like how I felt when I got out of the hospital back in high school, and the depressing overcast skies were finally retreating and I felt like I had the strength to tackle on the whole world. The truth is I’m scared. That’s not new for me, but I mean I am terrified as to what this means going forward for me and change is way way harder than I thought it was going to be. Good intentions just don’t cut it. And that makes me extremely nervous. I don’t want to lose what I have now because it’s really been the best I’ve had in a long time and I don’t want this… or more accurately, me, to ruin that. I am however willing to put in all the hard work I need to and I want to keep venturing forward, as terrifying as it might seem because I actually do want to get better; for me and for everyone around me. I have a plan and I think now I have an even better support system because I can better explain what’s going on without having to use words like “I need to just get rid of this weird itch, I gotta do something” or “sorry I wasn’t listening I got stuck in my head a little.” Now I know I was just being overwhelmed by unregulated emotions and often dissociated to cope. This gives me a little hope things might be different this time.

I have made so many posts acknowledging my mistakes and apologizing for them, hoping that things will be better going forward to no avail. I’ve made many mistakes in this journey to “normalcy” that started back around the time I first created this site. I’d like to say I hopefully learned from at least most of them and I’m way more equipped to deal with stuff that a life lesson isn’t quite able to solve. So I’m done with the sorry’s for right now (at least when it comes to public apologies) and I just want to say thank you. To all the past relationships that helped me feel what love and acceptance was, and especially to all the relationships and friendships, which I definitely hadn’t looked back at fondly, that have taught me specifically what I don’t want in any kind of relationship, how to be honest about what I want, and most importantly… to know when it just isn’t worth it anymore to hope that someone will treat you better than they have been. I’d like to thank Crazy Ex Girlfriend who I’ve been watching with a real good friend of mine lately for making a show that so accurately depicts what it’s like in the mind of someone with BPD and has made it so much easier to explain my symptoms not just to her, but to my family and all my other friends as well. This show doesn’t shy away from the uglier parts and honestly I was hoping to watch it and just feel validated in the way that I felt, but instead I got a brutal honest.. “Take responsibility, get help, and its super tough but its still only on you” feeling throughout and it was thankfully that kick I needed. Not to mention the whole show takes place in my hometown, which is super weird.. I know all these little obscure places they visit and locations they’re talking about. It’s been super weird starting that show and not have a character with my diagnosis, but have it also take place where I live.. in a fairly small-ish town.. one that they shit talk a lot but still i mean I have a whole musical song now about my town (well more like 3 or 4 because there’s a lot of reprises in the show) so I’m okay with it. All these reasons, on top of being able to watch it with someone I care about deeply and seeing them understand my experiences and my disorder more as each episode passed and bitch about how they’re shit talking my home with them, I absolutely adore this show and it will probably be my favorite musical and TV show for years to come thanks to this amazing experience.

Maybe in the future I’ll write some posts about symptoms and terms associated with BPD to hopefully maybe let anybody in my life who’s curious or wants to know more, to get a better understanding of what goes on in my head. Or at least the things that used to go on in my head, the things my head defaulted to. And maybe a post talking about how incredible of a show Crazy Ex Girlfriend because I have so much to say about it; like its’ incredible LGBTQ+ representation without ever tokenizing any of the characters, the whole deconstruction of romantic movie tropes and even the harmful and sexist term “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”. The show’s way more clever than it has any right to be considering its a CW show, a musical, and all based on the premise of a girl who drops everything to move to West Covina to seek happiness because a package of butter told her to (and oh also by coincidence, so random, just by chance.. this guy Josh, just happens to be here). God I love this show so much. As for the other kinds of posts I used to do, the ones I thought I needed to do to feel better or to cope… I don’t need to anymore. Those posts followed along my journey to get help and become normal but that journey is now coming to a close. It’s not the normal I wanted back in high school, but its the normal I actually needed. To feel comfortable with my sense of identity. So yeah.. the last post was the start of that end so to also put an end on my narrative references, this post is now the epilogue. The optimistic tease at the future but the rest of the chapters of this book I think I want to keep off the page for now. Good luck to all of you guys and just know that even in the darkest of times, even when it feels like you’re never going to stop spiraling… eventually you do and once you do its up to you to pick yourself back up and keep walking, you don’t have to do it alone but you do have to reach out for that help. So now I shall keep walking; And to my friends, my family, those no longer in my life but who have had an unforgettable impact on it..

Thank you. For everything… I think I’m finally ready to move on.