13. An Elusive Thing Called Help

For me to ask for help is to admit my imperfections. I don't like appearing weak or lost or unknowing. In myself it is tantamount to ignorance, it is ugly.

I know this is rooted deep within the fucked up pages of my childhood. Time and time again I have found myself lost in my own self; scared, afraid, angry, sad, turmoil reigning: it doesn't matter; I am unable to reach out through the black molasses that surrounds me. I am unable to ask for help.

The agony this causes is like shards of glass down my spine. It is unnecessary. Yet instead of saying 'I'm angry, and I don't know why. It's not at you. It's because of something else I don't understand'; instead of admitting I'm afraid, or saying 'I'm confused by what I'm feeling', I get angry and cause pain and trauma.

As I move forward down this path I am heading further and further into swamp land with many hardships and pain. But the pain is getting cleaner, if deeper. And the light keeps breaking through. There are times I don't think I can handle it on my own, and those are times I walk around, tears constantly there, ready to fall if I let them, allowing constant waves of negativity to wash over me, unable to find the way to make them stop. Unable to reach out and ask for help from whoever is around.

Not my family, not my friends, not my therapist.

This is my wall. I cannot seem to break through.

Even in love, I was unable to reach out and ask for help, to admit I cannot do it on my own. I want to pretend I am that fantastic superwoman when I am scared and alone inside.

I can never seem to be able to admit I am lost, I am scared, I am confused by the tumultuous emotional sea inside me that has come from nowhere. And then I lash out, hurting the one I never ever wanted to hurt. A cycle that seemingly never ends. Different guises, different subtle touches, like tinsel, but the same old cycle.

I don't need to be like that, but I realise now that to reach out is to admit vulnerability, and to admit vulnerability is to allow further hurt. I know this time round, it wasn't someone who would hurt me, but I have been trained well to hide that vulnerability.

So the hurt comes, worse than ever because I cannot show that side enough. I am learning. I was learning. It wasn't enough. I simply need to reach out with a single word. A phrase. Something or anything.

This is my beginning.

I am admitting I am not superwoman. I am not perfect. There is a scared, scarred little girl inside who wants to keep hiding behind the lovely facades she's built over the years.

But she is me. I am not those facades. And I realise now that the scars, the pain, the fear, they will diminish. Sometimes they will return to help me when I need help. But I am admitting here I can't do this on my own. I need support from others. I need understanding. I need love.

This is my first step to asking for help when I need it.

12. That Voice Inside

This is a hard time for me. Christmas is a time I usually spent with my family, but they are so far away and for the first time, I will be spending Christmas all alone.

So many things are whirling through my brain. That constant outward focusing is not taking its demise lightly. If I am not diligent, it is there, firmly ensconsed in my head, leading me down the path of safety and familiarity; a path that will not help me at all. Its devious role sooths while dragging me back into the murky quagmire of pain and confusion and the false self that came into being to protect me from pain as a child.

A few words from my mother hurls me headfirst into paranoia and the world of the black and white thinkers. Her world that, because I am her child, is my world, too.

Yet again, that place she had me is not where I want to be; it's the same place the outward focusing takes me to: away from my real self.

I constantly remind myself I am hurt and injured and I am so sad over that. Yet that voice pipes up every time I think about this, every time I allow the sadness to well within. It refutes my feelings, invalidates them. It tells me things weren't that bad, you're being a drama queen, you're into histrionics, you're exaggerating.

Before I would have accepted it, pulled myself together and moved on. Now I see how unhealthy that is right now. I now squash that voice, tell it it's wrong. It starts up again, but I'm beginning to notice, not so loud.

But the times I need to watch are when I am feeling down, vulnerable, already in a bad place. It then runs wild and sometimes I don't notice until the pain is much worse than it ever should be.

I am learning to retrain myself, to badger that voice back where it should be, a warning that I'm wallowing unnessarily. It's learning what's true, what's right. And I know that voice inside is the faulty one, not me.

If I look back at myself over the past ten or fifteen years, I can see the forward momentum. It may not be much at times, but baby steps are still steps forward, and the voice has slowly been losing momentum and power, and my choices in romantic partners have been improving as have the way I handle my struggle with intimacy and all the baggage I bring to it.

Even in this last relationship, though I was unable to control those seemingly irrational behaviours all the time; there were times when I could, times when I was able to explain this is why I'm the way I am. And that is something. A very big something.

I just need to keep reminding myself that the voice is faulty, not me.

Under this I'm a pretty amazing person. Unique and talented and someone worth knowing. I don't believe it all the time and I know I'll never be perfect, but that's just because I'm human, not a disaster, not a freak. But I'm starting to believe in my own self-worth more and more.

Because that voice is the faulty one. Not me.

11. A Word Is All It Ever Takes...

So strange the way it pans out.

I've been in a good place, but also bad. You think the power someone has is diminished but then...boom. You're in shards on the floor.

I am not talking about romance or broken hearts here. For me this is something more powerful. That might sound strange, but I am different. The truth and my own real self are hidden behind myriad shifting veils; some so gossamer light I can almost see through to the other side; others heavy like lead and all I know of the other side are the brief glimpses of clarity that if I do not hang on I lose them like sand. I am working hard to pull down all those veils so everything is exposed and there for me to see and understand. Romance and broken hearts are smoke, adding to the confusion. They must lie discarded for now, no matter how hard it is. Not for long, just for now.

I am still talking about the support and honesty and encouragement I have received, both from my friends and clients and strangers. This is something that has confounded me the past week, had me in turmoil. I keep going back and back to it, to make sure I take it in completely.

At first I wanted to cry. Those words were unexpected. No one thought I was crazy or strange. They understood. They understood. I felt touched, open, exposed, vulnerable.

And suddenly I was in pieces. A tidal wave of emotions so strong, so confusing, consumed me and left me there, lost and so alone.

That's why the romance and broken heart needs to be discarded. Rather than focus and deal with what I was experiencing, I reverted to my age old trick of self-protection and focused outward, on to my lost love. This in no way diminishes my feelings for him, but obsessing over someone instead of focusing on myself no longer works. I'm too aware, moved too far down that path to let myself slide comfortably back into those old, familiar, safe waters.

So I choose not to think about him and how I feel and all I did wrong (yes, hard as it is to accept, I know it always takes two, that he must have been at fault, too). Instead, I force myself to look at me. I shy away. Like I shy away from those who are good to me, who have always looked at me and really seen me, really listened to me, really asked me valid questions about myself and well being. The others are much easier to deal with, just like it's easier to project all outwards, like onto a screen.

But I am now becoming more discerning. As hard as it is, I want to surround myself with those who are good for me, with those who respect my boundaries as I discover and erect them, with those who will not put up with bullshit and me overstepping their boundaries. I want to enrich myself as I bring myself out of its hiding place.

I don't need to hide anymore. I know I can be vulnerable and safe at the same time. It's a difficult concept for me to take in, but I know it, I understand it.

My heart is beginning slowly to believe.

10. Fragile Flower

Sometimes I feel like a fragile flower, blooming, lying open, exposed, trembling in the wind and all that would like to destroy, yet still standing strong.

The thing that makes me feel my own fragility is not harshness, not threats or games or cold callousness: those I have learned to deal with in my sleep; it is sweet words of unconditional support. It is people who both know me and don't know me who reach out and give me empathy without patronisation, give me love without pity, give me respect and a shoulder if ever I should need it. They read my words and did not label me a freak, or damaged. They offered respect, told me my words were beautiful. They saw me for who I was and loved everything they saw.

Those things make me fall to pieces inside.

Yesterday I could not shake the anxiety from its perch within. The whirling panic of something I could not grasp, just taste when the wind was just right. I couldn't work it out. All I knew was I felt starkly alone. Pinned under a hot, white spotlight on a huge, black stage. All eyes fixed upon me.

My own inner spotlight found my insecurities and blew them wide open. It was like drowning. Still I did not know why.

Then it hit me. All those lovely words, all that love and understanding and respect was alien. it made me uncomfortable, like I stood before my execution board. All that was the thing I was not used to. It was why I panicked when faced with real love from my man.

Too much, too good, too ovewhelming. To accept such positive stuff means you take it with wide open arms, you take it by opening yourself up. That means you're open to pain, too. I learned that young.

I am not stepping backwards, but forwards. Seeing now the sneaky path the voice of doubt takes within me. This voice served me as a child, helping me through the minefields of my mother's life. But now it is only to my detriment. I am stringing lights in all the dark corners so it cannot hide much longer. The paths are becoming bright and clear.

Knowing and understanding means diminished power to all the demons, the doubts, the critisisms that are so deeply learned they are almost a part of me.

Not for much longer.

This fragile flower is not so fragile. If it can stand the hurricanes my mother launched and still come out intact, perhaps bruised, perhaps wilted, perhaps with a few torn leaves, but still functioning, still most definitely intact, then it can stand the sweet onslaught of love and positive emotion and feedback from both friends and strangers. It can stand the overwhelming honesty and power of love and open heart form the man who loves me.

What happened with him happened for a reason. For how could he understand what was going on with me when I didn't understand myself? Now I do. Now I know I have a much better chance of dealing with such overwhelming emotion.

I just need to learn how to accept without sabotage. I'm learning, though. Already the power of the negative within is diminishing; how can it not when you dig up all its secrets. Without secrets, the negative really isn't so bad. Just another piece of luggage to throw out.

I'm not talking about a clean sweep - for we do need some critisism, some doubt, some of that bad stuff we hate. But there is both healthy and diseased, and I am determined be like a white blood cell and destroy all that is diseased and replace it with the vibrant, with the healthy.

It is starting. Make no mistake.

Even when I am teetering on the edge I am now okay. I am learning the tools to cope. And the first, best and strongest is understanding. Knowledge means fear has nowhere to hide. Knowledge means the constant critic in your head loses power. Knowledge means the road ahead is not so scary and dark, but lit with bright torches that show the way, step by step.

The fragile flower is not weak, but strong, yet fragile where it counts.

I think today will be a fine day.

9. Melancholy Notes

Today wasn't a great day. That grey pressure seeped in slow and steady. Dark clouds and drizzling rain that finds its way to your skin no matter what didn't help. But it wasn't that. Missing that special someone started in mid-afternoon. A sweet, keening note that plays over and over again through your blood. Wasn't that, either, that caused the sad, lonely ache deep inside.

Being in therapy has helped me greatly to focus, fine tune myself to all my shifting emotions and moods. It's helped me grasp what sets off an emotion and mood.

I sat on the train, damp from the rain, reading my book. That's when it hit. Like a deep, strident chord. The distant sound of a gong. I felt it. Tightening in my throat and chest. Within the pages something hit me full in the face.

The narrator was being, right then and there as I read, emotionally blackmailed and manipulated by her closest friend, the one she relied on, the one who was like family.

Just a small thing, but it stayed in my mind, stuck like drying mud. Playing over and over. Emotions welled up, slowly like water spreading over earth, darkening all it touches.

Sadness for this fictional character because I knew all too well what it felt like to have that happen. To be made to do something against your inner-most will. Resentful for someone ever doing that to another. Anger that people did such a thing. Frustration because when in that situation, if you're not coming from a healthy place, a healthy past, then it is seemingly impossible to extract yourself.

I felt alone and isolated like the rain cutting me off from the others around me. I felt the darkness without working its way within.

I thought about finishing the wine I'd bought the other day, but instead I worked on my room, putting my pictures up, creating art. That melancholy feeling stayed, thoughts straying to that man who has my heart. I missed his voice, I missed telling him everything I've been wanting to tell him. Sometimes it happens like this.

Still I worked on. I didn't write, didn't sit down and make myself think. It wasn't despair or depression or acute loneliness, just a few things that were sifting through my blood. I let my thoughts free form and these things came to me with ease.

But now, everything looking good around me, cat curled up on my feet, I am struck by how similar this situation was to one when I just started therapy.

My second session and I got home, feeling emotionally devestated. I locked myself in my room, wrote on my computer. Inside the wolves tore me apart. Emotions rioted. It seemed I would never get through the night intact.

And then I cried like I would never be able to stop. I desperately wanted to pick up the phone and call the one person I knew I couldn't. So instead, I wrote him a letter that would never be sent. I wrote out all the devestation inside of me. And the storm passed.

I realised then that it would always be so. Storms cannot be sustained forever, eventually they will dissipate, and blue skies and warm breezes will return, bringing with them the fragrance of hope and happiness.

Tonight, as then, I kept thinking of Lilo and Stitch, the Disney animated film. In it, a genetically engineered alien, designed to destroy all it comes across crashlands on Earth. He lives with a little girl who loves him, even though his badness levels are unusually high. Stitch starts to learn what love is because of the unconditional love this little girl gives him, and through love, he learns loneliness and the pain of not fitting in because of his background. He runs away to find family (though family, is of course where the love is, and that's with the little girl, Lilo).

I felt like Stitch. Alone in the forest, feeling lost, trying to find family, trying to fit in, to belong. It's such a horrible, frightening feeling. That moment has always made me want to cry.

Now I understand why. Stitch, too, is a product of his upbringing, his wiring wasn't his decision. And as he starts to grow past that, to realise different paths are open to him apart from destruction; it's painful and scary, but he fights all he learned, was wired to feel and act, and becomes someone who is fully realised, not only capable of love, but being loved and finds somewhere to belong because he finds himself.

I get that, too. That's why tonight isn't bad, just melancholic. I realised I am the one responsible for completely loving me. Finding myself means I will always belong. And I'm really getting there.

The rain is still out there, but right now I am warm and content. Listening to music that suits the low-key melancholia of my mood.

Each day is getting better. Because I realise, it's about me, no one else.

Not even my mother.

Just me.

8. A Good Place To Be...

Right now I am feeling good. The horrible pressure that often drives me to seek out others has been seemingly banished to another realm.

Perhaps it's gone forever. Perhaps not. I do not know.

What I do know is this: I'm getting to know me. To most this would seem an uneventful thing, but to myself, to others who have gone through what I've been through, it's almost astounding.

To understand you need to see it through my eyes. From before I can remember, from the moment I was born, I was never really alone. Someone was always there. That someone was my mother. More than that, I was never allowed to be. After all, how can an extention of her become its own entity, its own being with individual thought, ideas, moods? It simply doesn't work.

This is why, even when I had left home, my sister had left home, her influence in our lives was as strong as if we were little children, still completely dependent on her for all the basic things in life. She was able, from hundreds of kilometres away, to rule our lives. She could stop us seeing our father with one phone call. With simply the promise there would be hell to pay if she found out we disobeyed her.

Yes, imagine being like that, and discovering yourself at the same time. It couldn't work like that for me. And when I was able to wiggle out from under her oppressive thumb, the thought of finding me was daunting. Not a conscious thought, but a thought there, lurking in the back of me, all the same.

The what ifs were too big, too frightening to examine closely. I had essentially been another part of my mother for most of my life and now I was alone and every single thing about that was frightening. Children learn their behaviours from home and my home wasn't a very good place for learning things correctly. The fear of being just like her was there, big and bold and loud, and I knew I didn't want to examine too closely, just in case I found an answer I didn't want.

So I hid among others, cultivating the mask I wore at home as who I was, running from the gawping maws of Alone. Alone meant lonely, abandoned, rejected, failure. My mother's illness bred those feelings in her when she was left alone and it was a frightening thing to see. Some of that had spilled into me.

There was also the idea of being alone as a time to concentrate on yourself, your feelings, and it wasn't something I was comfortable with. That kind of behaviour wasn't condoned in our house. Focus on my mother was. Anything else was selfish, self-centred, egotistical, wrong. How could I really do that now? Without guilt?

So I found others to concentrate on, to become my latest obsession. Obsession is easy, a one way street, the rules set in stone. Always the same ending of heartache and pain and disolusionment. Something I knew well. No set up to be flung, shattering, to the floor. With the focus so completely outward there was virtue in caring for someone else more than myself, there was safety in lack of self-examination, it was selfless rather than selfish. Now I see it was selfless in the worst possible sense of the word.

The need to run from self-examination, self-discovery. was so ingrained I found another easy way out, through drinking. Another aspect of this favoured crutch. If I drank enough I wouldn't have to be with me, deal with me.

Problem is, no matter how far you run, what drama or heartache you immerse yourself in, how much you drink or fuck yourself up so you no longer are able to think, in the end, you are still going to be there. You are never going away. In the end, you need to be alone, and make some discoveries, for better or worse.

At first, I longed for the man I lost with such wild heartache. I still miss him, but I'm at peace. I know there is love there still, and I hope we will work this out, but this is paramount. Even writing this, I feel that old guilt. But I sqaush it down without remorse as I say, no matter what he wants or needs, it's my needs, my wants that have to come first. Because I'm the only one I'm in control over. I'm the only one who can truly look out for me. It's no one else's responsibility.

From where I sit, deliberately alone, after the pain and fear and anxiousness has passed, I am able to see that what I have done is search for someone to give me what my mother never gave me as a child. All that unconditional love, affection, stability, support, that I crave, have always craved, will only now come from one person now, and that's myself. A hard, harsh lesson to learn, but one I have accepted fully. The moment I accepted that, I felt a strange peace come over me. I could clearly see all I had done wrong in the past.

I will not blame myself for those mistakes, no matter how much I want to. I wasn't in the place to see it, to know any better. Now I do.

And I can see, no matter how much I love and want to be with someone, I can't do that until I'm in the place I need to be. I feel it close. Sometimes I think I can almost touch that place, grasp the cool grass, smell the sweet flowers, but not yet. I owe this to myself to get there completely. And I will. Soon.

Yes, I miss him and want to be with him more than I can almost say, but I can still feel the love from myself, and this time it is true and untainted. I need to nurture myself to reach the place I can express that and, as importantly, receive love in return without that old, horrible fear. I know there will always be fear and doubt, but I am learning to control it, make it healthy rather than consuming and destructive.

Being alone is discovering self and it's something that is endlessly interesting and intriguing and completely therapeutic. I enjoy it. My room is slowly becoming a reflection of what I am growing to be within.

I am realising that aspects of me are like my mother, not my mother, and that is the most important difference of all. I refuse to allow myself to hate those aspects, because to know yourself you have to love and accept all parts. You can change and modify the ones you don't like, the ones that need to be changed, but you must love them, because they are you. Those aspects have brought me to this time and place in my life and they will be changed, modified, made acceptable in the life of the new, emerging me. It's good to be able to see those aspects, recognise them, know where they come from and why.

I would never have been able to know any of this without this time spent alone.

I look forward now to spending time with myself. I know there will be times I am so beside myself I will wonder how I can stand it. But I know that, too will pass. I know how to deal with it without obliterating it from my mind through drugs and alcohol. I am learning all the time.

This is such a good place to be.

7. Proof Positive

Things are not all darkness and despair. I have been deliberately focusing on the negative simply because that's the only way I know how to fix it. Identify and then destroy or change...

But there were things that helped me through. Yes, there were great things about my childhood.

The main one being my sister. She is my ally, my partner in crime. We grew extremely close because of life in that house. No amount of splitting or bad talk on my mother's part could change that - not even her bizarre thought that we were incestuous lesbians. Together, we could laugh at anything, find humour in even the most dire of situations. We learned the art of comfort and solidarity against the odds. From each other, we learned love. She is the only one that saw mum for who she really was and still is. Even now, she is still the only one (other than my therapist) who truly understands where I am coming from.

I received my rich and fertile imagination from escaping into my head when things got bad; it saved me so many times. It got me through. That imagination is now the well to all my creativity.

I am strong, far stronger than the darkness within would like to give credit for. I am able to deal with almost anything that comes my way. If, as a child, I could deal with such horrific circumstances, then now, as an adult, I can deal with whatever happens. Nothing can ever be as bad as being a child in that household. Though I have made many bad relationship choices, right up to the second last one, I have survived them all, I have learned and grown from each. I keep gaining strength. Every now and then I have to remind myself of the great reserves of strength I have within. But it is there.

I have keen perception and intuition from having to pick the signs of another rage from the monster.

And now, I am growing, spreading my wings. I have never enjoyed being on my own before. I never learned how, never got the opportunity. But now, since therapy, I have been keeping to myself, not venturing out to drink and meet friends. Not drinking at home, just spending time with myself and learning about me. I actually like it. I never gave myself the time to do that, but it's not so bad - actually, it's rather good. I'm intrigued and interested in all I'm learning.

I am writing all the time.

I am coming to terms with me and beginning to understand why I act the way I do at certain times. By understanding, I can learn to control, learn the signs, learn new ways that are acceptable to my new standards.

And though I am hesitant to say, because I am so not used to the focus being on me, but I am most pleased. I like this. I like being with me, I like discovering the child I was in all facets and the person I have been and the one I am becoming.

I think I am going to be most interesting.

6. Seemingly Irrational; Unseemingly Rational...

To those who didn't grow up in a household tormented by borderline personality disorder, having a relationship with a child of that home can at times, I think, be a strange and vexing thing.

Not all children react in the same way, but for those who haven't known how to deal, or are only now trying to deal as supposedly fully functional adults, there are many similarities.

To the other person, we may seem irrational. Mood swings, bursts of anger that seem to come from nowhere or over something trivial, blame when you don't deserve it, troubles with intimacy, hypersensitivity to play or teasing, self-deprecation, trouble with compliments, distrust, attempts at emotional manipulation, fear of being alone, jealousy of you spending time with others, a need to know everything, suspicion...

All this and you never guessed. The person seemed so together, so cool, so confident and amazing.

And then... irrational behaviour...

This is so for me. Sometimes all of the above, sometimes a little. In the past I never had the self-awareness to see what was happening, the poison well within the behaviours came from. I'm still working it out.

But day by day I see more and more. The fog is lifting, the air is cold and crisp and sometimes I can see almost forever. The trick is accepting all. Some I despise, I want to fling it into the raging river of denial. To do that would be to slide down to the beginning. I don't want to be there again. Some I am so ashamed of I want to cry.

This stuff will always be a part of me to a degree. But I can teach myself new tricks, new attitudes, new rules.

The child within is eager to cast off the constraints that have held her back for far too long. It is too late for another childhood, but I can learn to play again. I can learn to be free.

Already I have learned so much. My friend, Mr Alcohol is not so much a casual buddy but my security blanket. One I no longer need. We children of the borderline personality disorder household often have such a friend. For me, it helped to ease the way into myself fully. Alcohol became the excuse, the reason I could be loud, funny, silly, have fun. If the reprimands came, if the abuse came, then not only was there a scapegoat in the form of liquid escape, but it was also a way to numb out the memories, the emotions, the pain and anger and sadness I did not want to ever feel again.

Thing is, those emotions, those memories do not go away. They lurk until the mind is fresh and untainted once more. They pounce. The claws are sharp and hooked. They do not ever let go. Not that way.

I have implemented a rule with Mr Alcohol: if I need the drink I do not have it. I ride the wave of emotion, no matter how painful, how unbearable, how crushing it is. I give myself days without alcohol. I allow myself one night a week to drink more than three drinks. But again; if I need it, I keep away. For two and a half weeks now this is my new life. I really like it.

It is so much easier than I could ever have thought. I have made so much progress. The clarity brings tears to my eyes. This is what I have learned...

Irrational Behaviour: turning on someone, being mean, uncontrollable temper tantrum for seemingly no reason.
What's going on: so many years of learned repression of emotions, particularly anger and rage are there inside. The pressure cooker sometimes explodes and the person can't control it. Like a switch inside the head, you lose control and lash out.
What's going on: It's also sometimes a self-protective thing. Lash out before they can hurt you. This is an innate reaction. So ingrained the person usually doesn't realise what's happening, only that it is.
What's going on: It's also a reaction to being overwhelmed by so many emotions from now and the past. This past is something that is always with a child from a borderline household. It doesn't ever go away unless it is dealt with and even then...it will be there. Just not so volitile.
What's going on: Stressed by a situation, something sets of a memory, often subconscious, and this is set off and the memories and emotions rush up and the explosion happens.
What's going on: Behaviours learned at home as a child are perceived as normal. Even though the brain knows they're not, it's very difficult to retrain the emotions.

Irrational Behaviour: One moment hot, one moment cold; one moment sweet, one moment upset. We're talking mood swings...
What's going on: bottling up emotions play such a big part. It's sometimes so hard to tell what is what. Sometimes it's hard to tell what you're feeling at all.
What's going on: a childhood of repression and being told you can't feel that, or denial of whatever emotions you're feeling can make you very unsure as an adult. Sometimes you distance yourself from your emotions to cope and now it's hard to reconnect in a way that is functional all the time.
What's going on: not trusting your own feelings. After all, look what happened when you were a child?

Irrational Behaviour: Being blamed for something that's not your fault.
What's going on: a learned response. The parent with the BPD always projected any blame on the children, or whomever was nearby. This is almost like second nature. Though once aware of this, you try hard not to do it. Sometimes, though, you slip up.
What's going on: unable to handle the rush of emotion, you lash out and blame.

Irrational Behaviour: hypersensitivity to play or teasing.
What's going on: as a child, you were hurt by supposed teasing. You got into major trouble for playing and learned that it was something to be either ashamed of or guilty about.
What's going on: because of home-life, it's difficult to let yourself go as an adult and enjoy something as silly and frivolous as this.
What's going on: because of what happened as a child, you are continually waiting for something bad to happen, trouble to start, things to turn dark and you can't enjoy it. You react as if you were a child and the experience is not fun.

Irrational Behaviour: you're getting along well, growing close but then there's trouble with intimacy. Touching, emotional closeness.
What's going on: love at home was conditional and erratic. Fear of the same. Waiting for the same to happen. Waiting for the other person to turn. Irrational but understandable if you grew up in a house with a BPD parent.
What's going on: touching at home was often forced when you didn't want to be loving because of anger or abuse. You had to do what the parent wanted, regardless of your own feelings. These things are very deeply ingrained.
What's going on: sudden fear that you will be rejected. If it happened with a parent, it can happen with anyone.

Irrational Behaviour: low self-esteem, self-deprecation, self-loathing, trouble accepting compliments in someone who seems together and confident.
What's going on: years of being told you are bad, worthless, terrible, horrible and the like are at work within.
What's going on: being able to love yourself wasn't an option while growing up and compliments often came with trouble.

Irrational Behaviour: Distrust.
What's going on: no matter how wonderful or supportive you are, no matter that you've done nothing to earn distrust, years of conditioning of being betrayed emotionally have had its toll. It's almost impossible not to distrust. It's safer, because betrayal happened most of your life.
What's going on: bad choices based on childhood experiences have reinforced the whole distrust issue. It's what you know.

Irrational Behaviour: Attempts at emotional manipulation from someone who doesn't seem manipulative.
What's going on: this is a learned response from having someone do this your entire life.
What's going on: it's completely subconscious.

Irrational Behaviour: Fear of being alone.
What's going on: This comes from never been able to be alone as a child.
What's going on: As a child, you learned being alone was a terrible thing. You were worth nothing being alone.
What's going on: You have never learned how to be alone and it's a disconcerting and frightening concept.

Irrational Behaviour: Jealousy of you spending time with other people
What's going on: this is how the BPD parent acted and what the child learned as normal. It's a difficult thing to get out of when your body is pumping suppressed feelings through your veins.
What's going on: through learned behaviours at home, you think everything is going to go against you in the long run.

Irrational Behaviour: Need to know everything and suspicion.
What's going on: the parent needed to know everything and was suspicious if she didn't. Ingrained behaviours are hard to dismiss.

This is a start for me. As I begin to understand where these things come from, then I can begin to disable them.

I know I am starting slow, but at least I'm starting.

5. A hard road ahead

It's a strange place to be, seeing into your childhood without blinkers, without the vaseline smeared over the camera lense, just reality as it was. Unvarnished. Awash with harsh winter sunlight.

Exploring the child you were, you still are inside, is an uncomfortable experience. Digging around in the most basic parts of your psyche. Those areas that are delicate as they are deep; dark as they are old. They are like an ancient forest. Slightly unreal, but incredibly there. They are the parts that have been damaged by my mother's illness. And the damage runs so deep. The fundamental areas that in most people function smoothly are running just off the tracks.

But the only way forward is to look back. And I am looking back. Links are emerging like lines in the sand. I am beginning to understand why I am like I am today. I am beginning to see the parallels between my mother and myself.

It would be easy to say I am like her because the elements of her illness also beat in my veins. But I know that's not it. The reason is simple: if I was also ill, I wouldn't be here now, questioning it.

The truth is much more complicated, like a tangle of fine wires. A child is a sponge soaking up all around it. And if those surroundings have faulty logic, faulty functioning basics then the child will learn that as the norm. The child will watch and follow and soak up all about its parent.

Even growing up, it is hard to see the damage that is being done. A child is extremely adaptable. A child is so reliant on that parent it can see nothing else.

I see this now. I am not to blame for what I am now. I am not at fault. Yes, it rests in my hands to mould my own future and I am doing that. I am determined to change the path. I am relearning old truths, those tarnished things that have never seen the light of day. I am looking at them, tossing them in the bin, replacing them with the shiny reality of sanity and normalcy.

There is guilt lurking around the edges. There is uncertainty and fear of stepping into that unknown of possibilities. There is anger and sadness for my lost childhood. There is hesitation that even now, I am remembering things wrongly, that things weren't that bad, that it's all in my head, even though I know things were so much worse, that it was all terribly real.

I feel like I am betraying my mother's love. I am betraying myself who is part of her. I feel I am bad, I am rotten to the core. I know this is the faulty wiring at work. I know I deserve so much better, I know I deserve all the wonders of the world without her poison still breathing within.

It is hard, it is strange, but the road ahead is there, beckoning.

And still I look back to understand how to forge ahead.

Things come to me. People talking to me. People offering their pitiful advice when they know nothing at all about where I came from. People who just don't get the monster who lived within my mother. Yet their words get to me, through that faulty wiring the monster installed, they make me wonder if I didn't try hard enough, long enough, wasn't good enough to change the monster back into my mother.

I have been asked time and time again, what if you stood up to her?

I want to laugh. Only those who grew up in this environment understand when I say my sister and I were prisoners. To stand up to her was to take your own life into your hands. There was so escaping her wrath. No matter what you tried, no matter what you did. Her illness would not allow it. Would never allow it. She would get you, bring you down.

I want to scream and bring the walls down around me. I want to shake these people who look at me as if to say, well, you didn't try to control her.

That's not my job. That wasn't my sister's job.

We were children.

Children are powerless. They rely on the parent to feed them, clothe them, care for them, love them, teach them control and boundaries. Children aren't meant to control our parents. We aren't meant to placate, cajole, try to stand up to her. We were simply meant to be children, being nurtured in a stable, loving, safe environment. We had none of that. What we had was a small piece of hell and there was no escape. No way to skirt around the pain and anger and abuse.

I want to cry. We should never have been there. And still people tell us we failed in some way. We failed to stop the monster emerging. We failed in all possible ways.

But this is not how it was. No one could have stopped the monster. If the adults surrounding her failed, how could we, as small children, do the same?

No, as I gaze backwards, I am satisfied we did everything a child could do. We were beyond most children from normal families. We grew up to be successful in many ways.

Those people and their voices are now banished with the pointless guilt, the uncertainty and fear. Because I am strong. I had to be strong to survive my childhood.

And now I am striding out, further along the road. I am eager to see where it takes me next.

4. The Child Within

The child within is a frightened, beaten thing. Not destroyed. Too strong to let my mother's monster do that. But still...

The child within knows certain things. These things are ingrained so deep they seem to be a part of me. They are twined with my bones.

The child within knows not to speak her mind. If she speaks her mind, there will be hell to pay. If she speaks her mind, she will be verbally abused, she will be belittled, torn apart, made to feel she is the worst child on the planet.

The child within knows to keep anger down deep where it can't escape. She knows because when it has escaped in the dark past, where there was only abuse and more anger from the monster within the mother. Hours, days of tears, regret and being taught what a bad, bad child she was for riling up the monster.

The child within thinks she is always too fat, there is something wrong. She thinks this because the monster put her and her sister on a diet when they were young, around ten or so, and they weren't obese, not even fat, but still, something had to be wrong, didn't it? She thinks this because the monster used to weigh them daily.

The child within knows love is conditional. She knows this because the monster would give and take love and affection whenever she wanted. And when it was gone, the child within knew she had done something bad to deserve it. The child within has learned love will always let her down.

The child within knows she can't trust her own instincts. How can she when the monster tells her she is constantly wrong, that she doesn't know what she's saying, that the events she's remembered are wrong.

The child within knows others must always come first because the monster was the only one with valid feelings. And if the monster was upset, then the child within had to comfort and fix the monster so there was only peace in the home.

The child within knows that responsibility for everything bad that happens sits heavily on her shoulders.

The child within knows being alone means no one wants to be with her. She knows she is then unworthy and unwanted. She knows being alone is something to fear.

The child within knows not to trust others close to her. Because she will always get hurt and be betrayed if she lets anyone in. She knows because of all the people in the universe who should never have hurt her, hurt her. That monster within the mother betrayed her. If her mother can do that, then so will everyone else...

The child within knows she is a bad person. The monster told her this too many times to ignore it.

The child within knows she is undeserving of love because the monster has told her how nasty, horrible, selfish, evil she is.

The child within knows she is a burden on everyone that has ever professed to love her.

The child within knows it's always her fault. Because that's how it's always been and a parent never lies...

But the child within is slowly reaching out. And by understanding these fundamental quasi-truths, can I understand why I am like I am now. And then I can begin to relearn the right way.

It is beginning already.

3. Sweet Sound Of Validation

One of the first steps of recovery has been therapy. Just that sweet, simple act of stepping through the door.

When I am in that room I am doing something for me. I am no longer alone. When I am in that room, my mother's illness exists, even as most of my family pretends it does not.

Validation is like life blood. I am not crazy like I secretly feared. There is reason for me being this way. There is hope for me changing for the better.

Validation is like gold. Validation is the sound of the starter gun. Solid strength to draw from as I step inside myself and examine all that resides there. Just by stepping through those doors gives me the strength to approach those locked and guarded dungeons inside. I am trying to open them. Some come easily, but others are tougher and some...They are across rivers, beyond cliffs, but I know I will reach them sometime.

The simple act of going to therapy is galvanising. I have taken my life into my own hands and looked down upon it. I am starting to see what I need to do.

By walking in through that door I know I am in a safe environment where I can begin to work myself out. In that room I am no longer afraid of my own voice. I am no longer scared to express the emotions I am struggling to untangle. In that room I am no longer scared to explore everything, good, bad and indifferent within me. In that room I am given unconditional support.

Can you imagine that?

Sometimes I have troubles comprehending.

But I am learning. By simply stepping into that room, receiving the solid, honest validation of where I have come from I am able to keep going, keep searching, keep challenging ingrained beliefs, keep moving forward and changing.

That sweet sound of validation keeps resounding through my head, driving me on. And for that small, honest act, I am able to begin to grow.

2. What Borderline Personality Disorder Means To Me...

We never knew what was going to happen next.

If you met my mother you would think she was a lovely, engaging, sweet lady. She was compassionate, listened, liked to chat, helped out wherever possible. Liked to pick us up and drop us off at school. She could always be counted on to bring a plate. She was always available to ferry kids across the town at all hours, no matter how much out of the way.

If you were me and my sister, you lived with constant fear. A heaviness that sat in your stomach. You never spoke out. Disagreement was at your own peril.

Borderline Personality Disorder meant my mother's love was not unconditional. It was completely conditional. Her opinion of us changed at the drop of a hat, from one moment to the next. If she perceived us as having wronged her, we were bad, evil, nasty, unlovable.

The tricky thing was, you never knew what would set her off. It would change from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. The only side we were allowed to take was hers. To agree with someone else was ganging up on her, wronging her, going against her, betraying her.

The only real opinions allowed were hers. Our opinions had to change when hers did, otherwise there'd be hell to pay.

Borderline Personality Disorder meant living in a prison. No way out. The only escape was into your own head, somewhere she couldn't reach. It meant living with a time bomb. It meant being dragged out of bed at all hours to take part in a fight you don't understand. It meant being told how horrible you are, how worthless, how mean and nasty and downright bad. It meant being told at fifteen you were a slut when you had barely ever kissed a boy. It meant being told your mother just doesn't love you as much as she used to. It meant having to grovel to hug and kiss someone because that's what they suddenly wanted, even when you were shaking with rage inside.

Her illness meant we were helpless, unable to express our rage or indignation. It meant not being allowed to have personal boundaries of any sort. It meant your entire life was your mother's life. It meant violation and emotional and verbal abuse. It meant you didn't actually exist as a person. Everything you did was her right to know. You had to tell her everything. It meant you lived with someone who had uncontrollable rages.

Her illness meant we lived in a constant sea of her caustic jealousy. She was jealous of my father, of his family. She was jealous of friends, of the fact my sister and I were close. She was suspicious of anything that would interfere with her domain.

Her illness meant she was never wrong, only ever wronged. Her illness meant my sister and I remembered events differently to her and if we ever attempted to bring them up she would rage at us, tell us we were wrong and we were deliberately twisting things to hurt her and suit ourselves. It meant we were never sure if we were imagining things. It meant we constantly questioned our own grip on reality. It meant it was always our fault. It meant we were nothing but trouble. It meant we let her down. It meant we could never live up to what she wanted because what she wanted constantly shifted.

Her illness meant real trust was something we never understood. It meant isolation and pain and bewilderment. It meant living in a war zone. Twenty four hours a day. Seven days a week.

My mother is almost psychotic with her fears of abandonment, so much so she took it personally if we were out late. She locked us in when we had a fight with her. She perceived any attempt at independence as rejection, abandonment and there was always a quagmire of trouble when we tried to leave when we were old enough to move away. The emotional blackmail was like neon. She made us feel guilty for being individual people.

My mother formed and terminated relationships with others all the time. She still goes through friends. There is no grey with her. People are saints or demons. This instability wasn't only confined to her friends, but to her children. We were evil one minute, wonderful the next. She shifted between intensely loving us to intensely hating us. She often would choose my sister as the saint and at the same time vilify me, and vice versa. This could happen without any provocation we were aware of: an innocent word or statement or look and the game was on.

Her mood swings were like PMSing on a stage the size of Jupiter. She could be depressed, nasty, loving, irritable at a moment's notice. When she would shift into her rages, it would sometimes last for days. Though she was able to be hysterically screaming at us with hate-filled words and answer the phone and switch into sweetness and light and normalcy, then hang up and switch back into Attila the Hun. We never knew what would happen, if we were safe or if we were in for a night of horror and screaming.

In her eyes, we were her. Her property, part of her, to do with as she wanted. If she couldn't control herself, we were the portals with which she expressed that.

Life with my mother was a continual living nightmare. From the moment we were born we were surrounded by this. We were consumed by this and her illness. We were constantly maneouvering through a dangerous and volatile minefield, one where detonation never meant death, just pain, confusion and intense emotions that had nowhere to go because she couldn't allow it. She was the only one allowed to feel anything real. My sister and I didn't really exist as people, just another part of her.

Imagine being so impotent with pent up emotions, so many of them you couldn't even begin to understand or deal with them (even if you were able to do so). Imagine being deathly frightened of expressing yourself, of mentioning your opinions, the fact you are hurt, you are upset, you feel wronged. Imagine knowing if you did such a thing the next few hours or days would be hell on earth where your entire spiritual being is ripped to shreds one way, then another, as someone who is meant to love you unconditionally does their best to find the ultimate way to hurt you, over and over again.

Imagine that, then imagine you are a small child. There is no one else to help you. There is nowhere else to go. This was my life. For eighteen years, this was my life. The frightening thing is, I haven't even really touched on what it was like. Life in my household was a million times worse than what I am now just able to express.

I know I will come back to this over and over again as I sift through everything in my head and heart. I will redefine and tune this until I see it clearly, with all the hideous bones, blood and sinew. Until I see it completely naked.

But right now, this is what Borderline Personality Disorder means to me...

1. Allow Me To Introduce Myself...

I am damaged goods. This damage is not beyond repair, not irreversible, but it is deep, far deeper than I ever cared to admit, or was able to see. Until now.

It took someone very special to me, someone who truly loved and cared about me enough to point out I needed help. And I found it. This person is currently gone from my life; heartbreaking, yes, and something that has to be. For now, anyway.

There is a gaping wound in me and I am beginning to heal it. The process will be excruciatingly painful. It will be horrifying. It will drag me deep down into the murky depths of my subconscious. It will be completely worth it.

I am like this because my mother is mentally ill.

For years I have had many doubts about myself and my abilities to function like a normal human. These doubts have either swum out in the open or lurked deep within the depths of me, but always there.

My mother is suffering from undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder.

This illness turned my life and my sister's into a waking nightmare. If you have never lived through this, seen this, you may think what you read here is exaggerated. The truth is it's a thousand times worse than you could ever imagine.

I am writing this both as a way to work my way through my recovery of growing up with a borderline parent and as a way to show others who are going through it, or have gone through it, they are not alone. My sister and I thought we were alone. At thirty-four years of age I have discovered we're not alone and never were. So many other children grew up in a version of our nightmare; they, too, were prisoners in a home ruled by a monster who lived within a parent. My heart goes out to all of them. It goes out to the lost childhood of my own.

The horror of this illness is the effect it has on the children; the adults they become. The reverberations of life in that house is ringing loud in all aspects of my grown-up life. It is only now I am fully able to hear that sound. It is insidious and sly. It has affected how I interact with others. It has successfully led to destruction of every romantic relationship I have ever had. It has touched everything I say, think, feel and do.

I want no more. I want to be free.

I started therapy three weeks ago. Three weeks ago when my life changed for always. The man I love left, the blinders crashed to the floor and I saw what I had become. The creature who is in me is not of my own making. But it is there, dwelling, nevertheless. Three weeks ago I found a therapist who gave me validation for my childhood; who told me I am not crazy, just a byproduct of a fucked up childhood that I could have never hoped to control or change. That validation was my first step to recovery.

I am now on that road. It's a long, dangerous road, but I will make it, that I know. Every step I take, even if it's sideways or seemingly backwards is still movement, still positive, still leading to freedom, because every step is awareness and knowledge and learning. When you have those things, you have everything.

Some of you reading this know me. Some of you reading this know my mother. Most of you don't. I will be taking you through my recovery process, the anger, the rage, the pain, the fear, the struggle to find out who I am.

At thirty-four years of age, I do not really know who I am. I was never allowed to be. I was simply an extention of my mother and her illness, her receptical to throw her unwanted emotions into. I (along with my sister) took the blame for all that was wrong with her. We were her.

I am beginning to discover me. This is about discovery as well as recovery. This is forgiveness and exploration. This is definition. This is ending and beginning.

This will be who I am.

I'm eager to discover who that really is. I am filled with both trepidation and anticipation.

Let the journey begin.