Coping

I want to retreat into seclusion. The need to just close the door, lock it tight, and stay there is starting to grow. After some time of being on this thought train, I now question if I should just let go and be cold to the world. It would most assuredly hurt some people, maybe a lot in the long run. Most of them my friends. Am I willing to make that decision? Should I be selfish? What if I have regrets about not having those people around?

Some time later…

Being me is difficult. Being self aware makes it worse. Regularly, I think about how much of a burden I can be to my friends. I live in a constantly shifting fear of losing people because I’m afraid that I’m too much to deal with. I try to tell myself that I’m doing the best that I can, but that never feels like it’s enough.

Communication is a struggle. I’ve gotten better at it but it still seems impossible at times. Sometimes I can lay my thoughts out, I can think about them rationally, even form conclusions and I’ll go as far as rehearsing in my mind how I’m going to translate it to someone else. In those moments, it feels okay. I feel like I’m gonna make actual progress not just in life but as a person and be able to grow. But all of that just disappears when the time comes. When I go to speak, it’s as if all the articulated thoughts just leave and the things I thought through are complete unknowns now. I try to push through it, going off of what I feel I can say in the moment but after the conversation is over it just feels like I’m back to square one thinking about it again only this time I’m a tad bit more self critical than before because of my mental hindrance. This makes me feel stuck in a descending loop, and I feel like I’m dragging people with me.

I’ve been taking notes and journal entries here and there for a while. Trying to keep track of how I’m acting. Looking for triggers, irregularities, underlying problems, insecurities, anything that stands out. Coupling this with research, examination, and deep contemplation (using the detachment to my advantage) I have reached a point where I feel I need a much more thorough and deep psychological examination. To reiterate comments in another post, I’m not a doctor and I can’t diagnose myself. Showing a majority of the systems as well as a past of it, I now suspect Borderline Personality Disorder as a possibility instead of bipolar disorder. Symptoms of bipolar often overlap with BPD, however two of the major things that are part of BPD that is significant from bipolar is one thing called Splitting and another is detachment. Both of which, I am familiar with as symptoms

For a long time, I used the term splitting not knowing it was a term for a BPD symptom. To me, splitting was those times where I would be under so much stress from different things that I could physically feel my mind separate. Specific emotions or thoughts just drift away and I have some sort of radical shift in how I perceive people and things around me. Often, these thought patterns are temporary and aren’t even considered as possibilities once things for me settled down and I realized I responded to a situation poorly. Actual splitting as a term for BPD, is an episode of viewing people, objects, beliefs, or situations as all good or all bad. Which, I have done before. With my friends and family of all people.

I recall an instance, a close friend of mine and myself regularly hung out with the same people in the same place. My home as a matter of fact. Me and my close friend did most activities together, never been a single reason in x amount of years for us to have any kind of problems. Well, a new individual started hanging out with our group by connection through one of the friends. After she hung out a time or two, I started getting interested. I wanted to know her better, find out more about her. Looking back, it’s clear that I ignored the obvious signs of disinterest towards me. Not signs of disgust, but rather the clear signs of a lack of interest. Which I should have accepted, and went on about my day. Only I didn’t.

It had been close to two years since my last relationship and the last time I was intimate with someone else. At the time I had retreated exceptionally hard into my own home and was effectively a hermit with my only contact with outside strangers being whoever visited my house. I would make regular subtle hints that I would like to interact with her more (in my mind at least, I was trying to lightly flirt) but none of the intrigue was ever reciprocated. Eventually I did give up and just accepted things as the way they were. Something I should have done from the start. And life went on. They continued to hang out at the house and be friendly.

One night however, this night in particular I shouldn’t have been at home but due to selfish reasons I stayed in, she came over while it was just me and my close friend. Over the course of the evening and times prior, I had noticed more and more that she was interacting heavily with my close friend. This began to sear into my brain, and looking back I believe that I began to split. As I sat in a chair trying to remain distracted, I started thinking irrationally.

Why am I not interesting enough?
What does my friend have that I don’t?
Why did she feel drawn to him and not me?

Things were cool, calm, cheerful. And in a matter of moments I devolved, got quiet, became cold and vague. My mind started racing,  jumping between why, how, and when. I bottled it up, kept quiet and stuck to what I was working on even though everyone could tell I shifted. Some time later, they left together. And that’s when the thoughts got more intense and more irrational.

Why did the universe put me here to see that?
When is it going to be my turn?
He doesn’t even have to try for attention and affection, why do I continuously struggle?

At this point, I am alone. I stood up, began to walk around different rooms of my house. Pacing. Thinking. I’d sit back down to work and then just get up less than five minutes later because I’m demanding an answer and there isn’t anyone or anything to demand an answer from. My thoughts started to turn inward. And suddenly I had someone to demand an answer from.

Why did you let yourself get so invested?
What made you believe that things were going to go your way?
How dare you hold on to false hope?
How come you can’t be as good as everyone else?

And it just exploded. I punched the wall. Not just once. Dislocated a knuckle, broke two others, and busted all on one hand. I stood there looking at my hand, watching it shake, looking at the blood and skin and jutting knuckle, and all I could say was “That’s what you deserve.” I cleaned up my hand, sat back down and just started working again. In that moment it felt like the only thing that was real was the model I was building and the pain in my hand. I just felt alone. Defeated. Tired. Mad at myself for being so unstable. Mad that I couldn’t make things better. Still am.

It feels very shameful feeling to talk about, even anonymously. What hurts the most is the situations that went south that I was unable to remedy. I’ve lost friends and greatly tarnished relationships both seriously stable and potentially fruitful. I think about those times often, trying to use them as a learning tool but usually it’s nightmare fuel for day to day life. I’ve learned to bottle things up, which isn’t healthy but it’s effective. Communication has a steep learning curve but thanks to the people I have in my life it’s getting easier.  Opening up is extremely hard and it’s often scary and intimidating, but it is some of the best most effective relief I’ve ever known. Knowing that, although I’m gonna have days where I’m not well, I have people that will still be there when the bad days are over greatly helps. If there comes a time where they struggle as I am or more, I hope that I can do for them what they’ve done for me.