The Past Is Never The Past.

*Suicide references near the end*

 

 

 

Nobody accepted me at school….. they couldn’t accept that I was quiet, shy and serious… they questioned it. They thought there was something ‘wrong’ with me. 

Nobody accepts me now …. they think I’m too sensitive, “negative” and intense…. they say I make life difficult for myself by letting things get to me… they tell me to just let go of things… they blame me for my mental illness and invalidate my pain.

 

…

 

My best friend in primary school, Laura, ditched me to be friends with the girl who was bullying me, Nicola. Nicola loved to rub it in my face.

 

My best friend Lou, ditched me and replaced me with my former ‘friend’, Hannah, who essentially bullied me. It feels the same.

 

…

 

In secondary school I was psychologically and physically bullied by a girl and her minions, in front of a whole class – nobody stood up for me… not one person – even the teacher let it happen.

 

Falling out with Hannah she broadcast it to the rest of our friends, and none of them stood up for me. Nobody defended me or told her to sort things out with me.

 

…

 

At primary school I had to beg to tag along with people at lunchtime, just to not be alone.

 

I have to beg people to talk to me, chase after people, and this year had to beg people to go with me to a gig, so I didn’t have to go alone – even offering a free ticket. It’s just as humiliating now as back at school.

 

 

…

 

At school I stood alone by the wall, watching everyone else have fun without me, feeling there was something wrong with me and I deserved to be alone.

 

I stand alone, talking to myself on my wall, watching everyone else live their lives happily, excluding me… thinking I must deserve it… it must be me, as anyone else would be included. It’s personal.

 

…

 

Hannah turned against me – I don’t know why… she blamed me, rejected my attempts to resolve things, then avoided communicating with me by bitching to Lou about me, and blocked me.

 

Lou turned against me – I don’t know why… she blamed me, rejected my attempts to resolve things, then avoided communicating with me and blocked me.

 

…

 

Hannah showed no interest in resolving things with ME, her original friend from school. She wanted to have my best friend in her life instead.

 

Lou showed no interest in resolving things with ME, her friend of thirteen years. She did however want Hannah, my former friend from school, in her life instead.

 

…

 

BOTH prioritised each other over me.

BOTH saw it as too much effort to fix things… giving up at the first hurdle… didn’t value me.

BOTH probably saw me as “negative” (aka depressed / mentally ill & needing support from friends!)

BOTH failed to understand mental illness.

BOTH refused to acknowledge they hurt me or discuss it.

BOTH wanted my silence on the topic.

BOTH preferred me as a doormat.

BOTH sat back and expected me to put in the effort after they were the ones who hurt me. Weren’t prepared to fight for me or prove they cared.

BOTH communicated how utterly worthless they think I am.

BOTH prefer positivity in others – which they could both have, due to their circumstances being better than mine, and not having my mental illness, and not being hurt and abandoned by their friends!

BOTH abandoned me because of things related to my mental health…. both shallow…. and disloyal.

BOTH chose to kick me after tossing me into the gutter.

 

Now they’re friends.

Now Hannah knows more about Lou and her life than I do.

Lou doesn’t know how broken I am about this.

She doesn’t know that all I wanted was a friend who saw me as worth the effort…

That goes for both of them.

I just wanted them to fight for ME… their friend.

I introduced all my friends to each other, and now my life is destroyed as a result of that stupid choice.

They’re all friends with Lou now. She has no clue how that feels now she’s dumped me too.

I wish any of them would be my friend again right now – but that requires communicating and dealing with the issues that broke things in the first place. They can’t just sweep it under the rug. I wanted to be worth it to them.

They don’t want me in their lives though. They only want each other.

It hurts that Hannah told Lou she never wanted to hear from me again, but they want to know each other. I was innocent in both cases, and somehow ended up being the one neither of them want to talk to. I feel they are the same person now. They think the same. I assume Lou thinks I’m ‘toxic’ too. This has ruined me more than I can put into words. It’s so messed up.

They’re both happily getting on with their lives of positivity, whilst I’m left behind, completely paralysed by all this. They would never choose me now, not how I am right now… but I’m that way as a result of their actions….

Just like guys in the past – they created the monster then ran from it. They made me who I am and then ditched me because of who I am, all the while making me think it was my fault and I deserved it.

They are both responsible for what happens to me now.

 

…

 

I just feel I cannot escape the past. I feel trapped… doomed to be excluded, abandoned, replaced, neglected, alone, rejected for the rest of my life. I cannot live a life like this.

 

If people continue to treat me the same as they always used to, what hope is there? I really must be worth nothing in this world. I really must be here to just be used by others and dumped as soon as something better comes along. The bullies taught me this. My ‘friends’ taught me this.

 

Nothing and nobody can undo the damage done. It’s too late. Therapy won’t even work now. It’ll only work for a few hours… days if I’m lucky, but my mind is so unstable now, all the work done is undone within that timeframe and everything is hopeless again.

 

Just like a week ago I started writing a blog about my appointment at the Wellbeing Centre, and the positive corner I’d turned regarding past friends…. I was going to move on, learn to love myself, forget them as they were never really my friends if they treated me that way…. Now my mind leaps all over the place regarding them. I hate them. I want revenge. I want to try and resolve things. I want answers. I want to just tell them how shit it was to end a thirteen year friendship over the damn internet. I feel I deserved to be ditched. I feel outraged that I was abandoned like that. I want to apologise and chase to fix things. I want to hurt myself. It just never ends, the sickening twists and turns in my mind at 300mph…. it makes me want to end my life.

 

My mind is too broken to be mended. The damage ‘friends’ did to me, and those who stood idly by, has ended any hope of me ever recovering. The only true friend I ever had was Liv. Now she’s gone from this world. And nobody seems to give a shit about that.

 

There are so many reasons to not exist anymore. The reasons to hold on are few and losing their strength and power every minute of every day. I can’t live in this mind anymore, and it’s completely hopeless that anyone can ever help me with it, because nobody understands how damaged I am. They can’t see it externally…. it’s all happening inside my head, with a stony look on my face. How could they ever understand the chaos in my head? Until they do, I won’t believe they can ever help me. Nobody even wants to help me. I cannot be helped. I don’t have the strength to help myself anymore. I’m giving up. Just living makes me feel sick at the moment. The past is never the past for me. It’s the present and the future. I’m scarred all the way through me because of these people. I can never forget. I can never heal. And that means I cannot survive here.

How can I even live in a world where those who were meant to care about me, hurt me and aren’t even sorry about the fatal wounds they left me with? They didn’t see me as worthy of a conversation. They just used the ‘block’ button and virtually told me to go fuck myself. That’s what they honestly thought of me and the friendship I gave them for all that time. And with that and losing Liv, and my granddad, and how terrifying, unsafe and uncertain life feels now, I just can’t carry on. Why should I? It’s all too much… the noise in my head… the memories…. the abandonments…. the pain…. the anger…. the questions…. all of it. I want it to stop. But it never will. Because those cowards never gave me closure. And then they’ll wonder why I ‘hold a grudge’. I just can’t do this anymore.

 

 

 

The Borderline See-Saw.

 

 

It’s all ‘too much’ at the moment. Everything is hurting my heart. It seems everything I do is ‘wrong’. And I’m overthinking every minute detail, within seconds. Someone doesn’t reply to me… they don’t like me. Someone drops out of a conversation…. I said the wrong thing. Someone takes a long time to answer a question…. I came on too strong and made them feel awkward. Someone doesn’t look at what I’m showing them… they’re bored and I’m being annoying. Someone doesn’t respond when I talk to them…. they don’t care about me.

 

Every tiny moment is analysed within seconds of it happening. I can’t switch it off. I’m programmed now to notice rejection everywhere I go, from every person I meet and none of them ever let me down with that.

 

Did they get the message? Did they pass on the message? Did I say the wrong thing? Are they sitting back expecting me to talk to them before they’ll ever message me again? Do they not want to talk to me ever again? If so why the hell are they ‘friends’ with me online? I’m invisible, to everyone, all the time. And I don’t know what I’m more upset about – people treating me as though I don’t exist, or me being upset about it. I’m sick of reading so much into other people’s lack of words or actions. But this is what life has done to me.

 

I don’t know how many times and different ways I can explain how this feels to me, and what I need from people. But I’ll try once more.

 

 

I NEED CONSISTENCY, CARE AND COMMUNICATION.

 

 

The biggest of all is consistency. Because after so long of people ignoring my existence, if you come along and notice I exist, I’ll come to life again… but the minute you switch back to nothingness, you’re dropping me from the edge of space.

 

I can’t stand the ups and downs. I can’t stand the hot and cold treatment…. because picture for a minute Bipolar Disorder…. the highs and the lows. These tend to happen at a slower rate (or so I believe – I don’t know much about Bipolar myself so I’m sorry if I’m mistaken)… people have periods of deep depression and periods of mania. BPD is similar in some ways, but the speed and frequency of the mood changes is scary. It happens in reaction to what’s going on around us at any given moment – we’re more reactive to changes in our lives and interpersonal issues. If you treat me like you care one minute and then drop me the next, you are triggering those mood changes – the ones that make me feel sick of experiencing emotions altogether.

 

I once really liked a guy but he was the king of hot and cold. He’d show interest in me and then ghost me for months at a time. This had me messaging him over and over, trying to keep him in my life and get him talking to me again. Usually every year on his birthday he’d start talking to me again, but the pattern always repeated. It was all likely a game to him, feeding his ego and I bet he was laughing about how desperate I was, and how much I ‘wanted him’. Little did he know it was one of the symptoms of my illness…. that fear of abandonment. He was constantly triggering it.

 

I’d had people disappear on me before him, but he was the one person who blew hot and cold so much I think it actually made me unstable emotionally. If someone feels intense emotions in reaction to external stimuli, namely the state of a relationship with you, and you turn on the charm one minute and ghost them the next… lather, rinse, repeat… you’re going to destroy their spirit. That’s what he did to me. Until one day, three or four years ago, I stopped going back. And that was the hardest thing I had ever done until that point. I cared about him so much. He never appreciated that. I still care. I know he’s lost someone close to him recently and I feel deeply for him. I feel sad about it. I wish I could reach out to him about it, but I will never open that door myself again. Ever. I will never beg for attention and I will never be accused of running back to him. I don’t feel that way for him now. He hurt me way too much and was never even sorry about it. He was just like everyone else in my life – they’ve all hurt me and didn’t even feel bad about it. They all taught me I’m nothing. So I have certainly moved on from the feelings I had. Of course I still care when something like that happens… I’m human and have a heart. And I’m not ‘over it’ in the sense that it ruined my life, so it’s hard to trust men anymore. It’s hard to feel anything for anyone anymore. And it’s hard to feel good whilst talking to ANYONE now, because the moment the conversation just stops, it feels like I’m being toyed with again, like he did to me. He broke me. And right at this minute I’m so sad and hurt by this.

 

If you treat someone to care, kindness, attention or anything good, and then drop off the face of the planet, you destroy their hope, their trust and their happiness.  You need to be a steady support for someone with BPD. We need to know you’re not going anywhere. I don’t have that luxury anymore. This guy might have not liked the symptoms of my illness that his endless abandonments and flip-flopping brought out, but had he treated me better, more consistently, it would never have set in my anxieties and doubts. If people want to see the best in me, they have to be the best of themselves, and if they can’t bring that to the table they should be honest about that. They should tell me they don’t want to hurt me… that they don’t want to mess me around…. that I deserve better. Then they should walk away and never entertain toying with my emotions again. I hope he’s grown up and learnt more since that happened. I never will see an apology for what he did to me. I have to accept this, and do my best to undo the damage it caused inside my mind. If I can’t undo it, I have to just try and survive it.

 

I really do hate that when people talk to me and I suddenly get all invested in them, as someone actually noticed me and doesn’t hate me, I have to stop and tell myself to calm down, don’t say the wrong thing and scare them off. Life shouldn’t be like this. But it seems to be for me. I live in fear of saying the wrong thing, coming on too strong (in a platonic way I mean) and putting people off. I’m extra-sensitive to everything at the moment… and I do interpret silence as a bad thing. I can’t stop these paranoid thoughts racing. I can’t stop feeling like people dislike me and want to avoid me. I try my best, but if I break my own silence and talk to others and have periods of communicating with people, I start to expect consistency, and nobody seems capable of maintaining that (I can’t really expect them to if I can’t do it myself….), so it triggers what would be considered the ‘depression’ phase in Bipolar. It’s like getting your hopes up and being let down, but this happening every day. It’s sickening. I don’t know if I’m explaining it well enough…

 

It almost feels better to have no expectation or hopes…. to expect the worst from everyone… to believe nobody cares about me….  because the minute I think maybe I’m wrong and someone does care, I’m just as quickly dropped back to Earth when they ‘reject’ me again. I can’t take the see-saw of emotions and the lurch in my stomach and the suicidal feelings that come from falling back down. I just wish people would stop picking me up only to drop me again. I hate being alone and wouldn’t wish for people to just eternally ghost me and leave me alone, but I wish if they picked me up they’d take care to not drop me, as I’m incredibly fragile at the moment. I need to be handled with so much care, and the problem is most people can’t manage a drop of care for me.

 

I feel it’s better for other people if they stay away from me at the moment. I don’t want this. But I’ll only end up mad at them for letting me down… and as nobody so far has been ‘all in’, and they have all been half-hearted about it, they’re only going to make me worse right now.  I don’t know the answer. I do know a lot of people with BPD reach a point they feel it’s better to not have any friends, as the relationship issues that stem from this illness are too much to bear. I want friends. But I want friends who are consistent, open in communication and who truly care about me. I think anything else right now is damaging to my mental health. Maybe isolating myself isn’t the best thing, but getting my hopes up at the slightest ‘like’ or word someone says to me… it’s breaking my heart slowly… because the truth is I’m alone. I have no friends. I’m nobody’s friend. And nobody cared enough to give me a conversation. They all walked away, whether by hurting me, just ghosting me, or leaving this world, none of them cared enough to give me closure. None of them.

 

I live in silent pain… unable to move on… unable to actually live. And nobody knows how lonely I feel, but how trapped I feel too… I have to be this lonely, because hoping for anything more only hurts me. I can’t even think of forming new friendships, because I believe I’m only tolerated at best… I hate every single thing about myself now. I hate how I look, I hate my voice… so much… I hate the way I walk. I hate the way I laugh… I just hate everything. I hate my personality. I hate being who I am. I’m still haunted by the beliefs from school – that I’m boring. I feel I’m an embarrassment to be seen with or to know. I feel so ashamed of so much about me. I feel judged for my illness. I feel misunderstood. I feel I’m not good enough for anyone. And I can’t trust anyone anymore. I doubt people’s motives. I believe people only use me when they have something to gain, otherwise they won’t talk to me.  I believe people will drop me as soon as they find out about my illness. I am such an ugly person inside and out, and I hate that I’m wasting oxygen while good people are dying. There is nothing good about me anymore. Anything there was, was killed off by people who never cared.

 

There’s too much damage to fix now. I have to keep people at a distance because they will hurt and abandon me. But none of them want to be closer anyway… proving my point. I just want someone in my life who looks at the horror that is me, and sticks by me regardless. Someone who sees something in me that I can’t see. Someone who won’t let go of my hand during the storms. Someone who has my back every time. Someone who reassures me of their care without me having to ask for it. Someone who communicates consistently and wants to soothe my emotions, not trigger them. I want this. I need this. But I can’t have this. Because if it was anyone in my life currently, they’d be doing this already. The only person I had who did this was my friend Liv… but she’s gone now, forever… there’s nobody else. So it means reaching out for new people – I can’t trust new people. I will never believe that anyone could like me or want to be my friend. The scar runs too deep. I’ll never believe anyone ever again.

 

I feel defeated tonight. I just want it all to go away. I want to not be me anymore.

 

 

 

The Unfairness Of Life.

*Swearing near the end*

 

 

I have just realised why nobody talks to me anymore. For so long I’ve wondered why…. what I could possibly have done to them all. I thought of every reason – from them having their own stuff to think about, to not knowing what to say to someone grieving and suicidal. But it’s finally hit me…

 

They don’t talk to me and don’t want to be my friends because I blog. Because I’ve blogged about what I went through with my former best friend. They think if we were friends and they fell out with me I would blog about them too.

 

I can totally understand this thinking as well. And I don’t blame them for it. I can see how it’s my fault that I’m alone now. And I feel I deserve to be alone. That being said, I am not to blame for everything. As much as this goes against what I’m saying, I do blame my former best friend… for all of it. She may have decided to abandon me for a blog I wrote last year. That may be where she’s pinning the blame. But we had issues before that blog. She was neglecting me before that. I was ill and paranoid and grieving, and dealing with all that alone. The initial blog that caused issues with us was not about her. It was about paranoia and how it manifests as jealousy and possessiveness rather than the insecurity and fear it is. I was talking about self-fulfilling prophecies. I was right to talk about that as it’s exactly what happened. What happened after that was a misunderstanding. I felt rejected by her and like a burden to her. So I gave her the space it sounded like she wanted. But that’s not how she took it. She thought I asked for space. So she was waiting for me to approach her again. I couldn’t do that. I’d been rejected. I couldn’t put myself out there yet again. I was locked within myself. I did the best I could at the time and used my blog to break out of the bubble and communicate. Perhaps my pain and desperation stopped me wording it right. I know a lot was misinterpreted by her. But that’s the blog that offended her and she’s used as a scapegoat to ditch me.

 

But that blog was not the cause. It was the effect. Her abandoning me was the cause. The pain was the effect – and I used my blog to express my pain. I was also using it to fight for our friendship, though it clearly wasn’t received that way. I could’ve done what she was doing to me and stayed quiet…. never spoken again….. let apathy and indifference win the day. But because I bloody cared…. cared too much…. felt too much pain at losing her…. I had to say something. I had to get her to talk to me, as I couldn’t talk to her. It just went horrifically wrong, which led to her attacking and blaming me for everything. That’s what killed our friendship. That, plus snubbing me after I extended an olive branch at Christmas. And then blocking me etc. But I reckon I’m conveniently getting the blame, for blogging. I blogged because I was in pain and had nobody to turn to.

 

But now I think blogging my truth has cost me everyone else. And I’m angry with my former friend for that. Because had she treated me well, understood my illness and intentions, communicated with me properly and not run away and abandoned me at my lowest, I’d not feel so desperate that the only way to stay alive is to blog and let it all out. But nobody wants to know me now, as they think they’ll be the next topic for my blog. Well yeah…. as things stand at this moment in time I’m beyond being able to cope, and if they are like everyone else and refuse to treat me with the love, care, consistency and respect I need, and intend to hurt me then yes, they would probably end up being blogged about. But if they were decent people and intended to treat me well, then that’s a different story altogether.

 

 

What it’s demonstrating to me, yet again, is that some of us are destined for a life of pain, betrayal and abandonment. Life and the people in it will not let us move on.

 

People have endlessly hurt, betrayed and abandoned me…. unfortunately not everyone can bounce back from that. So I talk about the pain I’m in, and people don’t want to be there to prove I didn’t deserve to be treated that way. Because they think they’ll end up being talked about too.

 

It reminds me of how guys don’t want to be with a virgin. So you never get to change the fact you’re a virgin, because nobody ever gives you the chance to be anything other than one. So nobody will ever want to be with you because of the inexperience … and it never ends.

 

Just like I used to be thought of as ‘boring’. But nobody ever gave me a chance to prove I wasn’t. They never wanted to be my friend, spend time with me and see I wasn’t as quiet as I seemed, and I knew how to have fun. They chose to judge me on the opinions of others.

 

And the biggest of them all – when you are mentally ill and deteriorating, people want nothing to do with you. They only want to be around positive energy and those who are recovering.  It’s been the most sickening lesson of all in the past year or two…. as I have become more ill, people have talked to me less.

 

They don’t want to be around people who are depressed…. I heard as much on my therapy course two years ago – it was the thing that caused me to walk out the room until the break. Being mentally ill is tough enough without feeling people won’t want to be around you if you show how you feel.

 

I’ve spent years not showing my reality. Hiding my illness and depression behind a smile and a mask. I’d probably fit the profile of someone ‘high-functioning’. Not so much nowadays. Now my meltdowns are more public. I’m spiralling out of control and struggle to do life like before. I can’t pretend to be okay anymore. And people aren’t okay with that.

 

Even my best friend of about 13 years didn’t like my reality when she saw it. Yes I wore the mask for her too…. afraid I’d be alone if the reality of how I felt was known. I wasn’t being deliberately two-faced though. I knew no other way. I’m the person who got up after a BCG injection, gave a smile and said ‘thank you very much’. I’ve always wanted to be polite and to not make people feel uncomfortable. I don’t want to worry people or upset them, or bring them down. I’ve always felt like a burden. The fear of disappointing people or putting them out is the only thing that’s stopped me putting myself in hospital. The three times I’ve needed treatment were horrible for me emotionally. I felt so ashamed and guilty. But since the last two times – two years ago nearly – I’ve never really improved mentally. I have however become better at hiding things to some extent… usually until the point I explode. I’ve become more volatile…. unpredictable… unstable in my behaviour – because I’m trying to pretend to be better than I am, because I know nobody cares how I really am… but it’s harder to do now, so I very quickly slip into my ‘episodes’.

 

But it’s something I have noticed before – if you post about achievements despite your illness, or you talk about progress, people like it and encourage you. But if you say you’re not doing so well they give you a wide berth. Well they do with me for some reason. I notice they don’t with many other people. That’s why I think it’s personal against me specifically … being ignored is seriously increasing my paranoia… which makes me more ill… which makes people stay away even more. It’s a vicious circle.

 

We were taught about vicious circles in therapy, and about breaking them. The only way I can break my vicious circle is to miraculously not be mentally ill anymore! To not be traumatised! To pretend to be okay! I cannot and should not have to do this. People should care. And even if I did pretend to be okay now, it’s too late – these people will never be my friends. They’ve seen too much of me falling apart. The people in my life now will not want to know me anymore. It’s ruined. For good.

 

So I’m going to have to leave them all behind. I don’t see any of them begging me to stay in their lives. I won’t be missed. I’m alone anyway, so it won’t make any difference to me. I’ve been talking into a void for the last few months, with nobody noticing or replying to me, so I’ll keep talking to myself, like every sane and rational person does!

 

I don’t think any of these people I considered to be my friends will ever understand just how embarrassing and humiliating it has been to have such a public breakdown… to not be able to contain it…. to lose control of it and for it all to unravel and get worse and worse, and no matter what you say or do you cannot make it better again…. they don’t know what it’s like to feel like they’re all standing there watching me drown, and they’re not even considering reaching out a hand to save me. I think they’re willing me to drown. Alone. And that’s what I will do now.

 

I have a choice… I can choose these people, who don’t talk to me and don’t appear to care about me as a friend, or I can choose blogging. They’ve made my decision easier. I choose blogging. It may have caused a fuck-load of damage, but given there’s nothing left now – I’m so far down this path now I might as well keep going, these people aren’t here for me, the damage is done, I can never imagine liking myself again, let alone them liking me again, and the only one that’s ever been there for me, besides my friend who killed herself three months ago, is this damn blog. I choose the fucking blog.

 

Maybe one day my life will start afresh… with people who haven’t seen what a total freak I am…. people who care…. people who include me….. people who never leave me feeling I might as well be dead….. but then pigs might fly! I don’t see that happening. I don’t see anything other than blackness, screaming, pain and death. Nothing can undo these past few months. I can’t forget what I’ve experienced with people. And they won’t forget what they’ve witnessed in me. So there’s no hope of recovering anything that’s come before. The only hope I have, which I honestly can’t see at this point, is to build myself up as a new person, with new relationships. But this illness will always be a part of me. I fear I will never survive in this ‘social’ world as long as I have this illness. The pain is too much to bear. And I will never rid myself of the memories and scars of the past couple of years. You cannot escape the past. And my past will be the death of me.

 

 

 

 

All I Wanted Was…

All I wanted was my best friend back.
That’s all I wanted.
To know she cared about me, worried about me, and appreciated me.
To have her reassurance…
To feel safe in our friendship….
To know she wasn’t going anywhere…
I needed that stability and safety…. my world had collapsed after my first loss.
I needed to know she wouldn’t abandon me when my mental health deteriorated.
I needed to know I could count on her.
I wanted her to love me at my worst, because that’s when I needed her most.

 
I wanted my best friend to research my illness.
I wanted her to try her best to understand BPD….
And the concepts of paranoia, splitting and trauma.
To do this much for me, as I would for her.
To learn how to better support me and preserve our friendship.
To not hold my illness against me.
To understand why I am the way I am.
And why I do the things I do.

 

I wanted to see my Godchildren – the reason for me living.
I wanted my friend to help me find that lost part of me again.
I had lost faith in myself and thought I wasn’t good enough for them.
I needed my friend to help me see this wasn’t true.

 

I wanted to be a part of their lives… to watch them grow up.
I felt so proud watching them learn new things.
It’s been 15 months… so much has changed. They will not remember me.
I wanted to continue being there for them for the rest of my life.
I pictured the future with them. Now that future is gone.
And I will never see them again.
It’s not like a divorce where both parents see the kids.
I have no rights.
No way of seeing them.
I’ve lost them forever.
I’m heartbroken.

 

I only wanted to matter to my best friend.
For her to want to talk to me, to see me, to fight for me.
For her to not turn her back when I needed her most.
For her to ease my fear that I was being replaced.
I wanted her to understand how worthless I felt…
That I didn’t feel I deserved her.
That I was scared of losing her.
I wanted her to ease my pain, not add to it.
All I wanted was for my best friend to not be like the rest of them.
To apologise and make amends.
To not blame it all on me.
To use the difficulties to make us stronger.
To prove to me that bumps in the road don’t mean the end.
To make me feel safe to be honest with her if I felt hurt.
To not just give up on me at the first hurdle.
To not ‘ghost’ me and walk away making me think she hates me.

 
All I wanted was my best friend to show me empathy and compassion.
Even if she couldn’t understand my illness.
I wanted her to tell me words I needed to hear –
“I care about you”
“You’re my best friend and always will be”
“I miss you”
“I love you”
“I’m so thankful to have you in my life”
“I’m not going to leave you”
Is it too much to ask for caring words whilst suffering?

 

All I wanted was my best friend to make effort for me.
To send me a note that she’s thinking of me.
To ask how I am.
To give me a photo of us, to remind me of our bond.
To send some flowers.
To invite me for a coffee.
Anything to let me know I existed and mattered to her.
To match my efforts.
All I wanted was for my best friend to notice how hard I was trying…
To cope with my illness. Alone.
To cope with my first major loss. Alone.
To sort things out with her, despite my illness, even though she had given up on me.
All I wanted was to feature on my best friend’s list of priorities.
I knew I was nowhere near the top anymore.
But I wanted to feel I mattered on some level.
I wanted to not feel like a burden to her.
I honestly believed I was.
I wanted her to treat me otherwise.

 

All I wanted was to put my mental health first.
For my friend to put my mental health first.
For my friend to agree it was important.
For her to understand why I had to make the decision to step back.
For her to realise if she couldn’t make a choice then I had to.
That it wasn’t fair to string me along.
That it didn’t mean we couldn’t talk.
That she overreacted by blocking me.
All I wanted was my friend not to hurt me.
Not to block me.
Not to remove herself from my group after finding out it would hurt me.
Not to reconnect with the one person who came between our friendship before.
To stop doing these things she knows would hurt me.
To stop doing these things TO hurt me.
To want to ease my pain, not cause it.

 

All I wanted was my friend to put thought into how to make it up to me.
How to resolve things with me.
To focus on that, and not do anything further to jeopardise it.

 
I just wanted to be fought for.
To matter enough to my best friend to not let me go without a fight.
To matter enough to just one person, to not simply give up on me.
As though I’m worthless.
Nothing.

 

I wanted to be able to live life.
I wanted my friend to wish the best for me in life.
I wanted my best friend to care whether I live or die.
For her to stop doing things that push me closer to the edge.
I felt she actually wanted me to kill myself.
I wanted this to not be true.
I wanted her to do anything to have me as her friend.
I wanted to believe I meant as much to her as she did to me.

 

Most of all I want this all to be a nightmare.
To wake up and have my best friend back.
And for none of this to have happened.
I want to be okay again.
I want to not be alone.
I want trust.
And hope.
I want peace.
And I want the pain to stop.

 

 

 

When All Is Said & Done…

*Personal post, but the message behind it will be used in an upcoming post about those of us with a mental illness & the expectations we should have of our friends, and that they should have of us*

Dear ______ ,

 

Okay, I’ve reflected some more and I’ve read back the blog I removed. I understand entirely how it would’ve come across to you. I understand and accept it hurt you. It’s not ideal how I communicated my distress. Although I removed it and apologised, I cannot take it back. I appreciate that. And I guess I can see why you blame me and can’t let go of it. I would find that hard too. I spent a lot of yesterday mentally beating myself up… thinking I deserved to be abandoned by you. Thinking it was all my fault. Thinking what a terrible person I am. I know how awful it was to post my feelings ‘publicly’ like that, and I regret it.

 

That being said, I have to draw a line at that and say I’m not taking all the blame here. Whilst what I did upset you, it was as a result of things you had done that upset me… we had problems long before that. I’m not saying you deserved it. What I’m saying is that I was not of sound mind…I was isolated… having a breakdown, was suicidal almost every day. I felt neglected, rejected and a burden to you, because of the way you spoke to me and weren’t talking to me. I had paranoia, which you didn’t understand and took personally. I felt you started doing something more once you knew it hurt me. I was calling out for friendship and support, and received none. I thought you didn’t care if I lived or died. And having rejected me and having made me feel like a burden, you were then sitting back and waiting for me to get in touch with you again – that was never going to happen… it was impossible for me to do that. The ball was in your court. I needed you to make the effort. But you never would have. Had I not blogged, you would never have spoken to me again. I couldn’t speak to you. So while it was not ideal that I blogged about it, I honestly didn’t know what else to do at that point. I did what I thought was best. Even if looking back I can see it wasn’t best, in that moment it was the only thing I could think to do, to break the deadlock and try to maintain our friendship.

 

I know that backfired, but I didn’t think it would in that moment. I did it with the best intentions in the world. I did it because I didn’t want to lose you  (fear of abandonment with BPD makes you do desperate things to avoid being abandoned… some that don’t make sense), but I needed you to understand that I couldn’t get in touch with you. I admit that my words didn’t come out in the best way. And for that I am sorry. But what I need you to understand is that I was in a very desperate, dark, lonely and painful place – I was being abandoned by my one last friend… I felt I was losing everything … after all my grief and mental illness over the previous year, I was now losing my best friend. It was gut-wrenching. I was hurt. I was scared. I was paranoid and splitting – I know you don’t understand how that feels or what it means.

 

I wish you could have read that blog and rather than seeing it as an attack on you, I wish you could’ve seen the pain in my words… the loneliness and desperation. That is all I’ve ever wanted from you… for you to put yourself in my shoes and understand why I feel how I do and why I do the things I do… to know there’s no malice there whatsoever. That I’m reaching out in that way because I care, because I love you and I’m scared of losing you. But you don’t see things in that way. You don’t appreciate my emotions. You choose to see the worst in me. That’s how it feels.

 

I’ve said before, my mental illness is not an excuse …  if I hurt someone then I have to be accountable for it… and I am … I do feel remorse and I do apologise. I know that my intentions were not cruel in the slightest. I know the purpose of what I wrote. And I do know that a lot of what I said was twisted by you too. But all that being said, I accept I caused you pain and I never meant for that to happen. I’m sorry. While my mental illness is not an excuse, I hope it is an explanation. That’s all I want – I don’t want to escape responsibility when I do something wrong… but I want you to understand why I do the things I do…. I need you to know that I’m likely to make mistakes when I’m in a high state of despair and desperation. And I need you to not abandon me because of it. I need you to cut me some slack when I mess up. I need your forgiveness.

 

My paranoia had me thinking that you meant me harm. That you were trying to hurt me. That you hated me. That you were playing mind-games with me… like others have in the past. Whilst it’s not your fault that I had paranoia, you were capable of helping to ease it, by reassuring me and calming my fears. But you didn’t do this. You took offence at everything and got funny with me…. this made my paranoia worse. You did feed my paranoid thoughts. I’m not blaming you. But equally I don’t want you blaming me for having paranoia… I didn’t choose it. It’s hell to go through. My paranoia played a big part in what I blogged. I can see it in the words I chose…. that I honestly thought you were a threat to me. If you cannot understand paranoia then you will never be forgiving of what I wrote. You’ll never appreciate that what I was experiencing was not reality… but that I DIDN’T KNOW THAT. I needed you to be forgiving and understanding. And while you may not have wanted me to do it again, you needed to work with me on how we could avoid the same situation arising in the first place… I needed you to understand the part you yourself played, and to learn how to help me earlier… how to communicate better and be pro-active.

 

I needed you to learn about my illness… to show an interest in finding out how best to protect our friendship. To not blame me for being mentally ill. I was experiencing new and terrifying aspects of my illness last year… I also needed stability, consistency, and certainty, and you weren’t offering me any of those. I felt out of control, and completely alone.

 

 

 

While what I wrote was something I wish I hadn’t, please try and understand that it came from a place the furthest from nasty. It was a moment of desperation, using the only skills I had available to me in that moment to deal with overwhelming pain and fear. I’m not making excuses. I’m not making things up to escape accountability. I’m just saying this was my reality. I do regret it, but I didn’t feel in control of it at the time… it was not done with any true ill-feeling to you. It was done with hurt in my heart at what my sick, paranoid mind was telling me about you. It was done to try and rescue our friendship from eternal silence. I wish I’d left it there now, as the hell it unleashed has done more damage to my life than anything else I’ve ever experienced. But please try and see it from the perspective of someone afraid to lose you, and who thought we would never speak again, and realise that I would’ve been right. You were waiting for me to speak to you. You have to accept that was never going to happen. And you need to accept that’s because of the things you said to me in the previous message. You had made it so I could not approach you again, and then you were sitting back, expecting me to do just that. It was an impossible situation, and I was trying to rectify it. It just went horrifically wrong. Please have some sympathy for that, if nothing else.

 

I tried to make it up to you afterwards. I admit, I didn’t feel it was my fault. The message I got in response to my blog was hurtful, because I knew what my intentions had been, even if they didn’t shine through in my words. I’d wanted to open the lines of communication, but I had no idea they would open so harshly. I felt attacked and misunderstood. I never wanted to talk to you again. But I took time to consider things from your perspective. I understood that your words came from a place of pain, and whatever you had going on in your own life at that time…. this was all I wanted from YOU. For you to understand where my words came from. I wrote to you, to explain, to apologise, to fight for our friendship. I extended the olive branch at Christmas. I sent cards and presents, knowing full-well you probably wouldn’t do the same for me, if you believed such awful things about me. But I still made the effort (which was the level of effort I had needed from you all year but didn’t get…). The whole point was nobody would make any effort for me. All my life I’ve been the one making the effort, chasing after people, begging for care, love and friendship. You don’t know what that’s like. I needed people, particularly my friends, to give it freely… especially at a time when I needed them, like I did last year.

 

So I sent to you… and all over Christmas I was met with silence. Not a card. Not a text. Nothing. It was only a month later when I chased you up yet again, that I learnt you had not opened the presents. You hadn’t given the kids their presents. This deeply upset me. I hadn’t held our disagreement against the kids, but it seemed like you had… I’d gone to a lot of effort choosing things, making things – I don’t know if you’ve opened them now and can see that, or if you’ve done what it feels like you did anyway, and smashed the lot and burnt it… that’s what I’d do if you sent it back to me. It feels like you’ve already done that by rejecting it anyway.

 

I had tried to resolve things. I’d fought for you where you wouldn’t fight for me. I had understood the pain in your words where you refused to do that for me. I had explained my mental illness and yet you still seemed to be holding it against me.

 

 

 

When it came to it you couldn’t decide what was best. You had said to me in your message that ‘nothing will ever be the same now’. You had talked to _____ about that and said you weren’t sure if things could ever be the same between us now…. you weren’t sure what you wanted. I accept that things wouldn’t have been the same… ever since you said they wouldn’t be, you made sure they never would be. But just because it wouldn’t be the same, it doesn’t mean a friendship couldn’t exist. You don’t just give up at the first hurdle. Look at your relationship – did you give up on it at the first argument? No. You fought for it…. because it mattered to you…. he mattered to you. Every relationship – romantic or platonic, has bumps and arguments…. you use them to make you stronger. You don’t just give up on the person. If YOU do, then it really is best you’re not in my life. I need to know people aren’t going to just up and leave when things get tough. I need that stability in my life, that I know people won’t leave me if we have a disagreement. I aired my feelings to Hannah about how something she did hurt me…. she handled it so poorly that I became afraid to address issues with friends again, in case they left me. And you’ve done just the same.

 

Do you honestly think that if I make one mistake that’s the end of the friendship? Do you know how that makes me feel? It makes me feel I don’t deserve friends. Please look at how you treated me last year, and this year actually – and realise that I still wouldn’t have given up on you. I was still there fighting for our friendship, knowing it wouldn’t be the same as before, but that you don’t just give up on someone. I may be the ‘mentally ill’ one, but I think my values are sound, and I understand the concept of ‘friendship’ better than many who don’t even have a mental illness!

 

Yes at this moment I feel far too hurt and angry with you, and in a sense I have given up on you. You have no idea what it took to get to this point though. I never gave up on you… until you blocked me. Twice. And then you removed yourself from my poetry group, just after finding out that it would hurt me if you did. I see that as malicious. There’s no good explanation for that. That was the final nail in the coffin. That’s when I feel I saw your true colours. And it was very upsetting to realise them. You probably thought I wouldn’t notice…. or maybe you hoped I would …

 

Even when I said I was taking a step back, and unfriending you, I didn’t give up on you or our friendship – I stated that. I said I was doing it for my mental health and a future friendship… I said when you were ready you could get in touch and we’d go for a coffee. But you cut off that option by blocking me. And then you claimed to have done it so I couldn’t see anything that would make me angry at you or resentful. That isn’t the truth is it? Because me unfriending you would’ve done just that. That was the point. You have a private account, as I do. There was no need to block me. The real reason you did it was to get back at me… to feel like you were the one in control. To have the power. You did it to punish me, and so that I couldn’t talk to you again. It was unnecessary, as I wasn’t going to talk to you again. I had put the ball firmly in your court for that. It was your move. You made the wrong one in blocking me. Then you doubled down on it, doing it on the old account, and removing yourself from my group. That felt spiteful. That felt like you had removed yourself from my group to get back at me for talking to _____ … like it was your only way to lash out at me.

 

At this point I don’t want you as a friend – not the way you’ve been behaving. As much as I miss our friendship, I now don’t know who you are because of what you’ve done this year. That being said, if you were to get in touch with me and apologise, and work your arse off to make it up to me for how you’ve behaved, then yes, I would consider our friendship again. I’ve only given up on it now because it seems pretty dead to me, from your behaviour. And because you’ve hurt me so much and seem to have no remorse about it. If that were to change then fine. But I don’t see it happening.

 

I understand you’re holding that blog against me. I can understand why… but at the same time I’m desperately sad that you couldn’t see the emotions and illness in the words I said. That you can’t forgive me and move past it like I tried to do with what you did to me.  You have no idea how many times I’ve had to forgive you for things in the past. I doubt you think you ever did anything wrong towards me. But I’ve always let things go for the sake of our friendship. That’s why it hurts that you gave up on me at what you see as the first hurdle. Because it’s not the first hurdle and I didn’t give up on you.

 

I will always beat myself up for that blog, thinking is that the reason I lost your friendship…. I will always think that’s why you abandoned me. It may be true. But it’s not the real reason I lost your friendship. I lost your friendship because you didn’t have compassion for the state of my mental illness. Because you weren’t there for me. Because you didn’t communicate. Because you gave up when things got hard. Because your heart just wasn’t in it. If you had truly cared about me, then no amount of difficulty would’ve stopped you fighting for us. If you were that heartbroken about losing me then you would’ve accepted my efforts to mend our friendship. You would’ve put in any amount of effort for me. The reason I don’t think you did, is because you blamed me. You were angry with me for the blog so you didn’t want to be the one to make effort for me. You didn’t think I deserved it after what I did. You thought I was nasty and intentionally hurt you. You thought I was the one who owed apologies and effort. And like a chump I did that for you, and it was all rejected. When the whole problem in the first place was your lack of effort for me. That was all I needed from you… effort. And I ended up being the one to show it, for you.

 

So I know that our friendship died through lack of effort on your part when I needed it most – when I was newly grieving after my medication wore off, and I was having a breakdown. You know, when someone has a breakdown they don’t always know what they’re doing… they don’t always make the best choices or feel in control of themselves. You need to be more forgiving of people with severe mental illnesses… we’re doing the best we can. And I tried to fix things afterwards. But no more.

 

At one point I said I didn’t blame you, and I didn’t blame myself – I blamed my mental illness. Well now I don’t. I can’t blame my illness – it’s beyond my control. I don’t blame myself. I do wish I hadn’t written that blog, but things were bad before that… so it’s not the cause of the demise of our friendship. That would be you. I was mentally ill. I couldn’t help that. You could’ve helped how you responded to that illness. One day I hope you’ll look back on the things you said and did, and realise that given the state of mind I was in, they were unhelpful and only worsened things in my mind and in our friendship. You’re not ready to see that yet. You said you didn’t blame yourself for where we were…. oh to have a clear conscience. I envy you. You continue to blame me if it makes you feel better. But blaming someone for being mentally ill is about as low as you can go. And that’s what you’re doing by holding this against me. I never took a break from our friendship. Never. I left you in peace because you had too much to think about to deal with me. I will not take on blame for being rejected by you. This was all your fault and your choices. You knew how I felt, and you chose to avoid me. You chose to tell me your priorities. You chose to not talk about things early on. You chose to react to my blog like you did. You chose to snub me at Christmas. You chose to not give the kids their Christmas presents. You chose to give up on me. You chose to block me, twice. You chose to leave my group. Your choices brought about the death of this friendship. Not me. Not my illness. Your choices. That’s why I’m hurt, and that’s why only you could ever revive this friendship, and I deserve no blame for it. I did all I could to make up for the one mistake I made while I was having a breakdown. I pushed myself through paranoia, isolation and splitting to try and sort things out with you. I chased after you on more than one occasion. And this is what you left me with. Silence. Friends don’t do that. You gave up on us. This is all on you.

 

I’m not going to spend the rest of my life blaming myself for losing you. I made a mistake during the depths of my illness. Any good friend would understand my illness and forgive me, knowing it’s not who I am. They’d understand when I push them away I need them to pull me closer… it’s then that I need love the most. Any ‘friend’ who gives up on me because of one mistake made out of desperation, paranoia and despair, a mistake I tried to make up for, was never truly my friend to begin with.

 

I always regret the bad choices I make during my BPD ‘episodes’ and my breakdowns….. self-harming at therapy…. begging and pleading with guys to help me after their behaviour made me feel unsafe…. ruining people’s days because I storm off…. degrading myself so as not to lose people I care about…. there are many things I’ve done that I wish I hadn’t. And they often replay in my head during my worst times… convincing me I don’t deserve to live as I’m that awful and pathetic… but I have to accept they are as a result of my illness. I am in extreme distress when these things happen and I need to learn not to kill myself over them. Everyone makes mistakes. My worst ones happen when I’m at my worst with my mental health. And they almost ALWAYS come from a place of love, fear or rejection. They do not come from a bad place. I know I’m not a bad person. I need friends who know that too, and remind me of the good in me. I’m sorry you weren’t that friend. Just be thankful you will never know the level of distress that drives me to do the things you think are unforgiveable. You’re lucky.

 

 

 

Now I have to face the consequences on my own. You’ve left me with nothing. It’s going to be hard to believe in myself again… or in friendship. I don’t think I ever want a friend again. I have to try and rebuild my life alone now. With no hope, no trust… nothing.

 

I may have hurt you with my blog…
But nothing hurts more than a friend who can’t see a mistake born of mental illness as just that, and holds your illness against you… using it as justification to abandon you. Nothing. This illness wasn’t my choice. I sometimes feel I’d rather die than live with this. I didn’t choose it. You chose to do the things you did, with the exception of your response to my blog – that I can understand from a place of pain. Everything else was deliberate. Your choice. Your fault. I will not be blamed for this. You destroyed me. You broke me at a time I needed my friends to help mend me. I was already broken… that was the problem… and instead of fixing me you tore me to shreds and scattered me into the wind. I don’t think I’ll ever recover from this. You gave me abandonment when all I needed was love. That’s harder to forgive than any words I could’ve said in a blog. You broke my heart.

 

We will never agree on what happened here, or who was at fault. The only difference I can see is that I was prepared to own up to my mistakes and fight for our friendship, whilst your choice was to blame me and give up.

 

If I’m wrong about you and all of this then I apologise. But I was paranoid. I was splitting. Your actions have only backed up everything I believed. You can’t blame me for my interpretation of events, when you wouldn’t communicate properly with me. If you really didn’t blame me… if you really didn’t want to lose me…. if you cared about me… if you felt guilty about your actions…. if you didn’t hate me… then you should’ve communicated that to me. By not doing so, and by ‘ghosting’ me, you communicated the opposite and affirmed my suspicions about you. I may be ill, but this is a hole you yourself have dug. Only you can get yourself out of it.

 

I will always be sorry for hurting you. That won’t change. But this is about so much more than that. You abandoned me at my lowest point. You killed our friendship. I’m very sad and hurt about that. And whilst I’m sorry for my part, I’m not the one who owes apologies or effort anymore. It’s the very least I deserve from you. I know I will never get it… but until then, you deserve my silence.

 

I wish I had mattered enough to you, to fight for us. Now I have to fight for myself and regain a shred of self-worth. I lost that and so much more when I lost you. Except I didn’t lose you…. you lost me. I hope you realise that in time.

 

 

 

 

Full Stop.

 

I’m struggling at the moment. It’s a difficult time of year for me. It was hard enough last year, not having the support I needed from friends. I’m anxious about that happening again and that I’ll end up isolating myself again. But this year it’s even worse. Not only will my best friend not be there for me, she’s given me even more to think about by blocking me.

I am so angry with her at the moment. I hate her for what she’s done. But that anger comes from feeling hurt, confused and frustrated. I don’t understand what the hell happened to us. I know I’m far from perfect. I’ve made mistakes… probably more than I would like last year, as I was having a breakdown. But as far as I see, the only thing I was guilty of last year was… being mentally ill … and trying to express my emotions and explain my thought processes, to help others understand why I am the way I am and how they could help me. I did nothing to deserve being treated the way I have been, and I really don’t understand what’s going on.

She said to me that I must think she’s heartless and doesn’t care about me … I’m afraid to say she’s very right at the moment. I didn’t think she was heartless until she blocked me. Who does that?? I had just expressed hurt at feeling rejected by her, and she thought the best response to that was to block me – the ultimate rejection of a friend.

I’ll tell you just how hard I’ve tried. Anyone who knows me or reads my blog knows just how ill I was last year. I was isolating myself. I was experiencing paranoia for the first time. I had no support, professionally or socially. I was splitting on everyone. Despite being too ill and too at risk to myself I pushed myself out of isolation and through paranoia, to talk to my friend, to try and save the friendship. Any effort I made was rebuffed. I WAS rejected by her a lot. And that bloody hurt me. It made me isolate more and made me more ill. I feel like she found every symptom of BPD and triggered each one off. And in my paranoid mind I feel this was deliberate. I do feel she did things to deliberately make me feel insecure, jealous, hurt and angry. If she read this she would be offended, rather than appreciating that her behaviour contributed to my state of paranoia. Rather than feeling bad for me that I felt a certain way, I think she’d be annoyed that I thought such things about her, and particularly that I SAID them! The only reason I’ve talked about these things is to explain my thought processes… so that she and other people understand how I form my beliefs… what they’ve done to make me think such thoughts and how it makes me feel. It’s never been about attacking her, and I’m so annoyed that it obviously came across that way to her. I just feel no matter what I say, nothing will ever make her see things as they are. And in my over-active mind that is because she’s just done with me and wanted an excuse to ditch me. So she’ll never listen to reason. Just like a previous mutual friend…. she didn’t want to change her view of things because she’d already discarded me. She obviously feels her life is better without me. So here we are.

But I fought for her. Even when I had very little fight left in me for even myself. I put our friendship ahead of my mental health… because she mattered that much to me. As soon as I said to her I had to do what was right for my mental health and take a step back, she blocked me.

I told her what she meant to me… I told her she was like a sister to me… that I loved her, cared about her and worried about her and all the family. I signed off my last message to her saying I miss having my best friend. She blocked me.

She didn’t like that I blogged about my feelings. So I stopped. At Christmas I wrote to her directly. She didn’t respond… I chased her up on it, putting in yet more effort for her that she would not reciprocate…. we discussed things a little…. I talked about feeling rejected a lot by her. She blocked me.

I sent her and the family cards and presents at Christmas along with a letter. The letter was for after Christmas. She read the letter, but didn’t open the presents. She didn’t give the kids the presents I made and bought for them. I wanted them to have them. I didn’t hold our falling out against the kids. I don’t understand why she did. This really upset me to hear. I had wondered why I heard nothing from her about it. She had snubbed me over Christmas. No card for the first time in however many years we were friends…. no text…. no thank you for the presents – no acknowledgement at all. I guess she thought if she didn’t open them she wouldn’t have to acknowledge them…. she was wrong. It was rude and very hurtful. I expressed being upset about this. She blocked me.

She told me she runs away when things go bad. I expressed concern about this as my illness means I have a fear of abandonment and rejection. I also expressed sadness that she could work things out with other people she’s not known as long as me…. so why not me? Was I not worth it? She blocked me.

I told her I needed to take that step back so I couldn’t see her posts anymore, as they were feeding my paranoia, and causing me pain seeing her move on happily with her life and her other friends, whilst dithering over whether to be my friend or not. I think this was not only quite reasonable but actually a sensible and mature decision to make. She blocked me.

I do not know her reason for blocking me. But as you can see above there are many possibilities. It could be because I was going to unfriend her. Maybe she thought ‘Well if you’re going to do it to me, what’s the difference me doing it to you?’… there’s a huge difference. I was only going to unfriend her. I hadn’t yet done it. So I was still friends with her when she blocked me. It was also done without an explanation from her, so was taken as yet another rejection / abandonment. It was quite a ‘final’ action. It’s a bit like slamming a door in someone’s face or sticking your middle finger up at them. I had explained quite reasonably why I was taking the action I was. It was to stop my paranoia and preserve a future friendship. It was for both our sakes. It was so she could continue to write freely about her better friends, and it wouldn’t hurt me. Win-win. Had I been able to do it that way I would have been the one to make that choice, and the paranoia would’ve ended. By blocking me she took away my choice. I had no say in if and when I could communicate with her again. She’s effectively said she never wants to hear from me again. I was afraid she could unblock me at any time and say something hurtful. Then I discovered you can block people who block you. So I can now take my power back. But she still ruined everything. Because where there was going to be an end to the paranoia she has denied me that. By doing something as stupid and dramatic as blocking me, I now have an endless amount of chaos in my head… so many bad thoughts about her and what her motives were. I wish she hadn’t blocked me. If she’d just accepted what I said and agreed it was best for now, we could have had a peaceful break and come back together again. But because of what she’s done I don’t think I will ever feel good about her again. She has spun my paranoia and splitting out of control. She can’t expect to close that door on me like that, move on happily with her life and then reconnect with me again in the future, with everything being flowers and rainbows. Blocking me was at least a passive-aggressive action…. if not an aggressive one.

I wish she could’ve communicated with me like an adult. I tried my best to do that with her, even though I wasn’t up to it. She didn’t know what the next step was. I told her it was to meet up. She wasn’t ready. Funny that…. I was the one who was wronged and yet I was prepared to meet her and talk, to save our friendship. Yet she needed more time. I don’t understand why she needed more time, but it’s fair enough if she did… I had to make that call in the meantime though. It wasn’t fair to leave me hanging, like certain other people did in my past. I deserve better than that. That’s why I did what was best for my mental health. I just wish she hadn’t crapped on that by blocking me. Right now my mental health is no better than before, because of her stupid action.

 

 

 

I’m frustrated because I don’t understand what the hell was going on in her head. And it was having such a huge impact on my life. And I was expected to keep it all to myself. She has a support network. She has other friends, a husband a big family. I only had her to confide in. It was unfair to expect me to know how to cope with things totally alone. I’m frustrated because no matter what I did I couldn’t turn back time. I couldn’t make things better. I couldn’t understand her or be understood. She wouldn’t listen to me. She wouldn’t be compassionate. She just kept getting colder and colder. I’m frustrated because I didn’t deserve that. I needed warmth. I needed love, care and compassion. I needed effort. I didn’t get it. But I damn well put it in, especially recently. I gave the effort I wish she gave me. And not only was it wrong that I did that when she wouldn’t do it for me, but she didn’t appreciate it at all. This tells me she gave up on me ages ago. And what frustrates me is I don’t understand WHY.

I can only assume it’s because of my mental illness. Either that or she just got bored of me. A lot of people do. I clearly didn’t mean much to her. She was prepared to let me go without a fight… thinking she hated me. She interpreted me isolating myself as not wanting her friendship, despite me repeating over and over again that it meant the opposite. I was pushing people away to see who cared enough to notice and pull me back. I wasn’t doing this knowingly or in a manipulative way… but it was a protective thing… to find out who I could trust and count on. Those who pulled me back I could then feel safe and secure with, and those who let me go were never really on my side to begin with… it saved me being abandoned further down the road. I needed more than anything to feel safe, secure and certain about the people around me. Nothing else in my life feels certain. With my illness nothing feels certain. It’s unpredictable. I don’t always feel safe – from myself, but also with my paranoia I don’t know what’s real.. I don’t know who I can trust… or what I can trust. I feel like people mean me harm. But also since my granddad passed away two years ago, nothing feels certain anymore. It’s changed the way I see life and the world around me. I need people around me who add stability and security to my life. I thought she was one of those people. But when I pulled away she made that wrong assumption, against what I was saying, and just let me go. I cannot express strongly enough just how much this hurts me. It is a hard pill to swallow, realising that someone who had been my rock all those years suddenly didn’t have my back at the worst time in my life… that they’d let me slip away without a fight. It’s not okay. I hope any reasonable person would understand why I’m upset about this.

When my granddad passed away I had just had my medication increased, so my emotions were numbed. I truly felt this. And at the time I was grateful for it. I’m now informed that this stopped me grieving fully until the effects wore off. By the time that happened other people had moved on and forgotten I was grieving. But for me it was new grief. It was all the things I hadn’t felt before when I was newly medicated. So a year ago, in the lead up to the first anniversary of his death, I needed my friends’ support more than they knew. So when nobody (except one person) was there for me it started off a spiral downwards in my mental health and how I related to other people. That’s what caused me to split on absolutely everyone and isolate myself as a result. The problem though wasn’t that my friend wasn’t there for me on that date… it’s that I didn’t hear from her for a couple of months and it was a reluctant message when it came. She thought I was annoyed with her when my problem was more with everyone else. I didn’t feel it was with her at the time. But it became about her as she appeared to assume it was so didn’t talk to me! We met and talked and said we’d never go through this again – we’d talk to each other next time…. fat lot of good that talk did! I saw her once more, this was in June last year, and then things started getting worse.

Any time spent apart was time for my paranoia and splitting to convince me that she didn’t really care and was simply tolerating me. She’d go weeks without talking to me at all. I was still isolating very badly. It was next to impossible to reach out, to anyone. It was nothing personal. I had to send the kids their birthday presents last year as I didn’t get to see them after February and only saw their mum in June. It was kind of her to post me my birthday presents, but at the same time I read into it that she didn’t intend to see me. It was bittersweet. I felt at that point she was done with me. I’m sorry but that’s how paranoia works. It infected my mind, and every action and every word was seen through the lens of paranoia. It was not a very nice way to feel about her. It’s partly why I kept to myself because it wasn’t fair to inflict that aspect of my illness on her. I knew that. It was not deliberate and it actually distressed me.

One aspect of the paranoia I found particularly distressing was in relation to her other friendships. This did not come from being possessive and thinking she shouldn’t have other friends. It came from insecurity about our own friendship because she didn’t show the same appreciation and effort for me as she did for them. We were rocky – not talking most of the time, and she was writing about the great time she had with other people – the great company and laughs etc. – I wasn’t jealous but I felt I was being replaced. And I actually started to think I deserved to be replaced. This is because I felt so badly about myself. My self-esteem and self-worth were six feet under and I felt inferior to these other people. I felt my friend deserved better. I thought she preferred the other friends – that they had more in common, being married with children, plus they aren’t as completely messed up in the head like me, and could be more supportive to her, more than I was able to be last year. I was also scared of losing her. She meant such a lot to me and I was afraid of losing her…

I wrote about this… about the fact that the fear of losing someone can actually lead to it being manifested. I was right. When I blogged about this – about paranoia, my fears and insecurities, I don’t think she was very happy about it. One thing I noticed after she read it was that there was definitely an increase in her writing about her other friends. Even a rational person would be forgiven for thinking it was deliberate. I was paranoid, so of course I was going to think the things I did. I thought she was doing it to punish me for not meeting her right away to talk about it (I couldn’t as I was overwhelmed and terrified of her. I thought she was angry with me and I felt under threat, so left it a week) …  I thought she may be doing it as a way of saying ‘I’ll do what I want’… as though me expressing my feelings about her posts was me saying she shouldn’t do it. This was not the case at all. All I was doing was explaining what was going on in my head and heart. I was pretty much seeking reassurance if anything. That’s all it would’ve taken. She gave none.

Every post since that was ‘evidence’ that she was trying to hurt me. Posts about Christmas with all their favourite people were digs at me, telling me I’m no longer one of her favourite people…. hinting about moving house was to make me feel abandoned and like I was going to be left behind now we’d fallen out…. the point was everything was hurting me. I didn’t want to stop her posting what she did. But equally I had to protect myself from it all. Taking that step back seemed a logical thing to do. I don’t understand her reaction to that.

She’s confused me so much. She twisted many things in her mind… thinking I asked for space when she was the one who told me her priorities, as though I was a burden. I gave her space she needed. This is a fact. She made it seem like the opposite. It worried me that she would never have spoken to me again based on this misunderstanding. It tells me how little I meant to her.

I knew that the only way to clear everything up and sort things out was to meet up and talk. We couldn’t afford to write to each other anymore as there appeared to be too many misunderstandings as a result. I felt far too upset by her to resolve anything in any other way. Things would only spiral further downwards until we met up. But she wanted more time. More time may have helped her be ready but it would also have made our situation worse, as it would’ve added to my paranoia and illness. Time is not going to heal this for me. Effort is what will heal it for me. Her effort. Time will only add to the ‘hatred’ I feel towards her. I’ve been put off for long enough… time is not what is needed… a difficult conversation is. If she didn’t have the balls to do that then that’s too bad. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it myself. But I knew nothing would improve until it happened. In my mind the next step wouldn’t actually have been meeting up. It would’ve been making up for what she’d done. Acknowledging where she went wrong, apologising… thanking me for the presents… and maybe making some sort of gesture to match my efforts. I feel that her reluctance to do that, or to know that’s the next logical step shows that she doesn’t think she did anything wrong. That she thinks it’s all me. That I’m the one in the wrong.

Everything she’s said and done has painted that picture that I’m the one in the wrong, and that she needs more time (to forgive me presumably)… it is usually the hurt party who ‘needs more time’. She acknowledged there’s a lot of hurt and upset, but it wasn’t clear whether she was taking accountability for that hurt and upset or whether she was blaming me for it. I hate that it looks like I’m in the wrong…. that she snubbed me, whilst I was chasing after her apologising and trying to make amends… I made effort for her… she showed indecisiveness about progressing, and then she blocked me, as though I was harassing her or something!! It pisses me off.

The fact is I was mentally ill, paranoid, trying my best not to inflict that on her or anyone, kept out of her way, felt shit about myself and inferior to others, thought she deserved better, wrote about my symptoms, apologised when I was in the wrong, kept a lot to myself… I was hurt, rejected, neglected, misunderstood and abandoned … blamed for everything…. yet I still made the effort, extending an olive branch at Christmas, which she snubbed…. I further chased things up, for peace of mind…. when she couldn’t make up her mind if she wanted my friendship or not, I made the tough decision of stepping back for my mental health, whilst leaving the door open to talk and meet when she was ready…. and then I got blocked.

It doesn’t make any fucking sense. It’s confusing. It’s not fair. I feel angry that everything she’s done has made me feel like it’s all my fault… even if that’s not how she feels about it, that’s what her actions have communicated to me, and that just adds to my paranoia and splitting and makes me hate her, for lumping that shit and blame on me, when the above paragraph is the truth. When I was the one who put in the effort for her that I needed from her. I get blamed and blocked. It’s not right. And I’m rightly upset about it.

I will not accept the blame for any of it because I know the reality. I was trying to communicate the reality. She knows her reality for sure, but wouldn’t level with me. It’s like in her mind she knows her truth and that’s enough to make the decision to ditch me. And I feel like ‘How dare you blame it on me?! Just admit you don’t want to be my friend anymore. Own it. Say it’s your fault. Don’t abandon me and then make me feel like I deserved it’. … I’m just at a loss for what to think and how to feel.

I’ve been unable to put it into words for a long time. I’ve tried. But because she misconstrued a blog post before and had a go at me for it, I lost my confidence in writing. I felt anything I said would offend her, so I started censoring my posts so much that I didn’t get the feelings out and it was a total waste of time writing them, so I gave up. None of my posts have ever been or will ever be about attacking her. They’re about explaining what the fuck’s going on in my head. It’s exploring my thoughts and feelings and making sense of why I feel the way I do. Sometimes I’ve wanted reassurance and understanding from others… it has been to communicate… communicating my needs. But if people are on the lookout for insults they’ll see them where they don’t exist. It upset me that she saw attacks where there were none. I remember the post that upset her she said that people will think she’s a total bitch who doesn’t deserve my friendship…. I was baffled by this because I had just written about the fact I felt she deserved better than me. How could anyone interpret from that that she didn’t deserve me. I have to understand though that she was obviously in a delicate place herself and on the defensive, so prepared for battle with me on anything I said.

I know I didn’t do anything wrong. I know it was a misunderstanding that got out of hand. I would’ve forgiven it had she had the courage to admit it and make up for it. But blocking me was the exact wrong way to go. Trouble is I’m an understanding person… I give people the benefit of the doubt… I defended her and made a lot of excuses for her that she’ll never know about… and I’m doing it now. I’m thinking about how she might be stressed or struggling with her own mental health at the moment, and has her own fears that manifest in the wrong way too. But I’m sorry… the time for making excuses is up. It’s been two weeks since she blocked me. That was a bad choice. I’m not responsible for her choices. I’m responsible for my recovery, and that’s something I need to focus on now I don’t have to worry about her. I spent so long fearing being abandoned, and being paranoid about her intentions that it was making me more ill. Now she has officially abandoned me and solidified the split and the paranoia, as upset as I am about it, I have to see it as a positive… no more uncertainty. I needed certainty… although I don’t know the reason she blocked me, blocking me is a sign of certainty. It is a ‘goodbye’ (more like a ‘fuck off’ but yeah…). I wanted certainty, I got it. Just unfortunately the opposite of what I wanted. But now I have to move on.

She may or may not regret the mistakes she’s made, one day in the future. It’s not my problem. That’s her problem. And if she wants to make things right one day then it’s 100% up to her to do so. I will make no more effort for that girl. I did enough and got snubbed and blocked for it. The loss isn’t as big for her – she’s only lost me. She has other friends. I don’t. She was my one and only real friend. I won’t ever have another like her – even those who say they’ll always be there for you will eventually let you down and walk away. I can’t trust anyone anymore. I can’t afford another loss like this. Not when so many wounds from losses are still wide open like they are today. I lost her, the family, the kids, my one and only friend… it seems like a bigger loss for me… I definitely think it’s more traumatic for me based on that alone. But I’m being told it’s her loss. Because she gave up on someone who wouldn’t have given up on her… someone who cared about her, put in effort for her… tried to be understanding and forgiving… someone who fought for her even whilst I was very ill. And she just let me go. So I’ve lost someone who doesn’t see me as worth fighting for… someone who refused to understand… someone who didn’t appear to care…. someone who didn’t put any effort in and who needed telling what to say and do next…. someone who just gave up on me. I’ve heard it said that ‘Is that really a loss?’

The loss I feel is the loss of the kids. I will never bond with friends’ kids again. It just means extra loss when the friend abandons you. I loved them so much and always will, and I’m heartbroken that I may never see them again. I already missed a year of their lives…. they won’t remember me. That bond was special and made me a better person. They were ripped from my heart against my will and it’s hard to not be angry at my friend for that, as I couldn’t see them if I didn’t see her. I need to take time to grieve for that loss. No other kids will ever be as special to me as they were… only my own if I’m ever lucky enough to have any. Even then, they’ll always be so important to me. They taught me a lot about myself and made me so proud to watch them grow. I hope they turn into lovely people. I’ll miss them so much. I wanted to be there forever. I never saw things ending like this….

 

 

 

This is a very difficult time. I find myself feeling similar to how I did a year ago… but I have to try and remind myself that’s in the past. Yes I’ve lost this friendship, but it doesn’t mean other people don’t care. And I’m going to start branching out soon hopefully too. All I can do is have faith and hope that things won’t feel this awful forever.

I’m trying my best to battle on… trying to return to volunteering again… physical illness seems intent on holding me back, but I have to try and push through. I am doing better than a few months ago. Heck I even managed to go to a concert on my own a few days ago – had to take a sedative to do it, as my anxiety was through the roof, but I actually enjoyed it and had a good night…. I then had a better feeling week… I even managed eight days without harming myself in any way. Yeah I’m annoyed that that’s all I managed at this point, but I’ll aim for nine days without it next time. Progress is progress. And I’m trying my best. That’s all I can do.

Nobody will ever know how hard the last year has been for me. It’s a miracle I’m still here, breathing. I guess pain means I’m winning… that I’m still alive and fighting… Trying to frame things more positively. It’s a work in progress!

Hope everyone’s well, and I hope to get back to blogging more soon… this one was about breaking out of the shell I was forced into, and assessing my feelings. I know it will have offended at least one person should they read it. But it’s helped me start to make sense of something that’s messed my head up entirely. It helps to let it out. I don’t ever want to let someone silence my voice again. It’s dangerous to stuff it down. I should know… it’s what I do best.

 

All the best to you all,

 

 
xxxx

The Urge To ‘Fix’.

I’ve always had this issue whereby if I have a falling out with someone, or feel in a bad place with them, I feel the need to ‘fix’ it, or resolve it as soon as possible. I guess this is to avoid the uncomfortable negative emotions associated with it.

I’m having to tell myself to leave it be for now. We need some distance. Nothing has changed for me – my circumstances are the same as a week ago, and nothing will have changed on their end, so for now I have to just accept things the way they are, and I have to try and tolerate the emotions and not overthink things. Easier said than done.

To feel a sense of peace, rather than the anxiety I feel right now, I have to see it as an ending at this point. We’re done. Yes, hopefully we’ll speak again at some point, but right now we’re obviously not good for each other’s wellbeing. We can’t be there for each other, and maybe the time apart will be a good thing. I have to try and believe that.

Yes I am hurt, upset and a little angry. There’s a lot I want to say. But that can come in time. Right now I need to get back to accepting reality as it is, and using it to push forward. I need to take this time to focus on getting better and not let it eat me up. Very hard not to obsess over it, especially late at night. Not been able to go to sleep until the early hours of the morning lately. My mind’s too active. It takes me to dark places. But I can’t let this destroy me. Must put it to the back of my mind and focus on what I have, rather than what I’ve lost. That’s my aim.

 

The List Of Chaos.

• I spend months talking about how I feel I don’t have any friends.
• I talk about feeling alone and like nobody cares.
• You asked me what was wrong, I said I felt invisible, like nobody cares, and I should just keep to myself.
• Your response was silence.
• You left me feeling invisible and like you didn’t care.
• You hardly speak to me anymore.
• You don’t tell me you miss me. You tell me the kids miss me.
• You don’t show that you care. You just say I am your friend.
• I tell you about my mental health, to try and explain my behaviour – you don’t want to hear me. You just get annoyed with me for not being the friend I used to be, and you’re frustrated that I behave how I do.
• You don’t seem to accept my mental illness.
• I write about my paranoia, BPD and self-fulfilling prophecies in relation to friendships.
• You message me saying you don’t know what’s going on but want to sort things out between us and talk of meeting.
• I am hypervigilant and paranoid however. I feel scared and under threat, so retreat.
• I feel ashamed and guilty for saying anything and burdening you, saying you don’t deserve having to put up with my illness.
• I pull away whilst I deal with a couple of things that were hard to cope with.
• I fight against my emotions, my paranoia and my illness, to contact you and suggest meeting to talk, so I can explain my illness. I admit I’m scared about it. I warn you things won’t be easy with me for a while as I’m ill, so if you don’t want to get involved you don’t have to. Last thing I want is to inflict my illness on you. I never expected you’d take this option.
• After a couple of days you contact me, don’t really acknowledge anything I said, and just tell me your side – you tell me what an awful time you’ve been having.
• You tell me you don’t know how to be my friend as you don’t think I want you as a friend. And you just wanted me to talk to you.
• You tell me things that make me feel guilty for having not been there for you – but how was I to know? I’m not a mind-reader, and I’m too ill to approach others and ask. Sorry I’m a rubbish friend. It’s mental illness – you may have understood if you’d listened to me.
• You say you need to focus on your own things.
• This makes me feel like something you can’t be dealing with right now. i.e. ‘a burden’.
• You then tell me you are my friend and you are here for me, despite giving the impression you cannot be here for me. Empty words.
• You showed no compassion for my ill health or suffering. And made no reference to meeting up anymore.
• I  show care that things have not been good for you.
• I assure you I wanted you as my friend, and thought the same about you.
• I repeat that I have a mental illness, one I was going to print stuff out about, to give you to understand better.
• I acknowledge that we obviously need space to focus on our own issues.
• I show concern for something that you mentioned, and wish the best for that situation.
• I close my account.

 

 

• I have no clue how you could think I didn’t want you as a friend.
• I had been calling out for you to be my friend for months.
• The post I wrote about paranoia was based on my illness, but on our friendship too.
• I wrote about feeling possessive and replaced.
• I feel replaced.
• I was replaced as ‘best friend’ when you got married. He became your best friend – as he should be. But to someone with BPD it is still a painful feeling of rejection.
• Wanted to explain this to you.
• Being the only single person left, I feel lonely and I feel less important to you, now you have a family.
• I now feel replaced by your other friend who you frequently post about – you have more in common, family and all… so I feel inferior. This comes from low self-worth / self-esteem.
• You may not like ‘possessiveness’ or ‘jealousy’ but it comes from valuing you, and feeling inferior and insecure. I would have hoped you would respect this and reassure me, rather than feed my insecurities further.
• I wish you could understand my FEELINGS instead of taking offence at my words.
• You seem to look and sound happier with these others friends who are married and have children. It kicks in the thought that you’d be better off without me dragging you down. Whether this offends  and upsets you or not, it’s how I feel. I feel inferior and like a burden to you.
• You have confirmed this by your message.
• You have confirmed my worst fears. That you don’t want to deal with me anymore.
• You want to focus on your personal life.
• I know this will be untrue. You will see the other friend, who isn’t a ‘drag’.
• She will become the new ‘best friend’. And that fear of being replaced will also come true.
• I just wanted you to understand where my fears come from…
• I wanted to explain ‘splitting’ to you as well. It is beyond my control. It is like watching back a movie of your relationship with someone, which has been edited and only shows you the negative times. You know that the positives exist, but they’re not connected to the movie you’re watching. It is not deliberate, and is not about you. It is a faulty thought pattern caused by my mental illness. It distresses me.
• I wanted to explain this to you. But you avoiding my illness, and rejecting meeting to learn about it, and responding how you did has made me split even further. It’s just added to the problem and made it harder to fix in the future.
• My paranoia at least is not paranoia now. It’s just true. But I do still have paranoia and I wanted you to understand how hard it is to cope with that, when you’ve never had support for it before. It doesn’t just go away.
• I wanted you to understand my fear of abandonment, and that when I shut down it is self-preservation mode. It is me trying to protect myself from losing you. I don’t chase people anymore. I withdraw.
• I wanted you to know it’s because you matter to me that I fear losing you.
• I sense the changes. I noticed the way you spoke to me changed. I was aware of the amount of time you’d not talk to me.
• I was paralysed by depression and paranoia, so I couldn’t take the initiative and speak to you, no matter how much you wish I could. I wanted you to learn why it’s impossible for me.
• I felt you had expectations of me that I could not fulfil because of my mental illness.
• I know you want me to be who I was before, but I’m sorry I can’t do that right now.
• I wish I could. I hate feeling suicidal every day.

 

 

 

• You wanted to meet to sort things. I was afraid and overwhelmed, so didn’t agree to at that time. Then when I said about doing it, you seemed to have given up on the idea. I just feel you don’t understand mental illness at all. I couldn’t talk to you. I was scared of you!
• It took so much strength and courage to agree to meet and talk. So it was a blow when you didn’t accept it.
• I don’t understand how you could think I don’t want you as a friend, when I have shown over and over how desperate I am for you to show me your friendship!
• You are a closed book, so I had no clue you felt this way, or had problems.
• I never hid how I felt. So you cannot say the same.
• I know you have your issues. I actually care about you and your family.
• I cannot help not being there for you. I beat myself up for it. Literally. My hand is bandaged from doing so!
• I understand you might feel the same, that you cannot be here for me.
• I understand you may have felt too much pressure to be here for me, but please understand that I am desperate. My life has spun out of control. You cannot expect out of me, what you would expect from any normal person, or even what you expected from me in the past. I’ve never been this ill. I don’t always know what I’m saying / doing… I’m just trying my best to survive. Being judged for the way I do this is not helpful.
• It could be you are struggling with mental ill-health too, and I’m sorry if that’s the case. But I don’t know about it. I cannot help you if I don’t know anything. You cannot expect me to just know these things.

 

 

• I was upset nobody was there for me on the first anniversary of Grampa dying.
• That is where my splitting and paranoia started. It felt the worst that you weren’t there. I thought you would understand and support me. But you then went two months without speaking to me, before writing a less than caring message.
• I am grieving. I went into the ‘depression’ stage of grief and haven’t come out of it. I thought you would be more understanding of what grief can do to a person.
• I’ve never grieved before, not like this, so I needed a steady friendship and security to feel safe in a world that suddenly feels unpredictable and scary.
• Grief and the longest and worst crisis I’ve ever experienced, mixed together, and having to deal with it all alone is hell, and I wish you understood that.
• I don’t have other friends like you do.
• I don’t have a partner like you do.
• I have a tiny little world.
• I haven’t seen anyone socially for four months, since the last time I saw you.
• I don’t have someone to confide in.
• I am alone now.
• I feel suicidal every day now.
• I feel you wouldn’t care if I followed through with it.
• I feel you don’t value my friendship or my life.
• I understand you have your own life. To be fair I haven’t exactly ripped you away from that life this year. On average I saw you less often than once a month.
• I know you have to focus on your family.
• But you make me feel like I’m too demanding for wanting a friend.
• You make me feel how Joe made me feel… like I’m too much. Too needy.
• You made me feel worthless.
• However unintended that may be, it’s how you’ve made me feel.
• What if I died tomorrow? Would you wish you’d cared more when it mattered? Or do I really not matter to you now?
• After your message I wanted to die. Or I wanted to put myself in hospital.
• I ‘just’ harmed myself instead.
• I couldn’t find my diazepam to calm me down. I panicked looking for it.
• I had to just get through it and keep myself safe.
• I’ve appeared strong and positive the last couple of days.
• Today was hard.
• I had so many thoughts and words in my head, which I tried to write out, and I just couldn’t do it.
• I eventually found this way of listing my thoughts clearly. It’s helping.

 

 

• You may feel like a victim to my mental illness and my behaviour.
• But you don’t communicate. You expect me to just know. And then seem to hold it against me for not knowing… making me out to be the bad guy – like I’m selfish.
  But you don’t take the time to understand my illness. If you did some research you might understand how I’m feeling right now. I’d do it for you if I found out you had an illness.
• I feel like a victim.
• I’m already a victim of my illness.
• I feel like a victim of isolation and loneliness.
• And now I feel like a victim by the cold abandonment over the weekend.
• I feel like you see me as the one in the wrong here. But I cannot see it that way. Because I know about my illness. I know my limitations. I know how desperately I cried out for help all year, to have it ignored. I know my symptoms. I know I say and do things that might not be the best idea – but if you understood the illness you would know it’s never about you. It’s about trying to rid myself of overwhelming emotional pain and suffering. I know I have paranoia. I know everything I’m going through. But I know nothing of what you’re going through. And you seem to expect me to. You then imply you can’t deal with me anymore, and need to focus on you – as though I’m asking too much of you… making me feel like shit… how is that fair??
• I am hurt.
• Maybe one day things will work out.
• But it needs to be acknowledged that you’ve hurt me.
• Perhaps I hurt you. But I’ve told you multiple times I am ill. And you don’t talk to me, so I never knowingly turn my back on you at your worst times. But you did.
• I will forgive, but I don’t think I can forget… again, a part of my illness.
• One of two things will happen… either I will get better, on my own, and we will rekindle our friendship, when I’m in a healthier, stronger place. You will want me back as a friend once I’m not this ill. Or we’ll never speak again. And you can tell me how much you care about me, at my funeral.
• All I wanted was for you to hear me, and understand I’m not being difficult or awkward – I am ill and you’re seeing my symptoms. I wanted you to treat me with the kindness needed to survive a mental illness that kills 10% of those who have it.
• I wanted you to care. To really care about me, and to show it.
• I’m sorry you couldn’t do that.
• Goodbye.

Better Without Me.

One of the most distressing feelings I have with BPD is a feeling of paranoia and ‘possessiveness’ when it comes to friendships. I haven’t always had it. It seems to be when I’m under more stress, or my mental health is worse like it is now. If I hardly hear from a friend anymore, and I see evidence of them having fun with someone else, seemingly happier without me, I feel a pang of something… it’s not jealousy… it’s not even possessiveness as such. It’s more a kick to my self-esteem. It just starts me attacking myself.

I have no issue with friends of mine having other friends. Yes, perhaps I’m a little envious of them having other friends, when I don’t. I only had the one in the end. And of course it kicks in the loss of all the friends I did have before 2012 happened. But it’s not a problem.

The problem is I automatically go to ‘I’ve been replaced’. ‘That person is their new best friend’. ‘They’re happier without me’. They look it. They sound it. They have more in common now with the new person – I’m single, childless, depressed and suicidal. Why would anyone choose me as a friend? I feel I’m being ditched. This could be because of my mental illness, telling me this is the case. It could be because life has changed, and I used to see my friend once or twice a week, when our lives had more in common, and this year I’ve seen her seven times in nine months… twice in January, twice in February, once in March, twice in June…. with two lots of three months in between where I don’t even hear from her… maybe that paired with my mental illness makes me arrive at this point, of feeling it’s over. I’ve been replaced by someone better.

I know it might not be that I’m being replaced… she might just have several friends. But the reason it feels that way is because she sees other people, seems happier and more like her old self, she doesn’t see me, give me the care and understanding I need… and all of that mixed in with the paranoia and depression, and the state of my mental health right now, it tells me … that she’s better off without me. That if she’s friends with me anymore it’s purely out of pity or just because we’ve been friends a long time.

I feel us drifting apart, and nobody can understand what that does to someone with BPD and a fear of abandonment… to lose your rock. To see it happening gradually over time. It’s mental torture. In some ways it’s worse than a sudden abandonment. Believe me, I wish I could be one of those laid-back friends, who you don’t see for ages, but you don’t stress about it, you never doubt the friendship and you pick up where you left off. Perhaps in the past I could have done that. In fact I think I have. But so much has changed in a year or so. There’s so much I had to go through alone. So much that happened that I wanted to share with someone, and I have nobody to share it with. To ask what I’ve been up to since the last time we spoke or met… that’s three months… you’d need three days to hear the answer. I feel so disconnected… detached… and it’s nothing personal. I feel that way to everyone and everything. I feel like I’m a non-existence just floating around a world where everyone else lives. It’s not just about her. But it feels worse towards her, because I felt so close to her. It’s like it would feel if I felt disconnected from my family…. thankfully I’m not. They’re the only stable thing I have left, and they’re always there. But to have someone who felt like family drift away over time – yes, maybe because of circumstances beyond their control – but to have so much distance during a mental health crisis… for so long… that they feel like a stranger to you… it is hard to get your head around that. It’s not just your common ‘friends become strangers’ thing either. I’ve had that happen many times in my life, usually brutally. This is something else. This is ‘It FEELS like we’ve become strangers’ but I don’t just feel disconnected from her… but also from existence. Therefore it is hard to challenge my thoughts, because I’m disconnected from life. It’s like the thought is floating around in my head, and normally that would be fine, because I am grounded. But I feel like the thought is floating around in my head… and I’m floating around in existence. So nothing feels safe. Nothing can ground me and reassure me.

But more than this, if I expressed my feelings about this, I don’t believe I would be reassured. I believe having these sorts of paranoid thoughts about friendships will actually push people away. Like if I’m ‘possessive’ over my friend – or seem that way based on my mental illness and paranoia – it will make me a less desirable friend. It will make her more likely to replace me with the other one. I also wouldn’t believe it if I was told I’m also her friend. I’d feel it was pity. When I expressed pain at the distance between us before, I heard things that made me feel I’m ‘too much’. That she needed a break from me… time to focus on herself and other things. I respect this. Six months of this year I’ve respected this and kept to myself. Respecting it doesn’t mean I’m not hurt and won’t sometimes express that hurt. What am I supposed to do? Suffer in silence? I have nobody to talk to about anything.

I know I’m too much. I know people need time away from me. I know my mental illness is draining, and I have nothing good to offer anyone at the moment. I know that all I am is a burden. I know I bring the mood down – why do you think I keep to myself nowadays?? I know my inner turmoil when expressed, makes others feel like shit. I know people would be happier with me dead. Okay. I know that. I know I’m just one more problem that people don’t want to have to deal with. I don’t need reminding of it by people I care about. I’m too much. And I don’t matter to people.

All I’m saying is that I saw this coming. I always knew life would change and I’d lose relevance. But while my friend’s life has moved on, and she has other priorities now, I’m still traumatised and stuck in a time she’s left behind. It’s not her fault. But I wish people could understand this. While their lives have moved on, my life was destroyed in the process and I’m still living in that time. Losing a social life doesn’t exactly help me to move on and find my own happiness, and to evolve with them. So when I say I need my friends, it’s because I have nothing else. And when I feel like I don’t have friends it hurts … because I’m still stuck in 2012, and it’s like losing all my friends all over again. It’s magnifying the fact that I STILL have no friends… I’m STILL stuck here.. and everyone else is merrily moving along with their lives, forgetting me, and expecting me to save myself…. alone. 

I would have loved to share in everything with my friend. To have found someone for myself, and to have children at the same time as her, so our children could be friends, and I’d be part of the ‘club’, and everything would be happy and jolly and great… it KILLS me that that’s never going to happen. It KILLS me that I’m watching her go through all this, and I’m just a nobody… I have no children. I have no relationship. I know nothing of the world she lives in, and we both know it. I remember with another friend who used to rub it in my face, that I don’t know what it’s like to have XYZ like she had (like a house, partner, pets, job etc) – because of course I have and always have had NOTHING. So I don’t know the stresses of life for people who have it all do I….? So if I get upset about not seeing my friend, or not feeling like she cares, I know that the inner response at least, will be ‘You have no idea what it’s like trying to juggle all the things of an adult life – you live at home, don’t have a partner / children, a job etc.’… exactly. I don’t have any of that. And if you knew what it was like to not have any of that, and to lose all your friends as they move on with all of that, you’d never think something like that again. I actually feel like crying now, I’m that upset by it.

I don’t have the life I wish I did. It hasn’t turned out how I thought it might. It’s paralysing. It’s frustrating. It’s deeply upsetting. I know that people are busy. I know my friend is busy. I know she has a lot to think about.  But this year I feel like a burden. I feel she’s reached the point where something had to go… and it was me. Her boring old, whiny, depressed drag of a friend. And if she hadn’t already concluded that herself, then me expressing my feelings about it will have done it for her. That’s what I mean – it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, but one I couldn’t avoid. My BPD and fear of abandonment saw to that. 

I honestly believe she should dump me as a friend, and find her happiness again without me. I’ve been such a drag the last few years. She won’t know who I am now. I’m different. All the years she’s known me she’s never seen me as bad as I am now. I’ve had low points, and she’s stuck by me through all of them. But this is something else. This is the lowest point ever… mixed with grief, trauma, isolation, and all the worst parts of BPD coming out in me. That’s something I’ve not had before. The symptoms ripping through my life like they have been and still are. I have had the symptoms before, but never to this extreme. It’s not in my control. And I hate who I am. I would be hurt, but I wouldn’t blame her if she gave up on me. She should. I’m not a good friend to her anymore. In fact right now I’m doubting if I ever was a good friend to her.

I’ve become selfish. I’ve closed down from everyone – I find it hard to talk one-on-one with people anymore… I wouldn’t know how to talk with her. I’m struggling so much with not wanting to live, that it’s hard to think of the feelings of others. People might think me pulling away from them is because I don’t care about them. This isn’t true. I just don’t think they care about me, and it’s protecting me from that. But when they don’t try to pull me back, that tells me I was right, and I never mattered to them. Self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s one of the hardest aspects of this mental illness. The fear of abandonment makes you pull away, and you end up abandoned anyway. And logic would say just to not pull away, but that’s rational logic, in a sound mind. And that’s where we end up feeling so misunderstood. Because people think of us in terms of ordinary thinking / behaving people. So they don’t understand why we say and do the things we do. 

It’s exhausting having this illness, trying to stay alive and trying to battle crippling paranoid thoughts… this is the first time in my life I’ve experienced paranoia to this degree, and it’s hard to challenge anything as I feel so detached from reality. And the trouble is that people’s responses matter. If they’re upset by my paranoid thoughts, and respond to me in a short, sharp, defensive way, it won’t help ease the paranoia… it feeds it. That’s been my experience this year. It makes me detach from reality even more. It makes me think they’re mad with me… they’re getting fed up with me… I’m ‘too much’ again… they’ll leave me for sure now… So it’s become this thing lately that it’s better to keep to myself, because anything anyone says is highly likely to make it worse. Even if they’re trying to be helpful I’m hyper-sensitive at the moment, and see everything as a threat… an attack… a veiled abandonment.

It’s like in my mind at the moment, people can’t do anything right. My friend will have a very hard time reaching me now. I will analyse every word said, and every word NOT said. I will say I want to know she cares, and then not believe her when she says she does. I will hear reasons as excuses, because of past experiences with people she knows about. I will not trust in the long-term, as things have improved at times and then reverted back to this, and I’m sick of that rollercoaster. But mainly I just don’t know what to say to her anymore. And it’s not fair on her. It’s not fair that she would have to walk on eggshells. That I don’t trust her or believe in our friendship anymore. It’s not right for her to feel neglected by me. Or criticised by me because of my paranoia. It’s not fair on her to make bits of effort, like I’ve wished for, for so long, and to have those bits of effort rejected, because I can’t communicate anymore… because too much is going on inside me to be able to form words and converse with her. I know how unfair it all is on her. That’s why I know she’ll be better off without me. I don’t want to be the cause of unhappiness for her. I’d rather she was happy with her new friends, and her family and didn’t have to worry about me anymore. Yes it would break my heart, but I live with a permanent broken heart anyway, because I feel like a burden and I feel neglected. No point someone else being dragged down with me. 

Inside I feel flooded with devastating emotions and so much pain and distress… but outwardly it’s like I’ve turned to stone, and silence is my preferred response.  It’s not about ignoring people. It’s just not having the words. I’ve written blogs, I’ve made videos… I’ve said all the words I possibly could. All were ignored. I’ve lived my life quietly this year, without anyone to confide in. It’s hard to open up again. I don’t feel I want to. I don’t feel I can. I’ve accepted my fate, and that I’m alone and have to do things alone. I don’t know how you can ever let people back in once you’ve reached that point.

I have just reached the point where I have to live each day suffering. I have to take it a minute at a time, and those minutes are filled with paranoia, self-hatred, screaming emotions and suicidal thoughts. But I have to just tolerate every minute, and not beat myself up for feeling how I do. I have to accept that my thoughts may just be paranoia… that in this moment I cannot safely challenge those thoughts… I just have to hold on to the belief that one day my mental health might improve, and I’ll see the truth more clearly, but that right now this is me, and what I think and feel is my reality, even if others think it’s distorted. I have to just bear the pain and the sick feeling I get when thinking about everything, and just breathe. For so long now I’ve been screaming inside to ‘fix things’… to get rid of the horrible feelings, as I feel they’re going to lead to my suicide. But now I have to stop looking at the bigger picture of life, of friendships, of my mental illness, and take it a moment at a time and just survive the little moments. Hopefully recovery will happen in its own time. Hopefully resolution of friendships will occur on their own, either by people going above and beyond, or by walking away. I have to ignore the cries inside about losing people, and focus on not losing myself to this world. I really want to at the moment. Nobody in this world knows how much I want to not exist right now. Everything is too much. And paranoia is scary when you’ve never really experienced it before. I have to wait a month to see my doctor. It’s going to be a long month. I wonder if I’ll hear from CMHT by then or whether they’ve rejected me already. Life is so difficult right now. I’m trapped within myself, and that inner experience is hell. 

When They Ask… Tell Them…

*Note: This is not a suicide note… just me expressing the hurt I feel*

 

 

When they look back one day, wondering where it all went wrong…. what more they could have done to help me… why I didn’t ask for help…. tell them this…..

 

The signs were there. They were always there. They just didn’t want to see them. They just didn’t know what to do with them. They didn’t want me dragging them down with me.

 

I asked for help too many times to count, ranging from hints to blazing great statements. The most I got was a ‘like’. This says ‘I hear you’. It does nothing to help. It seems the more you ask for help, the less likely people are to give it, as they think you’re attention-seeking. But I only asked so much because it was never given.

 

Eventually I stopped reaching out. This did not mean I didn’t need help. It meant I realised my friends would never be there for me. They would always ignore my pleas. It hurt less to stay quiet.

 

They could have saved me six months ago. I made a video. I blogged. I tried to tell them I was starting down a path I knew would kill me. They ignored me then, they ignore me now. Now I’m so far gone I’m not who I was six months ago. There’s not enough of me left that’s worth saving. This is their fault. They could have stopped it going this far. They didn’t. Now there’s no way back.

 

At the time my granddad got sick, I was split from my friends, because of Hannah and others. At the time he passed I was still not connected with people properly. When I did my charity run in memory of him, hardly anyone supported me. On anniversary dates nobody was there for me. When I was away somewhere totally alone, and an important date happened, I reached out, and was ignored.  Nobody is ever there for me when I really need them. They don’t care about me and they don’t respect me. This is what killed me.

 

The isolation I feel because of grief, and because of my illness, is something they could have done something about. They should have been there. They’d better not come to my funeral and cry, or act shocked and upset and talk about how much I meant to them. I doubt they would anyway, as clearly none of them feel that way about me. But if they can’t show it in life, don’t you dare pretend to care in death.

 

Where it went wrong…? Try 2012. Try Gill and Sam. Try Hannah. Try Joe. They destroyed the person I once was. Other contributors: bullies at school; all those who shut down my voice because of my different political views; all those who publicly humiliated me; therapy gone wrong & the handling of Matt; losing Grampa & not having support from friends, plus family falling apart because they hurt my family; all the times people ignored me and excluded me; the world forgot me.

 

What more could they have done…? They could have listened. They could have responded to me… acknowledged me…. cared about me. They could have treated me like they did everyone else. They could have shown me not only was I visible, but I actually mattered. They could have said sorry when they hurt me. They could have changed so as not to hurt me again. They could have put in more effort. They could have spent more time with me. They could have told me they loved me…. that they missed me…. that they appreciated me. They could have included me more. They could have told the world, or even just me, that they were lucky to have me as a friend. They could have fought harder for me when I pushed them away. They could have learnt about my illness and how to make things better between us. They could have noticed me.

 

Tell them:

I only ever wanted to belong somewhere. I only wanted to love and be loved. I only wanted to feel accepted. I wanted a friend. I wanted a life. I wanted what you all had. Or at least a chance for it.

 

Tell him:

I never saw you as ‘the awkward loser’ or a consolation prize. I just hadn’t had any experiences with men. I was too new to it all. I liked you. I felt a special connection with you. I wish you had told me you felt the same, instead of settling for her. Who knows where I’d be right now. Perhaps I’d have a life worth living. I’ll always resent the way you ended things between us. You hurt me.

 

Tell her:

You ruined my life. You took everything from me. I hate you with every fibre of my being. You don’t deserve what you got. I could have achieved so much, but you destroyed it all. For a friend you showed very little care for my wellbeing. You got all you wanted, at my expense. I’ve never recovered from your betrayal. You killed me.

 

Tell him:

You destroyed my faith in men. You broke my spirit. You never deserved my love.

 

Tell him:

I loved you. Though it made no sense. I never felt so strongly for someone as I did for you. I only wished to have the blessing of you in my life, in any capacity. My soul recognised a kind soul… a beautiful soul. It could never recover from losing you. The pain of loss will be with me beyond the grave. I miss you.

 

Tell her:

One day we were friends. Through thick and thin. She came back into our lives and you took her side. Things were never the same after that. I always doubted my place in your life.  I knew that your circumstances would make us drift apart. I wasn’t wrong. You have no time for me now. All that time I was ignored, nobody was there, you were only there once I disappeared. You asked if everything was okay, I told you it wasn’t – that I felt invisible and like nobody cared… that I should keep to myself – silence was your answer to that. I’m sorry that the loss of you upsets me. I have nothing now.

 

Tell them: 

I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasted so much of your time, and zapped you of your joy. I’m sorry I was a burden. I’m sorry I was so demanding, and needed your friendship, for lack of anything else good in my life. I’m sorry I didn’t have the luck and success you had. I’m sorry I couldn’t be someone you wanted to have as a friend. I’m sorry my life was over before it began.

 

Why didn’t I ask for help…? I did ask for help. I prayed for help. I screamed for help to the bitter end. I didn’t give up without a hell of a fight. I deteriorated over an extended amount of time, but more rapidly in the last six months. Gone is the woman with a kind heart, a friendly smile, and anything to add to the world. I was reduced to a girl barely holding on… defeated, scarred, screaming bloody murder and suicide from the loneliest pit of despair. The care for others has gone. Everything’s gone. No joy, no hope. No more pretending. So distant from everyone, they’re practically strangers now. Not one of them helped when they had the chance. They let me die. I called out to them. I asked them to stop the hijacker taking me. They didn’t. They thought I was talking bullshit. But one day they’ll know. They’ll know I needed their help and they let me down. They could have saved me, but they chose to let me die.

The Unwritten.

 

 

 

“Hi, I hope you’re okay. I’m really sorry it’s taken me so long to get in touch. I wasn’t sure what to say. The longer I left it the harder it got. There’s been a lot going on at this end, and I’m finding it hard to juggle everything. I should have said something earlier, to let you know what was happening, and I’m sorry that I didn’t. I didn’t mean to hurt you or make you feel you were alone.

I know you’ve been having a really tough time, and I’m so sorry I haven’t been there for you. I know anniversary dates can be difficult, especially as this was your first experience of it… the first one. And I’m sorry nobody was there for you, that must have been hard. But I do care about you, and of course you were in my thoughts. I hadn’t forgotten, I’m just rubbish at communicating at the moment. I know he meant a lot to you, and he’s still with you.

I haven’t been avoiding you… I know it seems that way, but I promise I haven’t. There’s just been so much to think about, that it all got too much for me, and I had to have some time on my own, to be able to cope with it all. I didn’t mean to make you feel so alone though. I promise I’m not abandoning you, I just have to get my head around everything that’s going on in my life.

I’m still here, and I still care about you very much. And I miss you. The kids do too, they keep asking about you. You’re a special friend to me, and I’d hate to lose you from my life. I wish I could take away all the pain you’re feeling right now, or at least help you carry it. I want to see you be happy. I hate to see you so upset. I’m worried about you… please don’t do anything to yourself, I need you… the kids need you. It would break my heart to lose you.

Even when I can’t be there for you I want you to know you’re in my thoughts, and don’t ever doubt my care for you. It’s unconditional. You’re my best friend, and I’m so thankful to know you. Things will get better I promise. Please look after yourself.

xxxx”

 

---

14/05/18

 

This is what I would’ve written to me if I was my friend. This is the message I needed to hear at this time. It acknowledges and validates my pain, it explains the absence, but doesn’t guilt-trip me for being upset. It shows care and concern for me. It leaves a good feeling. It’s reassuring and compassionate.

 

Sadly this is not the message I received. It was quite different to the above. I shall take more time to reflect on it, but so far it’s left me with a sense that I am a burden, I’m selfish – only thinking about myself, and not my friend. Lack of apologies. No mention of caring about me. No compassion for my first anniversary date, just telling me they don’t get any easier – doesn’t inspire me to continue… and making it sound like ‘we all go through it’ – which is what I figured my friends thought anyway. Sorry for being a ‘newbie’ to the club….  Cold. Bitter. Withholding of care. These are the immediate senses I get from what I’ve read.

 

I feel like I’m a bad person for not being there for her, but she could have told me much sooner, what was going on, and that I hadn’t lost her. It’s far too late, and the message hasn’t actually reassured me, because there’s no heart in it. I feel she’s angry with me, and I’m meant to feel guilty and ashamed, and selfish… which I slightly do right now. But I am also angry as a result… as I am done being made to feel guilty for being abandoned and hurt by people. I’ve had way too much of it in my life. It’s time people owned their behaviour and stopped trying to spin it round on me. I deserved an apology or care, one or the other at least, and I feel I received neither. Those closest to me are going to have to start trying to understand my illness. Our friendships won’t work otherwise. They have to acknowledge and accept my triggers and avoid them. And they have to start thinking about ‘tone’, and showing more care, concern and compassion. I will be writing a blog about this soon.

 

I understand she’s been busy, and she’s had to focus on other people – I totally get that, in fact I’ve written about it before … that I don’t expect to be the priority … that family is much more important, as it should be. I’m not saying she should’ve taken her focus off of them and focused on me. What I’m saying, and what I’m upset about, is that she could SEE I was in pain and heading to a very dangerous and lonely place. I was crying out for help! She could SEE it, and she couldn’t take sixty seconds out of her day to send me one caring message, to say she was thinking of me. I wasn’t worthy of sixty seconds. THAT’S why I’m upset. I’m sure I’ll get over it. This is just a tough time, for everyone. But I am allowed to be hurt by that, and to take my time to recover from the whole ordeal of the past couple of months.

 

One good thing I suppose, is when I began reading the message, I thought ‘Uh-oh, this has that tone to it, where it’s going to upset me and trigger me…’ I actually got supplies ready to harm myself. But then I picked up a stress ball and tried breathing slowly whilst I read the message. While the message did upset me, I haven’t yet harmed myself because of it. I know there’s still time, but at least I was able to put it off initially.

 

One thing I’ve done is closed my account, and removed everyone from my old one. I’ve turned my phone off. I don’t want to talk to anyone right now. I will ‘talk to’ my blog, and people on Twitter, as they’re the only things that have got me through the last couple of months. People might not like what I say on this blog, but they have no clue what it’s like to have my voice silenced, and to be made to put up with being mistreated. None of them know the level of despair and emotional pain I’m carrying. They’re not capable of knowing. Unless you have BPD you cannot even imagine the intensity of the feelings. I will keep talking here, as I’ve been advised to by people who understand the dangers of me not talking. Those who can see how close to the edge I am, and who understand mental illness, particularly the one I have, say it’s important to just keep talking. I know I saw it as a mistake to talk about these things here. But only I know where I’m at right now. Only I know the consequences of shutting down entirely. I know how close I am to jumping in front of a train, or off a bridge, or doing something else. I can’t let those thoughts win. I can’t let these people win. I have to keep fighting, for my family. They’ve always been there, and I know they always will. That has to be enough for me for now.

 

---

 

15/05/18

 

Having slept on it… I’m less upset. I’m able to look at potential reasons behind the message I did receive. Of course it would have been nice to get one like the one I wrote at the start – that’s what I needed. But some people have the knack, others don’t. I have to accept people as they are. In time I will respond, and it will actually be with compassion and concern, just as I needed. But at this point in time I have to protect myself, and that means keeping away from everyone. I’m sorry. It’s better that I distance myself, work out how I feel, think of a response and take my time to write it… otherwise I might say something I can’t take back. I actually feel quite proud of how I’ve coped with this so far. I’m doing what’s right for me. I avoided harming myself yesterday. And I’ll let the answer come to me in its time.

 

In the meantime I’m going to be writing posts about what we as people with BPD need from others. In therapy I’ve often been told to treat myself how I would treat a friend, or how a friend would treat me. The letter I wrote at the start is how I wish my friend had treated me… and it’s what I would say to her if she was going through what I’m going through. It’s what friends are meant to be there for… so knowing what I’d have said to her, means I’m closer to knowing how to speak to myself… it’s progress… it’s knowing how I deserve to be treated and spoken to. It’s been a way of telling myself what I need to hear. I’m thinking of doing a collection of letters like this to myself, from all the people who hurt me in my past… the things I wish they’d said, which they never did. It might build my self-worth up a little, and who knows, it might even fool my mind into thinking they were sorry for what they did!! If nothing else it’ll get all the pain out of me.

The next post will be based on this experience, putting it to good use and hopefully it’ll be helpful to others, whilst expressing my needs. Best get working on it!

 

xxxx

 

 

It Hurts…

 

 

That you would see me crying, and feel no pain at my suffering.

That you would hear me say how alone I feel, and feel no responsibility as my friend to make sure I know I’m never alone.

That you would interpret my words as an attack on you as a person, rather than as an expression of inner turmoil and mental illness.

That you know what I’ve been through with other people, and put me through the same.

That you weren’t there for me on the one year mark… as I was reminded of the loss of my granddad, I faced the loss of my friends too.

That you continue to be distant, knowing I’m in pain… knowing I’m lonely… knowing I want to die.

That you have no fear of losing me.

That you expect me to do things I’m not capable of right now, like reaching out to you.

That you don’t understand my illness.

That you aren’t willing to make allowances for me.

That you aren’t prepared to make the effort.

 

 

That you stood by and watched me drown.

That you couldn’t even show you cared about me.

That you left me for weeks, thinking I was a terrible person, that nobody cared, that I’d lost everything, at a time I was already incredibly vulnerable because of the one year mark, and having nobody there for me.

That I’ve slowly been losing my importance in your life, just as I feared would happen five years ago.

That you agree with me, that I’m not worthy of happiness, friendship and love.

That you have given up on me, just as I’ve given up on myself.

That you see no hope for me.

That you can’t handle my depression anymore. You can’t. What about me?

That you’ve forgotten I exist.

That you would sooner lose me as a friend, than do what’s needed to save our friendship.

That you always abandon me at the worst times.

 

 

That I have to hold all this inside and say nothing about it, because it will upset you… so I hide it for so long that all it does is hurt me over and over again… until I get to the point I can’t take it anymore.

That you would rather I hurt myself than be honest about why I’m hurting myself.

That I matter so little to you.

That you don’t think I’m a friend to be proud of. I agree though.

That you could see me spiralling down, and did nothing to catch me.

That you didn’t communicate with me if there was some reason you couldn’t be there for me… therefore letting me fill in the blanks.

That you knew what this was doing to me, and didn’t care.

That you obviously wanted to communicate something negative to me by withholding care and support.

That you’re probably now offended, but don’t give a fig about the offence I feel at being ditched by everyone at the worst point in my life.

That you’ll blame me for all this, when it could have been fixed with a bit of effort.

 

 

That I wasn’t even initially upset with you – it was everyone else, but then you acted like the rest of them, so now it’s you too.

That I expected more from you. They were just acquaintances neglecting me. You were my best friend.

That you didn’t want to learn about my mental illness, to better understand me and to help our friendship.

That you are abandoning me because of my mental illness and grief.

That you know I’m scared of losing you, but you didn’t put my mind at ease, if there was a good reason for not being there… you let me fall apart instead. You let me believe you didn’t care.

That you would rather I killed myself or ended up in hospital, instead of feeling like I’m ‘controlling you’ – even though that’s not what I’m doing. Even though expecting you to make the next move is not manipulating you, it’s saying that I can’t open up to you because I believe you don’t care anymore. Even though I have crippling depression and don’t trust anyone.

That you know I’m paranoid at the moment, and your silence and neglect has allowed all these thoughts to fester, but you will be offended that I think them, even though you could’ve nipped it in the bud and told me you cared about me and that I’m not alone.

That you’re a closed book, so I can’t know if there’s a reason you’re neglecting me, but I’ve made my pain and despair so obvious you couldn’t miss it… and still, nothing.

That you can’t understand what assumptions I would make from that.

That when things got tough, you walked away… just like the rest of them.

 

 

That even you couldn’t see my worth in the end.

That you found it so easy to walk away, seeing me in desperate pain.

That you didn’t ask if I was okay, even though the answer was obviously no.

That you communicate through silence, and you clearly don’t care what happens to me as a result, as you can see for yourself what it does to me.

That I don’t know if you’d even come to my funeral at this point… if I did make that choice. Would you even care then?

That I feel like I’m dead to you and you wouldn’t miss me if I actually was.

That you were like a sister to me. You were my best friend. And I never pictured life without you.

That you said I’d never lose you, and yet here we are…