Soon.

*Suicide theme*

 

 

I never recovered from Adam disappearing on me.
I never recovered from the things Nick said.
I never recovered from the things Joe did.
I never recovered from Gill’s betrayal, and losing her and Sam.
I never recovered from how Hannah treated me.
I never recovered from losing Grampa.
I never recovered from therapy and my attachment to Matt.
I never recovered from being neglected on the first anniversary of my loss.
I never recovered from all the abuse online last year.
I never recovered from the way you treated me.
I never recovered from you ghosting me, like everyone else did.
I never recovered from you blocking me.
I never recovered from Liv taking her own life.
I never recovered from your absence in the wake of that.
I never recovered from losing Chloe and Logan from my life.
I never recovered from losing you.

 

I never recovered.

Not from any of it.

Do you get it now?

Do you understand why I changed?

Do you understand why I’m desperate to end my own life?

I never recovered from any of it. The experiences I had, built up and became too much.

I wasn’t just battling one thing at a time. I was being hit by all of these things over and over again, each time a new loss, a new traumatic event or anything remotely painful occurred.

I can’t recover from any of it. I never will.

And you turning your back on me when you did, that was the terminal moment of my life.

That was the moment I knew I’m destined to take my own life sooner or later.

When I had you I had at least the hope of recovery. I had something worth recovering for. I had the kids. I had someone I thought cared. I had someone who never gave up on me.

But you did.

You gave up on me too.

Now there’s nothing left.

To fight against that mountain of loss and trauma is hard enough.

To have to do it without your best friend by your side is impossible.

To have your best friend jump up and down on top of that mountain, increasing the load, is unbearable.

The worst part is that you never were to understand the layers of trauma and pain I felt.

You could never sympathise, as you didn’t know the mountain of memories and emotions on my shoulders.

You didn’t know the burden I had to carry.

I carried it alone.

I didn’t want to burden you or anyone else.

And somehow I still did.

Even keeping my distance from you, I was still ‘too much’.

You walked away.

In my mind and heart I feel you never thought of me again.

You were happier.

You were free.

You forgot all about me.

You were friends with Sam, with Gill, with Hannah – you replaced me with her.

What a win for them all… to know we’re not friends anymore… that you cut me out.

Eight months… eight months since you blocked me… the first time.

You blocked every way of me connecting with you again.

You moved house, and told me nothing of it.

Can you not see the pain that would cause?

What did I do to deserve all this?

I can’t recover.

I won’t recover.

This is too much.

I have no life to return to if I do recover.

Everything is gone.

Liv is gone. You’re gone. The kids are gone.

Everything has changed.

All the people who were once my friends have grown up and created lives for themselves. You would know – they’re your friends now.

And I’m stuck here. Powerless. Paralysed. Unable to change. Unable to survive. Because you all destroyed me. You all took my trust and my care and crapped all over it. You left me a broken mess on the cold floor. You left me too traumatised to even move anymore.

With you in my life I could see a little light.

Now there’s pitch black.

There’s only the desperate urge to end this life.

There’s silence.

No friends. No connections. Nothing.

Just emptiness and anticipation of death.

You did this to me.

I wish you could’ve understood the weight I carried in my heart and my mind, from all that’s scarred me forever.

I wish you would’ve helped bear the load.

I wish you hadn’t added to the pile.

I remember at therapy, with my attachment to Matt, saying that I knew I was facing another loss, which would add to the pile of loss and pain… the unresolved trauma. I was right. That’s what happened.

A lot has happened since then, to add to that ‘pile’.

You.

Liv.

So much more.

What makes it the worst is I didn’t want any of this.

I didn’t want to lose you.

I mentioned stepping back for my mental health and our friendship.

I never would have blocked you.

You made it permanent.

Why??

Why do you hate me so much?

Do you not understand what you’ve done to me?

Do you honestly want me to kill myself?

Is that it?

Because if not then you’ve gone about everything so utterly wrong.

Do you know that I’ve written you a note for when that time comes…. and something I wanted the kids to know too….God knows how I’ll get it to you, now I don’t know where in the world you live.

But do you really want me to leave this world thinking you mean me harm and hate me? Do you want to have to live with that on your conscience for the rest of your life? That you could’ve sorted things out with me and not pushed me towards this certainty with your cruel abandonment, when I was already breaking under the weight of everything else in the last ten years…

How will you live, knowing you could have done something to prevent this?

I deserved more.

I deserved enough respect to talk to me, and not just abandon me so casually.

Did thirteen years really mean so little to you?

Did I mean so little?

In the last three years a lot has happened…

I had to learn to live in a world with grief in my heart. Real grief. My first loss.

My world changed. I never recovered from that.

I had a breakdown at therapy and went down a slippery slope with my self-harm. I never recovered from that.

I was neglected by everyone… I was isolated whilst experiencing this new grief, and the breakdown of my mental health. I never recovered from that.

I felt you pulling away from me… a long abandonment over about a year. I was right to fear losing you. That fear affected me in ways I never expected. I will never recover from losing you and the kids.

I lost Liv…. five weeks before I was finally set to see her again in person. It would never happen. I’ll never get to talk to her again. I’ll never get over that….. now I want to be with her. I don’t want to exist in this hell of a world, where nothing is right, and nothing is left, and I’m buried under that mountain of hurt and loss. That mountain you stuck your flag in, to claim a victory over me, as you blocked me… taking all the power for yourself to decide when I may talk to you again.

You won.

You defeated me.

Well done.

You were in control.

All the good it’ll do you when I’m gone.

But I feel you don’t care an inch about that.

But let me tell you, from experience…. losing a friend to suicide is one of the most traumatic things you could ever experience…. all the words you never got to say to them…. the questions unanswered…. feeling you could’ve said or done something to stop it happening. It’s a brief moment and they’re gone. You can’t change it. You can’t get them back. You have to live with the burden for the rest of your life. It’s a burden I can’t carry…. not on my own…. not now I’ve lost you too.

But you’ll be alright. You have lots of other friends to help you carry ‘the burden’ of losing me, should you feel anything about it when it happens.

You’ll never have to feel what I feel now.

You’ll never know how alone I’ve felt.

You’ll never know the weight I carried in total isolation.

You’re lucky.

You’ll quickly recover.

You don’t have my illness.

You weren’t screwed over by everyone you ever trusted.

You don’t have my memories.

You’ll survive.

You survived losing me as your friend. You chose it. You’ll survive losing me forever. As far as I know this is it for us forever anyway…. that’s how it feels. So you’ve already adjusted to my absence. It won’t make much difference my being gone.

And you’d better not cry, or come to the funeral – not that I’d have one… nobody would be there.

You could’ve done something… all you had to do was care. All you had to do was put our friendship ahead of your pride. All you had to do was talk to me.

You just had to not walk away from me at the lowest point of my life and treat me like I was nothing.

But then I guess I really am nothing.

If I was anything to you then you would’ve stayed and fought for me, like I tried to do for you.

You wouldn’t have given up.

You wouldn’t have run away.

Everyone runs away.

It’s the biggest sign they never cared.

Nobody ever cared.

I was just a game to them all.

A game of ‘power’.

I’m done being a pawn in a game of ‘control’…. simply used to boost the ego or get something.

I may not deserve more.

I will never have more.

But I’m done.

I won’t be used anymore.

I won’t be ignored anymore.

I won’t be mistreated anymore.

I won’t BE anymore.

Soon.

 

 

 

* Just expressing feelings. I do feel all this, but it’s not imminent,
so nobody worry about me…. not that people tend to…*

Things I Wish You Said.

These are things I wish people had said to me when it mattered…. this can be from friends past and present, family, bullies, men, or anyone who ever crossed my path and left a mark in my life. The impact of these few words would be tremendous for someone like me. So it’s sad that I’ve rarely heard such sentiments. The fact these things most often have gone unsaid has broken me. A series of imperfect people in this imperfect world, neglecting to be kind or help at all with a sense of closure, have left open wounds all over my body and soul. I know life doesn’t always allow us closure…. but from guys disappearing from my life, to friends betraying and hurting me with no remorse, to nobody saying I mattered to them, to leaving it too late to say ‘I love you’ and never being able to hear it back, to being ripped away from someone I was attached to in therapy… it’s all too much. All I’ve ever wanted was ONE person to prove that there can be a good ending in life. After too much of it I put my final faith in therapy, thinking they’d help me do this. They did not. It was a missed opportunity. So I struggle on with life, awaiting the next hurt, the next betrayal, the next loss, knowing I will never hear a single one of the things I need to hear in order to heal….

 

• I’ll never forget you. I’ll always remember you.
• Your friendship means / meant a lot to me.
• I’m glad to have known you.
• I miss you / I’ll miss you.
• I’m sorry. What I did was wrong. Please forgive me.
• I love you.
• I care about you / worry about you.
• I value you.
• You’re special.
• You’re beautiful.
• I couldn’t live without you.
• You’ve give me such lovely memories.
• I’m flattered you feel that way for me.
• You deserve better than me.
• Is there anything you want to say or to ask me?
• I lied to you. I lied about you. I’m sorry.
• I was selfish. I’m sorry.
• I let you down. I’m sorry.
• You have every right to hate me.
• I trust you.
• I admire you.
• You matter to me.
• You’re not a burden, and I’ll kick the ass of anyone who makes you think that!
• Thank you for everything you do and for being you.
• I believe in you. I have faith in you.
• I’m proud of you.
• I have your back.
• I don’t want to lose you.
• I’m not going to leave you.
• Nothing changes how I feel about you.
• You’re a good person.
• You mean the world to me.
• I’m so lucky to have you.
• I will help you through this. You’ve got me on your side, we’ll do this together.
• Your feelings matter most to me.
• I had feelings for you too.
• I made a mistake.
• I never wanted to hurt you.
• Losing you was painful for me.
• I wish I could undo what I did.
• You didn’t deserve that.
• I wish we could have had our chance.
• I wish I’d met you sooner.
• You make me happy.
• I want you to be happy.
• You deserve to experience love. I hope you’ll find it soon.
• I understand you.
• I want to understand you.
• I want to learn everything about you.
• Tell me how you’re feeling…
• It’s okay that you feel that way.
• You’re not alone.
• I wish you well.
• Goodbye.

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…

 

 

Open Letter To My Friends.

 

To my friends,

 

I’ve been distancing myself from you all, and from ordinary life. I wanted to take the opportunity to explain and apologise for this. I think all of you are aware of my mental illness. I’ve always had this illness, so it’s nothing new. But having said that it has not been this bad since long before you knew me. This has been a steady, slow-building problem, but predominantly worsened by the events of last year. The combination of family troubles, my first loss and my struggles at therapy have dragged me down lower than I can remember. Ever since I had my breakdown during the therapy group in week three, my life has changed. I am under the control of self-harm again, and although I had been harming before that happened, I had control over it, not the other way around.

 

My depression has worsened. This has changed me into a person I no longer recognise. I feel ashamed. I feel hopeless. My self-esteem is under 6 feet of earthworms. The depression I feel has triggered off the worst parts of my BPD. It has convinced me that you all hate me, you’re sick of my negativity, you’re all going to leave me (stop talking to me), that I’m an awful friend, an awful person, and nobody cares. This in turn made me defensive. This made me push you away, to force what I saw as a done deal.

 

I tried reaching out in the earlier stages of this, but I went unnoticed. I took this as proof that nobody cared, and that I’m as irrelevant and worthless as I feel. Before I pulled away from everyone I went through the first anniversary of the loss of my granddad. I posted about this a few times, and I’ll admit I am upset that none of you commented, messaged me or anything, to show support. I guess having not personally gone through this experience before, I expected that’s what people do, as I’d seen them do with other people. Perhaps I’m wrong. That’s what upset me though. It felt like nobody had my back, which triggered a whole wave of memories for me. It also felt like nobody saw the value of my granddad. I now realise it doesn’t matter, because I know his value, and my family do. It just would have been nice to feel supported at that difficult time – the first I’d experienced.

 

It made me ‘split’ on you all. It made me think you were ‘bad friends’. And I’m sorry for that. I haven’t reconciled it with the truth yet, as I’ve still not spoken to any of you. But you’re not bad friends. This was just unfortunate. People get busy, and have their own issues. I know I’m not that important in life. And to some I’m probably viewed as ‘an acquaintance’ more than I am ‘a friend’. So I’m expecting more from people than is reasonable, based on that fact.

 

I didn’t come off of Facebook to make people care, or get attention. I did it, because being on there, feeling invisible and still resentful that nobody supported me, and seeing everyone chatting to each other while I felt ignored, was making me feel worthless. It was like a dull stab in the heart every time I logged in. So I had to protect myself from that feeling. I found refuge on Twitter and on my blog, because my voice felt more heard there. I didn’t feel as irrelevant as I felt on Facebook. My blog became my outlet for my emotions, as I tried to not be taken over by self-harm. It’s saved me on several occasions… but in the process I fear it may have damaged relationships with some of you. This has made me scared to come back, and to talk to you again. As I’m in a paranoid and guilty state, I detect things like a change in ‘tone’, or I notice things that aren’t said. I make assumptions that you’re upset with me. Or that you’re despairing of me. And it makes me shut down, as I don’t know what to say in response. I don’t know what to say to you. I’m not ignoring you because I’m mad with you. I’m not ignoring you to upset you. I’m ignoring you because I can’t see a way out of this mess I’ve created in my head. I haven’t found the right opening yet, to free me from this mental prison. I need reassurance, care and warmth – but I feel undeserving of it at the same time, for the way I’ve been these past weeks.

 

 

I came off to protect myself, and avoid negative emotions. But there hasn’t been a lack of negative emotions… because unfortunately nobody seemed to notice or care that I’d gone. Nobody checked in to see if I was okay. I understand by coming off Facebook I made that harder, but there were other ways to get in touch. And the resounding silence was shocking. One person asked if I was okay on my old Facebook account. That meant a lot. And another I’ve also had contact with on Twitter. So thank you to those people for noticing my pain when nobody else did. Anything else feels too little too late. I know my motto should be ‘better late than never’, but it’s hard to know how to respond to anyone once you reach that point of no-return. For anyone interested, I’ve not spoken to anybody about what’s wrong. Even those who did reach out to me – I was unable to put it into words. I’ve been in shutdown mode. Like I said, the only outlet I’ve had has been the occasional tweet, and my blog. It’s been the only way to organise my thoughts and state them. I don’t talk to my family about any of this. So I have had to cope with a heavy burden totally alone. I’m not asking for sympathy here, I’m just saying it’s hard to know the right thing to do when you have no sounding board. When you have nobody to validate your feelings and challenge your beliefs, it’s hard to know what to do, how to cope and what to say. So I don’t always make the best choices when left alone in my head for so long.

 

I know that I overvalue people. I give them more importance than they give me. It’s wrong of me to assume I mean as much to you as you mean to me. At this point I wouldn’t blame you for having the thought ‘I mean something to you?? Doesn’t feel that way!’… I agree. I’ve been a rubbish friend lately. And here’s the honest bit – I’m probably going to continue to be a rubbish friend for quite a while yet. I don’t enjoy it. I promise you I beat myself up for it constantly. But I’m not coping very well.

 

It’s been so long since I’ve been this unwell mentally (the physical illness isn’t helping much at the moment either!)… I’ve forgotten how to cope with life when feeling this bad. I’ve forgotten how to pull myself out of such a bleak depressed state. The last time I did this I think I had professional support, and I had my support network – my group of friends. So I’m struggling to do this alone. In fact that’s a lie. I’m not struggling. Struggling would imply effort to do something. I have given up. I know that on my own I can’t beat this. So after pulling away from everyone, I’ve given up on life. I now just sit in the deep black hole I fell into. I just sit there twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the end. I’ve given up fighting. 

 

 

I know that you must feel frustrated with me. You must feel helpless. You must have no clue how to help me. Just know that I feel the same. I’m so utterly frustrated with myself. I don’t know how anyone can help me. I’m not actually asking for you to fix this. I’m asking you to tolerate me at the very least. I’m asking you to, if you can – love me, care about me, and stick by me, giving me the support, validation and reassurance I need, to make me feel safe and secure, and like there’s some hope left for me. I have people on Twitter and on my blog who tell me I’m not a lost cause… they validate my feelings…. they are consistently there, noticing my existence, comforting me with kind words. This has been invaluable to me in the last few weeks. But I need this from my friends. I need this from you. Please. I know I’m unbearable at the moment. I’ve given up on myself. What I need is for you to not give up on me too. I need reminding of what I mean to you, and why. I need reminding of who I am. I need reminding of what matters. I’m not fishing for compliments. I’m not digging around for attention, or trying to inflate my ego. I’m asking for help to feel better about myself and about life. I’m having to ask for this, because it’s lacking in my life. I’m not someone constantly in need of praise. I’m not egotistical and lapping up admiration. I’m feeling neglected, and I’m asking for that to change. It’s not meant as a criticism. It’s just me trying a more constructive way of asking for what I need. If that makes me too demanding then so be it, but at least I tried.

 

I am sorry that even if a month ago you said something nice to me, and made me feel like I had a friend, sometimes life happens, my depression gets worse, my doubts creep in, my low self-esteem strikes and I forget what you said. I forget you care. I forget that you are a good friend. It doesn’t mean you’re not a good friend. It simply means I have a mental illness and it plays tricks on my mind. But the best thing to do when you can see this happening, is stop it from escalating to the point of no-return. Remind me of what you said to me. Remind me of your friendship. Remind me that you care. To me this is bog-standard thinking. If I saw my friend spiralling out of control, hating herself, feeling she had no friends, feeling suicidal, and thinking nobody would care if she disappeared for good…. I can’t imagine sitting back and hating her. I can’t imagine staying silent and confirming her belief that I don’t care. I can’t imagine denying her the reassurance, validation and caring that she needs. That is neglect. That is what many people with BPD experienced as a child. They didn’t have their emotional needs met. I’m not talking about my upbringing here, because that was not the case for me. But denying someone the emotional care they require is abuse at the worst, and neglect at the very least. I may not have been denied what I’ve needed. It could be people didn’t know what I needed. It could be I have offended you, and therefore my punishment is to not have those needs met, as I don’t deserve it. I accept this. But with my depression and my paranoia towards everyone right now, I feel I have been deliberately denied support… warmth… compassion. And that puts me on edge when people do eventually talk to me. I don’t believe they really wish the best for me. I don’t believe they actually want to talk to me.

 

I just wanted to explain the process that goes on in my head at times like this. It’s a vicious circle, and if I did what I learnt in therapy, I would try to break that circle, but like I said, with nobody to help me it’s been difficult. I guess this is me trying to break the circle by approaching it differently. Ideally I’d speak directly to people, but I’m not ready for that. I need to give you all the chance to understand me better first. So that you know where I’m coming from.

 

I’ll understand if you’re all done with me now. I would be too. I know I’m toxic right now. I know I’m draining. I know I’m a burden and don’t have a lot to offer you just now. I can’t promise when I’m going to be back to my old self. I’ve not felt this awful for at least ten years, I don’t know the way out. It feels an impossible climb right now. I don’t see an end to it.

 

I’m not good at replying. I’m not good at socialising at the moment. I won’t reach out and ask you if you want to meet up, because I’ve done that with people over the past year or two, and it never happened – it was empty words of ‘we should catch up’, without substance, so eventually I stopped asking. So if you want to see me, then I need you to ask me. I might not be able to meet, but I still want to feel included. This is important to me, because of what I experienced as a child at school. I was socially excluded and isolated, and this damaged me more than words can explain. It’s probably the reason I am how I am now. It’s that thing whereby someone wants to be alone, but they don’t want to feel lonely. And they want to stay at home, but still want to be invited. If I turn down meeting up, it’s either because I’m busy, or more likely because I’m scared. I have no confidence at the moment. I don’t like going out and being around people. If you can help with this fear then great – if you can meet me off the bus, or we can go somewhere quiet, or anything else you can think of that might help, I’d really appreciate it. Going outside the house is a huge deal at the moment. It’s been years since I’ve been such a hermit, and ‘socialising’ terrifies me right now. I want to feel safe and protected. Sorry if that makes me sound pathetic at my age. I’ve taken huge steps back in my recovery, and my anxiety is getting worse now too. I don’t do social gatherings that involve eating food, as I have social anxiety which makes me feel uncomfortable eating in front of other people, unless I know them well and feel comfortable. Drinks are okay. I have to use public transport, and doing so on my own at night fills me with dread, as it’s been so long since I’ve done that – besides, the public transport here at night is non-existent. Group meet-ups are overwhelming for me at the moment. But one-on-one meetings would be nice. Same with discussions – group ones overwhelm me. Private ones are welcome.

 

 

It might seem like a rollercoaster with me – one day I’m chatting and laughing with you, a couple of days later I’m talking about not having any friends. This is most likely a series of events that happened inside my mind. And depression has a way of lying to you. A few days ago I felt angry that I had to explain this concept to you – I’m ill, why should I have to tell you that my illness tricks me into thinking things that aren’t true?? You should read up about these things, and KNOW it. If I wasn’t so self-aware people would understand it more! Why do I have to explain myself when I’m too ill to give a crap?!  – But in the process of writing this letter, I realise that if you don’t understand mental illness and depression, then you’re seriously not going to understand that it’s like having a bully by your side 24/7. I don’t hear ‘voices’, but I do have a voice inside of me, that masquerades as my friend but is my enemy. It’s a part of me that’s intent on self-destruction and self-sabotage. If you don’t have that part, you’re lucky, but you’ll also never understand someone like me. It’s constantly there, telling me nobody cares, I’m worthless, I mess everything up, I deserve to be as alone as I feel, I’ll never be loved, I’ll never succeed, people would be happy if I killed myself. This isn’t a separate being telling me these things. This is me. It’s the ill part of me. And when I’m not so ill it’s easier to challenge these thoughts, and feel happier feelings to balance it out. But when I’m as ill as I am now, those thoughts are facts. And those are the times I NEED my friends…. to make me see they’re not facts, and to counter those beliefs with the truth, in the form of care and appreciation.

 

What has happened here is that voice in me has won. And by having nobody fight against it, and you all leaving me in silence, it’s given power to that voice. It’s made me believe what it says must be true, as ‘where are all my friends??’ It honestly made me believe you’d all be happier if I was dead. And if that’s not true for instance, then I need you to tell me that. I need you to tell me how you’d feel if I WAS dead. I need you to tell me what I bring to your life that you’d lose if I wasn’t here anymore. The things you appreciate about me. I don’t want to have to ask for this. I shouldn’t have to ask for it. And I believe I’m not worth the effort it takes to say nice things to me. But if you’re my friend and you care about me, I need you to prove me wrong. Prove I’m worth the effort. Prove I’m not a lost cause. Prove I matter. Because at this moment in time I’ve never felt more hopeless or worthless.

 

I might not be very giving at this time. But once upon a time I was. I used to put in so much effort to friendships. I was always a very giving person, until a time came where I realised my friendships weren’t balanced. People took me for granted, and since then I started holding back more. And then of course I was hit by this wave of mental illness, and now I feel incapable of giving, as I’m running on empty. I hope in time I will be able to give back, but I hope you will be patient with me and be willing to accept whatever I have to offer for now, even if it’s only my company. I realise I’ve become selfish. Part of that is feeling like nobody cares about me, so I have to care about me – but the thing is even then I still have that half of me (more than half actually), that doesn’t care about me either.

 

I’m insecure nowadays. People backstabbing me, letting me down, standing me up, playing with my feelings, abandoning me, crushing my heart and overall being arseholes, has led to me being uncertain of people’s intentions. I don’t trust. But if I appear to have any trust at all in you you’re lucky. My paranoia is a troublemaker for me at the moment. It causes conflict in relationships, because it makes assumptions about what you’re thinking – what you think of me, what you’re saying about me. I hate it. And it’s not something that’s really featured in my past with mental illness. It’s relatively new. So it’s hard to know how to cope with it. Keeping away from people tends to be the best way. But even then my mind doesn’t shut down. It continues overthinking things.

 

The bottom line is – if you notice I’ve disappeared, or I sound like something’s really up, then please say something to me. Don’t ignore me. Don’t leave me to stew in my own thoughts. Don’t leave me alone in my head for too long…. if left alone too long I will end up in a place I can’t escape from. Like right now. This could have been stopped if one person said enough, early enough. The turning point was nobody saying anything on the anniversary of my granddad’s passing…. or for a further week after that. That’s when I decided nobody cared. There were warning signs, and I wish someone could have noticed them and said something before it became too late. I only hope it’s not too late to salvage friendships now.

 

 

I’ve never felt so alone, and I hope to never experience this level of isolation again. Although I felt abandoned at a time I needed my friends, and I was hurt, a lot of this has been in my head. So ‘my fault’. But that’s mental illness for you. That’s why I’m opening up in this way and explaining to you all that this will happen sometimes, and saying what I need from you if it does happen. I can’t blame you for not knowing what’s going on in my head. I can’t be mad at you for not being mind-readers, even if I did suggest I wasn’t okay, you wouldn’t know the full extent of the chaos in my head. I can’t blame you for not understanding a mental illness you likely don’t have. Although I wish people would just learn about these things and I didn’t have to explain it, ultimately if I want the support then I have to make my friends understand what support I need and why. I’ve not been good at communicating my needs, and I hope this is at least a small improvement.

 

I apologise for the ways I’ve handled things in this difficult time. I was upset, and unable to express that in the right way. I couldn’t reach out directly to any of you, as there’s a block there. I struggle with conversation right now. My paranoia tells me I’m an outsider, a nobody, an unwelcome freak. It’s hard to fight those thoughts. My inner voice stops me talking to you all. And I find communication quite stressful so I just avoid it if possible. But I do care about you. Life has just become too much to bear. I’m sorry that my inability to cope with life may impact on you and on our friendship. I was doing the best I could. But believe me, I know it’s not enough. If you can forgive me and give me another chance, I will try harder, but I will need your help. In order to preserve our friendship you may need to learn more about my mental illness, to understand that I’m not trying to be ‘difficult’, I’m finding life difficult, and hopefully a good chat will explain what you can do to help me in the future.

 

If this helps make sense of what’s happened, and you’re prepared to help me going forward, you know where I am, and what I need. If there’s too much water under the bridge, then so be it. Mental illness is an endless, tiring, draining experience – for those who suffer with it, and those who support them. Nobody chooses to have a mental illness. But you can choose whether to support me or not. And there’s nothing to say you have to. It’s not easy. But I will always remember the ones who did. The ones who never gave up on me. The ones determined to help me see the sunshine again.

xxxx

 

 

Exodus Of Friends.

*Bad language*

 

 

I am the most alone I’ve ever been in my life. And it’s the worst time it could happen. I have nothing left. My mental health is the worst it’s been in many years. I’m grieving for the first time in my life. All of my friends managed to miss the fact I went through the first year mark last month. Look, I know it wasn’t my mum or my dad I lost, so people think ‘What’s the big deal?? It was only your granddad‘ but for fuck’s sake, it was my first major loss. He mattered to ME. I’ve not experienced the grieving process before. I had never gone to a funeral. My first funeral I’ll remember for how my extended family fucked it up. I had never been through the one year mark. I needed to feel the support of people. There was none. Now I’ll remember that first year for the wrong reasons – for the lack of care from friends. I can only assume it’s because they figure I wasn’t that close to him, and all grandparents die. But there is a hole in the world without him. We’re doing our best to carry on, but life is different now. Other people get words of support and comfort on their relatives’ anniversary dates, even years later, but I didn’t get a single nod for his first one… my first one. I can understand if I hadn’t posted about it, but I did. Several times.

This is where a lot of my hurt is stemming from at the moment. This is what made me split on everyone. It’s only been made worse by the fact I’ve disappeared for two weeks, and nobody’s even been in touch to check I’m okay. I don’t know what would be worse – that they’re purposefully avoiding me, and not talking to me because they’re annoyed with me, or that they have just forgotten to get in touch / that I exist. Both are highly offensive. The amount of time that’s passed with nobody caring is too much now. I’ve passed the point of no-return. I have to assume I’ve upset them, or they’ve simply stopped giving a damn about me. In which case fine. I’m not going to apologise for feeling like nobody cares. I’m not going to apologise for expressing that my mental illness is having this impact and that I needed people to reassure me and support me. I was told that my friends aren’t worthy of me. I personally wouldn’t say that. But I did deserve better than this. I am deeply upset at my irrelevance. I feel like an outsider to all of them. But to be honest I wouldn’t be able to see a way back from this now….

With the splitting and anger actually comes guilt, shame and the feeling that I’m selfish. Whenever I’ve felt nobody was there for me before, and someone explained why they weren’t there I’ve felt awful, as they had their own stuff to deal with. So now, whenever I’m upset that I’ve been neglected and abandoned, I automatically feel as though I don’t deserve support, because I’m not there for others. I automatically feel guilty and selfish for the assumptions my mind makes.

I’ve not had an experience like this before, where I’ve been so outspoken about my feelings on this subject. I worry people may have read things and it may have pushed people further away. But there’s nothing I can do about that now. The trouble is, those thoughts send me into a shutdown mode, where I resign myself to having lost everyone, so I don’t try to reach out anymore… and then I’m full of self-pity for causing this mass exodus of friends myself.

It takes me on a tumultuous journey of emotions inside. And the only time anyone would know about it, is when I post something online, or write a blog like this. I can’t reach out and talk to people directly now. It’s become too complex. This is my only outlet. I tried explaining my fears, my needs, my emotions, and either nobody cared enough to read, or they read it and still didn’t care. It really felt like a blanket abandonment. One person was ‘liking’ my posts. But nobody was talking to me… not when it mattered.

I’ve given up now. I may as well be dead to them.

If anyone asked how I am now I wouldn’t even know how to answer. Of course when people ask that they never really want to know how you are anyway. But I’m not able to say ‘I’m okay’. I still hurt myself. My trichotillomania (hair-pulling) is out of control. I’m so depressed and anxious I don’t want to leave the house. I’m not looking after myself. I’m still unwell physically after two months. I think I’m in a cycle – where I feel worse mentally because of physical illness, but my illness won’t clear off because I’m low mentally. I’m still struggling with grief and also with the transference stuff. I’m struggling to do my voluntary work. My ‘mentor’ is on the other side of the world. My ‘boss’ doesn’t seem to understand my mental illness. My family are all I have right now – and I’m so lucky to have them. But I’m not opening up to them about what’s wrong at the moment. All they know is I’m not well physically. So I’m completely alone in my pain and depression. I have no therapist. All I have is the occasional reply to blog posts or on Twitter. But I brought this on myself. It’s just a shame it came to this, and nobody broke my fall in time.

There was a point a couple of weeks ago, when I was going to contact one friend, and ask for her help, as I didn’t know what to do, as I could sense all this happening…. but I never sent that message. I closed my account, and even she hasn’t been in touch. My problem was never with her. But now it’s with everyone. I wish I had said something because now I’m stuck. My presence can’t matter that much to anyone, if they don’t even notice my absence. 

It’s going to be hard to see friendship in the same light anymore. This has totally trashed my self-esteem beyond repair. I can’t even pick myself up and move on, finding new friends, as it’s damaged me that much. I feel like an awful person. And I don’t have friends to help pull me out of my beliefs anymore. So I’ve given up on myself. I’ve given up on people. I’ve given up on working and going out. I’ve given up on life.

It was so bad in my head yesterday, that I had to tie my hair back and wear a beanie hat, to stop me pulling hairs out. And I took the battery out of my clock, because the ticking was driving me mad, and making me aware of the passage of time. I still haven’t put it back in. Today is a worse day. I won’t go into that though. But I’m shutting myself away. My phone is off. I’m done with everyone and everything. There are two people who have noticed my existence in the last few weeks – hopefully they know who they are, and know how much it means to me – they reminded me I’m not a ghost and that they can see me. I am sorry to those two that I’m still deeply upset, and it would seem like their care isn’t enough. I hope they don’t think I’m ungrateful. But the damage that’s been done is too deep, that I can’t just get over it. Not this time.

I’ve never felt this ‘done with everything’. I’ve never given up on people like this. I’d normally close my account for a few days, gain a better perspective and rejoin. My perspective isn’t changing… not for the better anyway. It’s only getting worse, the more days that pass. I can’t see me ever getting back to posting on Facebook again. Because nobody gives a shit. I’ve been in these places before, where I’ve thought, ‘Why bother posting that, nobody will be interested in it…’ and usually I’m right. But in the past it didn’t totally stop me. It has now. I don’t believe anyone is interested in anything I have to say. They don’t care when I post about grief or mental illness stuff. They don’t care when I share light-hearted stuff. They attack me when I share political / news stuff, because I’m the outsider in that regard. I’m the ‘alien’.

I’m shutting down more and more every day. But I don’t think I care anymore. It’s only heading in one direction. I can’t see it improving now. So I’m kind of giving up, and just letting it drown me. Everyone else was fine to watch me drown. So I’ll let myself drown. Without an audience though.

Poem: Thanks.

Thanks

Thank you for ignoring me, thank you for your silence;

Thank you for the scars you caused, through such poetic violence.

Thank you for reminding me that men are all the same –

The only way they differ is by their looks and name.

Thank you for the memories you’ve triggered in my mind,

Of rejection and abandonment, from times I left behind.

Thank you for avoiding me, for giving me wide berth;

For the wonderful, amazing job you’ve done on my self-worth.

Thank you too for treating me with sensitivity,

To take my insecurities and play them out for me.

I notice as the weeks go by I learn to trust you less;

I thank you for the way you dodge what I need to address.

Thank you for the way you make me feel I won’t be missed…

The way you showed such little care the time I cut my wrist.

Thank you for informing me my feelings do not matter;

For watching on in silence as my heart and spirit shatter.

Thank you for the jealousy you do not know you stir;

The way you stay away from me, but seem to care for her.

Thank you for these moments when your actions make me ‘split’;

Thank you for destroying me, slowly, bit by bit.

I thank you for the knowledge you carry of my love,

And how you’d watch me kill myself – if push came to shove.

Reaching out to ask for help, it was my last resort…

Thanks for disregarding me. Thanks for your support.

I’m Tired Of Feeling.

*Contains strong language*

 

I’m not good at the moment, I’ll be honest. I feel overwhelmed. And I feel alone with it. Loneliness is an emotion I particularly struggle with. And what compounds this is my friends not realising I feel alone, or understanding why.

I’m struggling with my emotions a lot right now. And also my self-esteem. Health, both physical and mental have been a struggle. I’m really depressed, and feel exhausted every single day, and it only keeps getting worse. No amount of sleep fixes the tiredness I feel. I’m weary of the world. I’m tired of feeling everything. I feel I’m being abandoned by my friends, and every time I allow myself to think about that, it’s like a stab to my heart, with a very blunt knife… and that stab deflates my heart and sends it to the pit of my stomach. I don’t feel loved at the moment. I don’t feel appreciated. I don’t feel visible anymore. What is the point in being on social media? People don’t interact with me. I’ll get the occasional ‘like’. I’ll get the occasional comment when someone disagrees with me and wants to show me up! I’ll get the occasional late night ‘Hey’ message, when I’m already settling down to sleep. But in my waking hours, when I need people, and when I need to know I matter to them, nothing. I’m invisible. And I want to unfriend everyone right now, and live as isolated as I feel.

 

 

I mean no offence to my friends, as I’m aware they all have their own stuff going on. I just have such paranoia right now, and my emotions and negative thoughts are overwhelming, and I honestly believe none of them would give a fuck if I dropped off the face of the Earth. Sorry.

I’m just starting to struggle more with grief, and they’ve all forgotten. Life goes on. But not for me. When I’ve needed people the most, around this issue, they’ve not been there. They’ve let me down. I got the initial support when it happened, but after that, nothing. And it’s only now, that the realisation that he’s truly gone and I’ll never see him again, is setting in. And it’s the sudden awareness that we are all alone in life. Nobody else gives a shit that I’m suffering. Nobody gives a shit that this was my first loss – they’re all thinking ‘Well we all went through that at some point, why are you making such a big deal out of it?’ – that’s my assumption at least. And that they’re also thinking ‘It’s only your granddad, not like it’s your mum or your dad’. I’m just a number. I’m just like everyone else now. It’s like once you’ve lost someone you’re just normal and you just get on with it like everyone else does. Well I’m sorry, I haven’t got to that point yet. I’m still in shock that after thirty years of my life, I really have lost someone of great importance to me. I lived the last ten years of his life, living in denial yet knowing that one day I would lose my grandparents… and I’m struggling with the reality that ‘one day’ has come. He’s not here anymore.

I switch between remembering the last time I saw him, not even 48 hours before he died, and the way that’s scarred me forever…. and also I sometimes just remember him before he got ill, and the comparison between that and him not being here now, is just as traumatic and scarring. A part of me thinks how can he be here one minute, talking, laughing, caring, worrying, joking… and the next, he’s gone… put into a coffin, cremated, and nothing left but memories. How can that be? But then I remember that we watched him deteriorate for eight months. Longer even… we watched him have a mini stroke and lose some of his eyesight. We saw him have fall after fall. We saw him go into hospital for six weeks, and said our goodbyes then, before his short-lived recovery. And then he gradually got worse. He lost his memory… one time thinking I was someone else. Until eventually he was dying, and I really was saying goodbye for the final time. I mean some people aren’t so lucky to have a chance to say what they need to say, and to say goodbye. So in a way I’m fortunate. But I’ll never forget saying goodbye, KNOWING it was the last time. And as I closed the door to as I left the room, I looked in and looked at him for the very last time, knowing I would never see him again in my lifetime. That image will never leave me.

And this is just the beginning. He’s just the first of many losses I’m going to face. And if this is what life is, do I really want to be a part of it?

I’m living life from one event to the next. And just wanting to shut the world out in between. I don’t enjoy life anymore. I have moments when I do, and any moments in between are hell.

I have started a therapy group last week, and cried in my first session, in a room of strangers…. because of my granddad. I’m mortified by this, as I hate showing my emotions in front of people. I know it’s going to be a struggle for the next three months. But therapy has already brought up issues from the past for me, as that’s my problem now. Everything is linked. Present, past and future. My present struggles are because of my past. I can’t move into my future because of my past and present. I need to heal my past. But I can’t, because I can’t talk to anyone about it. Just like my grief, that file’s been closed. It’s done now. I should be over it by now.

 

 

I feel judged. I feel judged for not letting go of shitty human beings who hurt me. I feel judged for having a voice and bloody well using it. I feel judged for cutting toxic people out of my life. I feel judged for standing up for myself. I feel judged for not having a proper job. I feel judged for still living at home, and not driving. I feel judged for being chronically single and not having children. I feel judged for being fat. I feel judged for being the friend that is STILL a failure after ten years. I feel judged for being such an awful person that nobody will ever want me. I feel judged for being a shit friend….

And I AM a shit friend. I’m bloody aware right now that I’m not there for my friends like I used to be. I know I sound like I’m criticising them, but it’s because I hate myself, and assume they do too. And I never get any indication otherwise. I’m aware that I’m missing out on important things that my friends are going through, and what a shit friend that makes me. But I can barely care about myself on any given day, to be able to project that care to other people. I’m selfish. I’m a selfish, shitty person, and it’s pushing people away. Which is the exact opposite of what I need from people right now…. which is making me more ill, and more selfish and shitty as a friend, and that’s it pretty much… a spiral to rock bottom. Not far to go now.

I’m tired of trying. I’ve put in a lot of effort in the past with people, and not got the same effort back, and it’s finally dawned on me, that I don’t matter to other people to the degree that they matter to me. And I don’t want to live that way anymore. I’d rather be alone than have half-hearted friends. I just wish we could rewind two years and freeze it. Because once something happened I no longer believed anybody cared about me. I no longer thought I had a friend I could count on. I no longer trusted people. And it’s ruined how I see my friendships with people now. And I can’t unsee it. And I wish so much that I could. This isn’t about blaming someone. It’s not about making anyone feel bad. It’s explaining how it feels to be me now….

I feel like a vulnerable little girl, unsure of the big wide world around her. I feel I’m stood on a thin branch, unsure of when it’s going to snap, and how far I’ll fall when it does. I can’t afford to move, because it might break the branch. I have absolutely nobody to confide in anymore, so every single thought and feeling I have, is locked up inside, where it just grows and grows, until I’m at the worst scenario, and have nowhere to release it, so harm myself. Sometimes I don’t know which way is up. What used to be my rock, no longer is, so I’ve nothing to support and stabilise me anymore. Nobody to count on. I feel like a deer caught in headlights. The world carries on at full speed – people and events in life are the cars, and they’re totally unaware I am the deer, and they all scare me, and overwhelm me, and I freeze inside. My fight or flight kicks in, and that’s why I sometimes run from the people I care about, because I’m constantly waiting now, to be hurt by everyone, because that’s all they’ve ever done to me. Also constantly being on the lookout for danger is exhausting, and it’s why my tolerance for social interaction is so low at the moment.

 

 

I project a tough exterior now, to keep people away, but this leads to misunderstandings, as inside I feel like I’m a little girl, frightened and alone, and abused by the world. And I just want someone to come up to me and give me a big cuddle, tell me they love me, and will protect me from the world. But I’m the neglected child on the street, who people walk past, ignore and pity at best. They have no love to give for an ugly child like me. They think I’m not a ‘hugger’ so they keep their distance. Yes I have personal boundaries and I have my circle of personal space which people should respect, but sometimes I just crave the human warmth from friends… for them to realise I’m not this tough woman I might appear to be.

I feel nobody ‘gets me’. Heck the one guy I wanted to settle down with, who was much like myself, and wanted someone who ‘got him’ (which I did!), didn’t even get me! He didn’t recognise my vulnerability. We were so alike, and could’ve made each other happy. But he decided to paint me as someone I’m not, and paint someone else as better than they were, and now they’re married. So….

And what I wish people could understand is my life feels like one big fucking tragedy. From that point on – 5 years ago yesterday (15^th September), my life changed and it still doesn’t feel real. When I think about that time of my life and how out of control it sent me spinning, I feel I could throw up from the emotion of it. It hurts just the same today as it did back then. In a way, even more so. Because so much time has passed and the people involved have happily moved on with their lives as though I don’t exist, and I’m still stuck in this place of pain, betrayal and tragedy. It’s tragic that two people like me and that guy friend, would’ve been perfect for each other, had I not been so hurt by other people that I closed up. If I could’ve let my barriers down, and had he been better at spotting the desperate vulnerability in me, he could’ve been MY knight in shining armour. And I wouldn’t be where I am right now…. wanting to end the pain forever.

 

 

I can’t get over what happened, and the more time that passes, the sadder and more angry I get. It’s mainly sadness, at what I lost, and how fucked up my life became because of those people. I just can’t understand how a friend could do to me, what they did. And I feel so angry and upset at the guy, and wish I could tell him that. The way he ended things with me will haunt me forever. It’s messed up my view of everything. He made me believe in good guys. But the way we parted made me realise there’s no such thing. And if he, the one decent guy I met, and a friend, couldn’t see the good in me, and appreciate me, then there’s no hope for me.

People need to understand that that’s why I am so cynical about love now, and about finding my own happiness, because that SHIT of a man has destroyed anything I ever believed about guys, and about myself. And I HATE him for that. Everything he said to me in our parting messages has scarred me and rearranged my beliefs about my worth, character, friendship, and right to be respected. He showed no respect for me and didn’t fight for me. He rubbed salt in the wounds and spat at me at my lowest, and I will NEVER forgive him for that.

All of the shit that’s happened to me because of so-called ‘friends’ in the last few years… it feels like it happened to someone else. These things don’t happen to someone like me. I’ve always been quiet and reserved, and down-to-earth. I fight a daily battle between ‘I DIDN’T DESERVE ANY OF IT!!! I’M A GOOD PERSON!!’ and telling myself I’m a bad person, and that’s why people shit on me so often. I battle between ‘So-and-so is a rubbish friend!’ and ‘I’m the rubbish friend’. I battle between moving on with my life and showing them how fucking irrelevant they are to me……and slashing my arms and standing in front of them, screaming what they’ve done to me, before ending my life because of them. I’m in constant conflict in my mind and my heart. I feel like I’ve allowed bloody awful people and their actions to change me, and make me someone who DOES deserve what happened to me. I hate who I’ve become, because of their actions.

Even this year, too many people have hurt me. And I can’t take any more of it. What did I even do to deserve it? Just because they disagree with my opinions, they think it’s acceptable to do what they did and take no responsibility for it. It’s not on. And I can’t trust people anymore now. I think everyone hates me, across the board. I’m not over what happened at the start of this year, and I won’t be until it’s acknowledged and apologised for. I’m not over what happened last year, and don’t know how to fix that. I’m not over the things that happened five years ago which broke my world into pieces. I’m not over any of it, and if I could take a pill and be over all of it I would do it instantly. I’m not choosing to hold on to these things, they are stuck to me like leeches, and they’re sucking away at my spirit every day, and I’m losing who I am as a result. I hate myself, and I’m sorry if it’s needy or demanding, but every once in a while it would be nice to hear from the appropriate people, that I’m ….. well, whatever good qualities anyone can see in me, that I can no longer see. But the fact nobody ever does it, or not the right people at least, tells me there’s nothing good left in me. And that makes me want to unburden everyone from my presence.

I’ve spent so long putting in extra effort for friends, and feeling it was taken for granted, that I just don’t bother anymore. I honestly don’t have it in me to go the extra mile anymore, when nobody goes it for me. Cancel something, to make time for me when I need you….. buy a bunch of flowers…. send a card to cheer me up….. give me a framed photo of us to show what our friendship means to you….. keep your word….. say online that you had a good day with me, like you do with others….. I could go on, but I shouldn’t have to tell adults how to show they care about their friends. But the fact I feel the need to ask specifically for signs of caring from my friends, shows me they 100% DON’T care about me. If they DID care I would know it from their words and their actions. I’d never doubt it. And the fact I’ve reached a place as dark as this, to believe none of them care, shows they don’t. So I’m incredibly close to cutting everyone out. They wouldn’t notice anyway.

I just give up on people now. I want to pack up my social media, switch off my phone and isolate myself. And I can’t tell if it’s because I think others aren’t being good friends to me, or if it’s because I’m not being a good friend to others. Or both. I feel too many things have been said and done, and with too much water under the bridge, there’s nowhere left to turn. I feel certain if people haven’t abandoned me, they will now, so I might as well give up. I brought this upon myself. Or rather the pain I’ve endured has brought this upon me. But people see the actions, they don’t see the cause behind it. And I’m too tired to explain myself anymore. I just want one person to get it. To get me. And to stick around despite it all. I’m tired of feeling. I’m tired of life.

Open Letter To My ‘Friend’.

 

 

*Mentions self-harm & suicide*

---

 

 

Dear ‘friend’,

Thank you for caring so much about me. Thank you for supporting me through the loss of my grandfather. Thank you for noticing my mental health had declined, that I was harming and wanted to kill myself. Thank you for understanding that my focus on politics was a coping mechanism to avoid dealing with my grief. Thank you for reaching out to let me know you cared. Thank you for making me feel I’m worth something and I’m not just your emotional punching bag. Thank you for checking in on my posts to see how I was doing. Thank you for accepting my difference of opinion like an adult, and still respecting me as a person nonetheless. Thank you for not letting your own dogged opinion come between our friendship. Thank you for speaking kind words to me, and for not lashing out in anger, personally attacking me just to win an argument. Thank you for thinking about someone besides yourself for a moment. Thank you for making sure nobody took your side in an argument, against me, which could cost me their friendships too. Thank you for your sensitivity and kindness. Thank you for understanding mental health yourself, therefore applying your knowledge to my situation and not making me harm myself. Thank you for being so mature and lovely, humble and remorseful. Thank you for messaging me, apologising profusely, wanting to save our friendship. Thank you for caring so damn much.

You see my ‘friend’, none of that was true. You are a ‘mental health activist’. You have experience of mental illness, self-harm and suicidal thoughts, apparently. You are aiming to become a counsellor. And yet you showed such little compassion and regard for one of your fellow human beings, who was suffering badly.

I was grieving. You chose to attack my posts right slap bang in the middle of two of the most distressing times of my life – my father’s heart attack, and my grandfather’s death, which had been coming for 8 months. You then either decided to cut me out as you just didn’t agree with my political views, or you decided to not respond to anything I posted, after I asked people not to attack my posts. So you and someone who chose to back you against me, both stopped speaking to me for over four months, completely abandoning me in the worst time of my life – where I was facing the first major loss of my life, and my mental health became so bad I wanted to end my life. You didn’t once say anything to me about any of that, nor anything in response to posts about interests we shared. You made me feel like I didn’t exist.

You decided to forget that I suffer from mental illness, and struggle with self-harm. You obviously decided I’m an ‘older person’ therefore can look out for myself, so don’t need kind, supportive, sympathetic friends.

If you had any understanding whatsoever about mental health problems, you would know how you treated me was wrong. You would understand how abandoning me would have made me feel. You would know the anxiety caused by being ‘attacked’ by people publicly. You would know all about real depression, quiet depression that honestly makes you want to not exist in the world, and feel like everyone hates you. You would know about ‘triggers’, and if you had supported my writing you would know what those triggers are, and what my boundaries are, and how you crossed every single one of them. So you would know that when you said on Twitter to me, out of the blue “All I can say is it’s good you don’t have children”, it would send me into a spin, and make me cut myself. If you were my friend, were supportive, and honestly understood mental health problems, then YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT.

So … I have to conclude, either you don’t know as much about mental health as you claim to; you are selfish and only think of things from your own young perspective, and don’t consider the consequences of your words and actions on the feelings of others; or you knew what you were doing, knew it would upset me and make me harm myself, and chose to do it, to make yourself feel better.

So which is it? Are you inexperienced in mental health? Selfish and thoughtless? Or are you a narcissist / sociopath? I’ll let you decide.

Now admittedly you could have done what many of us have done over the years… you could have just made a bad mistake. You did utter the word ‘sorry’ after I had to ask if you were even sorry, as you didn’t seem it! But the fact is, if you truly WERE sorry, you would have faced up to what you did to me, how it made me feel, and your response would NOT be to block me and block the friend who was showing me support. If you were honestly remorseful you would have contacted me, apologising profusely for hurting me. You would have made an effort. You would have shown some interest in me as a human being. But you already knew our friendship was fucked, because four months before, you had decided to let me suffer alone. You opted to not share in interests, not pass on your condolences to me, and to not offer sympathy or support for my mental turmoil. And you knew you owed me an apology for far more than just saying what you did. You owed me one for being a lousy friend, upsetting me, abandoning me at my worst time, and then swiping at my weakest point – motherhood.

 

You can’t undo what you did to me this year. But apologising would have been a start. And I mean a sincere apology, privately, not just on Twitter to make yourself look better to your followers. You removed the offensive tweets you’ve posted, I’m guessing just for appearances, and not because you thought it was wrong. You’re merrily carrying on as if you didn’t cause me to drag a blade across my arm a few days ago. I wanted to overdose – and coming from me that means a lot. If you claim to have experience of these feelings and thoughts, then I’d expect you to be more sensitive to the suffering of others. That’s the one good thing I took out of my own fifteen years of mental illness – I can honestly say I have a lot more empathy for other people. I am more sensitive to their feelings. I do admit, sometimes that goes out the window when I’ve been hurt by someone – in those moments I do become more selfish and might say and do things, that with hindsight I would choose not to. I’m not claiming to be some paradigm of virtue… I make mistakes like everyone does. But it’s more in the heat of a moment, and as a defence mechanism after years of people hurting and betraying me. In everyday life I would never seek to hurt or upset anyone. I’m usually good at reading people’s emotions. I would never say something so hurtful to a friend as you did. Out of thin air too. I could understand it in the heat of the moment if we were arguing, but as far as I could tell we were merely discussing politics.

You had someone leap to your defence when one of my loyal friends referred to you as ‘vile’. So well done, another one who has your back and not mine. Probably because I’m older than you, and they’re both old enough to be your mother, so it’s mothering instincts. But I expect people to take my side if I’m the victim. I don’t expect them to say, ‘Well you’re older than she is, therefore I put her feelings ahead of yours’ – fine, they can do that if they want to, but they’d better be prepared for losing me, either as a friend or from this world. If you take the side of an abusive person, against the victim then the blood is on your hands too.

I understand that ‘good’ people can do bad things and it doesn’t make them bad people – heck I’m one of those – I do bad things. But at this point in time I actually agree with my friend that you are vile. What you said was vile. It’s made extra vile by the way you treated me (or rather didn’t) for four months beforehand too. Nobody else knows the whole story, so they can’t look at a situation that hurt me, and say you’re not vile for how you made me feel. Only I have the right to that opinion in this case. And I’m allowed to perceive you as vile until I reach a place of forgiveness – be that after a heartfelt apology from you, or from simply wanting you not to take up space in my thoughts. To anyone who hasn’t been hurt by you, you are a lovely person. To me you are nasty. Neither one of us is right – you are not nasty, and you are not lovely. They are merely opinions based on our own different viewpoints. My other friend had no right to say you are not vile. And I have no right to say you are not lovely. I can THINK it all I like! But everyone has their right to an opinion based on the way you treat them. In my personal opinion, as it was a personal attack on me, I think vile people say vile things. Lovely people don’t often say vile things. Not to their friends.

I’m sorry to say that unless you change your manner and behaviour, then becoming a counsellor might not be right for you at this time. I understand you’re going through your own challenges in life and with your mental health. And whilst it’s admirable to want to use your experiences to help others, like I have always wanted to do, you have to have control of your own mind first. I spoke to a colleague at work about what you said to me and how it made me feel, and she said you’d likely push people towards suicide rather than help them. This at the present time would be true based on how you made me feel the other day.

I hope you can conquer your demons, and achieve your goal, as it’s good to give back the help you’ve received. I hope I can do the same in some way one day, but I know that my mental health will always be an issue, and the likelihood of me directly helping others anytime soon, is low. My blogging is a way I feel I can give back to the world, but even that has its dark times and silences.

 

 

I believe that mental illness can make us better people. There’s got to be some reason for our suffering, and my belief is that we suffer to learn, and to find the skills and tools to help prevent the suffering of others. I guess you just haven’t had experience of it for long enough yet, to learn the lessons. When I was your age I had only just started to deteriorate mentally. It was at the age of 16 I started to self-harm, and it took me until I was almost 18 to admit it to my parents. And then came the long road of counselling, therapy, medications, joining forums and support groups, ups and downs. It took me about seven years of mental illness and self-harming, to speak openly about it – I gave a speech to a group of university students about self-harm. Only did it the once.

Though you’re a champion for mental health, you are still at the beginning of your journey. You haven’t had enough life experience yet, to understand the complexities of mental illness in others. It’s only through your own long journey to recovery that you come to understand your own mental illness, and you learn about compassion, sensitivity and acceptance. You learn about yourself and life, like I’ve had fifteen years to do. I’m still learning now! So hopefully by the time you achieve your goal, in eight years, you will have gathered that life experience, and learnt the lessons you’re meant to learn from your own struggles.

I don’t wish you ill. I wish you well, but more than anything I wish you experience, to ground you and teach you. Time will give you maturity and wisdom, and you may reflect on the harmful things you say to your friends. I will forgive you because you are young and inexperienced in social etiquette. But it does not mean that how you have treated me is okay. Far from it. And I hope in time you will learn from it, and have the courage to apologise properly, as this is what makes an adult. Screw-ups don’t matter. It’s the way we make up for them that defines us.

xxxx

Seeing Red.

*Mentions self-harm / suicide & contains bad language*

So this happened at the weekend….

 

……………………………..

 

I couldn’t believe what I was reading – where had this come from? A ‘friend’ and I were discussing politics and all of a sudden she was personally attacking me, saying it’s good I don’t have any children. What kind of person says something so unpleasant? She was nasty.

I saw red, and responded as I did. I couldn’t believe the cold, callous, apparent narcissism I was witnessing. She had just been raving about how amazing she and other young people are, and how important they are, and then said something horrendous like that to me, and when asked how she would like it, she implied it wouldn’t bother her as she doesn’t want kids. I couldn’t believe it. I had to actually drag some level of remorse out of her!

My heart was pounding faster and harder than I’ve ever known in my life, and my heart was erratic – I had palpitations. I had the buzzing in my head. After typing my responses, and blocking her on Facebook, I started hyper-ventilating. I furiously searched around for my self-harm stuff, and quickly slashed at my arm, before bursting into tears. After patching myself up I went to see my parents, and they could tell immediately that something was wrong. I burst into tears again, and started hyper-ventilating… so much so that I felt I was going to pass out, so I sat down and told them what happened. My mum was furious and wanted to use my account to give her a telling off. I said I needed to calm down first and foremost, so she never did do it. I took my blood pressure and it had soared to the highest it’s ever been, and my heart rate was over 110 beats per minute… this was having calmed down a little!

During my anxiety attack I took a screenshot of the tweets and posted it on my Facebook, needing support and people to validate my feelings. To make me feel better. One of my friends did so, by saying how awful it was, and hoping I’d blocked that ‘vile person’ – she doesn’t know her. And another friend commented on her comment, and said ‘She isn’t vile x’ … Now, fair enough, ‘good people do bad things, it doesn’t make them bad people’…. but there’s a time and place for that – this wasn’t it! It had literally JUST happened, and I was in severe distress. That kind of sentiment is good to have… when you’ve reached a place of forgiveness…. like I could say it was just a mistake. But for Heaven’s sake I had only just been publicly attacked by a friend!! It’s going to take a lot of time to reach any place of forgiveness towards her, if ever! So until then I am allowed to believe she’s not a nice person. I’m allowed to believe she’s a bully. I’m allowed to hate her if I want to. I am allowed to believe she is a vile person – because how could any sort of ‘lovely’ person say something so cruel and vile?

I know the comment was aimed at my friend for labelling her as vile, not knowing her. But what it actually demonstrated to me was a lack of sympathy, caring and loyalty. She was more concerned about defending my attacker against the word ‘vile’ than about the long-term scarring that girl had just left me with – mentally and physically! My heart started racing again, and I went red. This felt like a second attack from another friend. It felt like they were taking her side against me. This has happened to me in the past with the last ‘friend’ who bullied me. That’s why I won’t tolerate disloyalty anymore.

I don’t expect my friends to take sides in this. Perhaps the ones who don’t know this girl, yes, but not mutual friends. She only hurt me, so I can understand the others won’t have a problem with her. And that’s fair enough. But that doesn’t mean they can’t sympathise with me and say what she said was wrong. It doesn’t mean they can’t speak out and stand up for me. The friends who keep out of it is one thing. But if a friend defends my attacker, and doesn’t offer up any form of care for me, and doesn’t condemn what was said, then to me it is CLEAR they have chosen a side. They chose the side of someone who is an unpleasant person and chose to hurt me, out of nowhere.

I never asked them to take my side. I never wanted them to have to pick a side. But they did. And that was demonstrated by their comment. ‘She isn’t vile x’ – I think that should be left up to me to decide don’t you? As I was the one who was hurt by her. What you have to realise is with BPD you can go from liking someone to hating them at the drop of a hat. They can be a decent person, and then boom, they’re a vile person for what they did. And I am allowed, for now, to think she is a vile person. Eventually in time I may come to think she made a mistake and spoke out of turn, and it doesn’t change that she’s a ‘lovely’ person. But I do not feel that way right now, and that’s okay. And if it’s not okay, and me having this opinion is offending you more than the way she’s treated me, then you are part of the problem, and you don’t have my back. So don’t be surprised if I distance myself from you. I will not be ganged up on by friends. I have been shitted on by so-called friends for long enough now, I don’t deserve it, and I will not put up with it.

The funny thing is, they were defending her against the word ‘vile’, and she was blocked on my page, so it was all for nothing. It was virtue signalling, wanting to appear like the loyal friend who had her back – well why the fuck didn’t she have my back? Why the fuck didn’t she post / tweet to this girl that she was out of order to say what she did? Why is it always the case that when it comes to me, nobody has any fucking loyalty?! They all support bullies. They all support disgusting, vile behaviour and condemn me for reacting to it! Well no fucking more. If anyone else does this to me, they’re out of my life immediately.

I’m very lucky that at least four of my friends have stuck up for me, by validating my feelings, saying it was wrong of her, and supporting me. These are the people who matter to me. Not ones who sweep it under the rug, as done and dusted. Not ones who say they don’t comment on political stuff now, when the attack was certainly not political – it was personal. Not ones who have the back of someone just because they’re 19, with mental health problems – never mind the fact I also have severe mental health problems… but of course I’m older, so can look after myself. Wrong. And the more false friends I have supporting my attackers, the worse my life becomes.

I can’t tell you how awful my life felt on Saturday. I seriously contemplated taking an overdose… or slashing my arms to high Heaven. I didn’t want to be here anymore. This was too much, given the personal tragedies I’ve faced this year. I’m still grieving the loss of someone so close to me, and this episode only brought that to the front of my mind again. I wished so much that he was here, to comfort me and tell me everything would be okay. It made me think how a ‘friend’ could say something so horrific to me whilst I’m grieving. But then I remember that this ‘friend’ unfollowed me on Facebook so didn’t look at my page probably – so wouldn’t have known anything about my life since February. If only she hadn’t been so immature as to do that in response to a request I made, she may have been more thoughtful about her words towards me – but maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’s one of those people who just says whatever the hell they want, with no shame.

The reason this comment upset me is partly because I have nobody special in my life, and because of my BPD I feel I never will…. which means I’ll never be able to have the children I so desperately want. Even if I do find someone, I have health issues which may make it harder to get pregnant. So might not get to have the children I want. I feel I’d be a great mum, if I was given the chance, as I have a lot of love to give, and have good morals I could pass on to my children. But I’m also devastated that my granddad passed away, having never seen me happy. He won’t be at my wedding. He won’t be there if I have children. And the fact I haven’t had any children yet, so that he could meet them, and so that my nan can too – and my parents, before they’re too old or no longer here…. upsets me so intensely – more than anyone else could imagine, as most people I know are married and have children. None of them realise how deeply her comment cut me, because they don’t understand my situation. This was one of the worst comments anyone could ever say to me, especially at the moment, when I’m grieving the fact my granddad didn’t get to meet my children, that I may never have. The guilt from that is immense, so when someone says it’s good I don’t have children, it’s like an attack on me as a woman – it made me feel like a failure for not having any yet, and like an attack on what sort of mother I’d be – what, simply because of my political views, and opinions on the nastier young people in society today? Of which she illustrated a perfect example!! I’d make a fucking great mother thank you. I’d at least teach my children to not behave as disgustingly as you did. Mine would have manners, morals, a conscience and respect for other people. Mine would respect a difference of opinion and would be sensitive to the feelings of others. Mine would be taught to make it up to someone when they hurt them, not ‘block’ them and run away from the responsibility. Mine would be taught to be humble and live quietly, not boast about everything. Mine would put the feelings of others ahead of ‘winning an argument’.

I think she resorted to a personal insult because she knew she was losing the argument. It wasn’t an argument anyway, it was a conversation. I was being very respectful towards her. The only time I got a little narked was when she implied young people matter more than those over 65 – does she include her own relatives in that?? I said that’s the attitude of young people that I don’t like, as older people have wiped the backsides of the young, and paid taxes to give them the lives they enjoy today, only to be told their opinion doesn’t matter as much as teenagers!! That’s when she took that swipe at me. She knew I knew more about politics, and in her mind I was obviously beginning to make her look bad, so she went for the jugular, to bring me down, or end the conversation as she’d had enough.

The comment about older people was replied to on a different thread, one which involved a couple of other people and a newspaper, but I spotted this before responding about the attitudes of the young, because I knew she was trying to bait me. She wanted me to rage at her, to show me up and make me a target for other people, as more people would see it if others were tagged in it. So I refused to play her little game. I replied to a tweet that was just between the two of us. Didn’t stop her sniping at me though.

I see she’s removed the disgusting tweet now. Now, some would say she’s done it for my sake, I say bullshit. She’s done it because I called her out on it, and she realises it makes her look like a nasty person. She thinks if she erases evidence of her past, that people will believe her to be nice. Well the thing is, I am never going to be able to forget this. I will have a permanent scar on my arm now because of her. I have the words etched in the front of my mind… they have been added to all the other nasty words people have ever said to me. I can never forget. It’s nice she has the luxury of deleting it and forgetting it ever happened. I cannot do that. So I’ve tweeted a screenshot of it, which I did before she deleted it. It was put on Twitter, it will live forever in my mind and on my heart, and on my arm… so it should live forever on Twitter also – the place that started it. She doesn’t deserve to forget. She doesn’t deserve to get away with erasing it, when I cannot. She has to face up to the disgusting way she behaves. It’s the only way she’ll learn. I’m sorry if people don’t agree with my thinking here, but people do this too often with Twitter – say something awful and then delete it. But Twitter is so public and instant. Even when deleted, hundreds of people may have potentially seen it. And people have to be held to account for the atrocious words they say. If she hadn’t deleted it I would have reported it. But she chickened out and removed it. Lucky I have the evidence.

What bothers me the most is this person apparently knows all about mental health – they’re a mental health activist. They’re training to become a counsellor. And as a colleague of mine said, she’d likely push people towards suicide rather than save them from it, if this is her manner / attitude. I would have thought she’d be a lot more understanding, and know not to hurt someone like me. She knows all about my self-harm and mental illness. She once messaged me and told me she’d just self-harmed, and I was annoyed at this, because one of the rules when in therapy is to not do that sort of thing – because you might trigger other people, which it did. It made me want to harm. This is partly why I eventually withdrew my support for her with her struggles, as I couldn’t cope with them on top of my own. I just find it hard to understand how someone could understand self-harm themselves, know that I’m at risk of it, and choose to say something hurtful which could lead me to self-harm. I don’t understand that mentality. I don’t understand why anyone could hurt other people, but when they know you have mental health problems and are prone to cutting yourself, why would they decide to say and do the things they do? She’s got eight years to train to be a counsellor, let’s hope in that time she learns compassion and respect for the feelings of other human beings, and gives up this need to be ‘right’ no matter the cost. She lost this argument by turning to nastiness and insults. And she lost a friend. I haven’t, because she hasn’t been there for me or made any effort for over four months, and all she brought me in the end was aggro. So I don’t feel a huge loss right now. Only in the sense that it impacts my friendships with others, and stops me attending things as a group… which hurts because it brings up my experience in the past. But my life might feel a bit calmer now, and that’s what I need right now, to work through my grief and get well again.

This upset has allowed me to take a step back and focus on self-care. I’m avoiding politics, the news and the outside world, when I don’t have to deal with it. I’m looking after myself, and focusing on the people who matter to me – my family, my Godchildren, and my real friends. I’m hoping to get back to blogging properly about mental health now – won’t be very regular, but want to start being more informative and helpful to others… get back to basics. I almost needed this breakdown to start again from the ground up. Just wish I could have got through it without harming myself. The key though is I’m not going to give myself too hard a time over it – have a hard enough time from others without beating myself up!

I hope everyone’s well. And if you’re not then take the time to look after yourself, and listen to what your soul needs to recover. Speak to you all soon xxxx

“I’m Not Sorry I Hurt You”.

*Contains very strong language & honesty – don’t read if you’ll be offended*

I’m spiralling again. I’m sorry to be selfish, but I feel so alone in my experiences in life, and need to feel connected to others who may know what I’m talking about….

Is anyone else SICK of people doing them wrong and hurting them, and not only denying any wrongdoing, justifying it, withholding apologies, but sometimes acting like the victim, and giving you the silent treatment, i.e. going ‘ghost’ on you? Is it just me??

This is a constant pattern in my life. I’m experiencing this with a couple of people at the moment, and because I’m not in a great state, it triggers every memory of others who did this. And there’s a lot of them. It makes me feel utterly shit because if everyone treated me like that, I must not mean much to people. I must be an awful person.

 

I’ll paint the picture…

• A guy called Rob led me on. He knew what he was doing. He didn’t apologise. He pointedly said to me, ‘Do you think I’ve been fannying you about?!’ He seemed offended that I liked him and was led to believe he felt the same. He was a player, and was seeing someone. Apparently this was what he did – he’d try it on with everyone. He could see I was upset and instead of being a man and apologising, he tried to shift the blame, and made me feel embarrassed for thinking he could like someone like me.
• Male friend Adam, he supported me through the Rob stuff. And then put me through the same thing. Except he had actually told me he DID like me first and we’d kissed. He disappeared from my life as though we were never friends. To this day I’ve never received an apology for his wimpish behaviour. We no longer talk.
• Friend called Lucy, a pathological liar, told the most awful lies to me… took me for a fool and played my emotions. Didn’t repay me my money. Stole my intellectual property, and wouldn’t remove my photos from her page even after asking her nicely. I cut her out of my life – obviously I’d get no apology, as she was so caught up in her fantasy world she wouldn’t have thought she owed one. A mutual friend wondered why we weren’t talking anymore and pried into my business. I wasn’t about to explain it, as I’d seem like a bitch. That tends to happen when someone hurts you – you talk about it, and YOU sound like the one with the problem.
• Guy called Nick, I started to get to know him. My friends stirred, messed things up. One told me he’d said he liked me, the other said he’d claimed he didn’t. I didn’t know who to believe. One friend was being kind and caring to me, the other was starting drama and sniping at me. Nick wasn’t telling me anything. He didn’t have the balls to talk to me himself. Yet he expected me to know who was lying and who was telling the truth… despite the fact that one of my friends, the one being kind, I hadn’t known long enough to know she was a pathological liar! He said some really unpleasant things to me, that have scarred me for life. I never got an apology. I think one of my friends got a half-arsed apology from him for being a dick to me. But that’s not good enough. I deserved an apology. I know people would see it differently but I was the victim in that situation. I know they all thought it was entirely my fault – for not being clairvoyant!! I know I didn’t handle things great. But I was getting attacked from all sides – the only side I wasn’t being attacked from was the pathological liar’s, but that in itself is an attack, as it attacks the mind and ultimately caused a lot of harm. I was innocent. I was just a girl who liked a guy but couldn’t tell him, and then my friends got involved and fucked it up. I was then made out to be the bad guy. The crazy one. I had a good friend tell me I wasn’t getting enough mental health help, and that she thought I might kill myself. And she talked about restraining orders. All of this was totally out of proportion, and came from a drama-queen. But that lot had me questioning my own sanity. Ultimately I did feel like killing myself after it all blew up, and he said ‘How you think messaging me all the time is going to make me like you I don’t know’. I didn’t get a hint of an apology from any of them.
• Guy called Evan, we dated, not for long. First ‘relationship’. He broke up with me when a family member died, and he was joining the navy. I tried to remain his friend, as I cared about him and wanted to support him through his loss. He also kept saying ‘You never know what the future holds…’ – leading me on. But he treated me like shit in the coming months… making plans, letting me down. Snapping at me. At one point came to see me to talk about getting back together but just put me through the break-up again instead, and told me everything that was wrong with me. Dick. Later found out he’d cheated on me in the two weeks before breaking up with me. The next year after healing I accepted being his friend again. He apologised for his behaviour and how he made me feel. So woohoo for that. About the only person who really apologised for hurting me! Then he went on to try and turn our friendship into something else. And then when I needed his support for something, he suddenly said he couldn’t give me what I wanted. I told him I didn’t like him like that now… I lied. Two days later found out he was in a relationship. We parted ways. And they got married. I was ditched. Last year he got in touch with me out of the blue, after six years, and we met up and chatted. He’d changed. He’s so serious and miserable now compared to when I knew him. I told him I had fallen for his best mate, and when I found out he was seeing someone I got upset, and he said the guy wasn’t right for me, as he’s not reliable like I need. A few days later Evan took me off Facebook without a word. He ditched me again, making him just as bad as before. And no explanation or apology. It could be his wife found out and made him delete me, but I deserved a fucking message. Because for all I know I did something wrong. I said something wrong. People like me fill in the gaps and fear the worst.
• His best mate Joe. God I liked that man a lot. He has no fucking clue. Don’t feel it now, and time has allowed me to see it wasn’t ‘love’, but I’d not felt that way for someone before. He hurt me so much. And I didn’t deserve it. I was in a vulnerable place when I first knew him. I’d just broken up with Evan. Joe was there for me and made me feel better. I wasn’t a confident person anyway, but he gave me confidence. He made me feel like I was attractive. I thought we shared a powerful connection. It was undeniable to me. But it was all bullshit. He was a player. It was his game. I was naïve and innocent. He took that innocence and turned me into a cynical, bitter, man-hating mess. He did the whole ‘blowing hot and cold’ thing, the ‘drip-feeding attention’…. only pulling me closer when I went to leave. He fucked my mind up forever. I trust nobody now. He’d keep going silent on me for weeks and then months at a time, and then press reset. He would cancel on me very last minute. He would accuse me of ‘overreacting’ to him cancelling, when it wasn’t an overreaction to me, it was very understandable. The problem wasn’t my reaction – it was his bloody behaviour!! One time he stood me up and when I turned up to meet him as planned he turned me away, in front of someone else, with a pathetic ‘sorry’, but nothing else – no rearranging, not even a five minute chat! I was mortified. And I’d had enough. I considered killing myself that night. I went to the top of the Itchen bridge and thought about jumping. He thought it was all just a game, but it was my fucking life he was playing with. That was about it for me. That’s the last time I saw him, so my last real memory of him. So screw him. Total jerk. I’ve never received an apology for his behaviour – not a proper apology. He said sorry occasionally…. to keep me hooked, to make me feel sorry for him so that I’d stick around. But the longer I stuck around the more sparse the apologies became…. because he didn’t respect me anymore, and he didn’t care if I stuck around or not. He knew I’d always come running back, and because I did that it made him think his behaviour was acceptable. It wasn’t though. He just took advantage of a vulnerable, mentally ill, trusting girl who ‘loved’ and had faith in him. His loss ultimately, but he did ruin me more than I could ever explain, and a part of me will always hate him for it. The rest of me pities him. I wanted an explanation and genuine apology. But guess that’s asking too much. Where are all the men with balls?!
• A friend Hannah, kept throwing hissy fits at me for simply trying to help arrange lifts, to meet as a group. She became friends with another of my friends Gill, and that made things difficult, as she obviously bitched about me with her, as she accused me of doing the same at the end, which I didn’t – so was obviously a guilty conscience talking. She had this jealousy issue about my friendship with Lucy at one point. But she was being a bitch to me at the time. She was very blunt and rude. She’d upset me and then not allow me a say. She’d say she’d forgotten all about it. She expected things to be swept under the rug. Which I mainly did, for the sake of my other friends. But one day she went too far and tried to show me up in a group message. She provoked me, and when I got upset with her she made herself look like the victim. She removed herself from the group message and started one excluding me, ‘for obvious reasons’. In other words I’d done HER wrong. I stepped back from the group, not wanting to make them choose. So they met with her, and hardly checked on me. None of them were sorry for that, minus one maybe. She kept telling them things couldn’t be resolved, and she’d be ‘civil’ to me. In reality I hadn’t given up on our friendship. I was merely waiting for her to apologise and be nice to me, which she wasn’t prepared to do. Eventually after a few months she got in touch to apologise. We met, and within a few weeks, more of the same. She wasn’t prepared to put in the work to rebuild my trust, and obviously had some resentments. She threw a hissy fit and told me what was wrong with me. A year later I’d get in touch to make amends with her. She smeared me to my best friend and didn’t talk directly to me. Nobody has fucking balls in this world – bunch of fucking cowards all of them! I deserve a fucking face to face apology and explanation. Can you see already this build-up of people treating me with the same disrespect and the resentment it causes in me? All I’ve ever wanted is someone to be different. Someone to give a damn. Someone to show me I’m worth fighting for! But clearly I’m not. She got in touch with my friend last year, and that caused a heap of trouble. And what became clear was that regardless of if she intended any harm, she caused it, AND she had ‘forgotten all about it’ again, and didn’t think she owed me an apology now. That’s what my friend gauged from her. So she wasn’t sorry for all the pain and chaos she caused me. I hate her now.
• Gill, was a good friend. But she betrayed me, and got together with a guy who was perfect for me. She knew I liked him, she knew she liked him, but I didn’t know she liked him. She was in a relationship so no threat when I left the country. While I was away that changed and she admitted her feelings to the guy, Sam. They’re married now. No longer in my life. The pain Gill caused me is among the worst I’ve felt. I didn’t expect it from her. It showed me I can’t even trust my closest friends. She did apologise for hurting me. Not for doing it… of course she gained a heck of a lot from it! So she’s not remorseful for her actions, just that those actions hurt me and cost her my friendship. But tough shit bitch. I was the one stabbed in the back… think I came off a damn slight worse. I hate her too. The Hannah thing is different – I can put her in the ‘irrelevant’ pile with Lucy. But Gill, I can’t get over this… what she did. What it cost me. And how she’s happily getting on with her life, her future, with someone who was meant to be with me. I wanted to settle down with him. She’s not really sorry.
• Sam. We were two awkward losers. Two nerds. Two quiet people. We had shared interests. We had a lovely friendship, and there were no awkward silences. I was comfortable with him. He never made me feel uncomfortable like some guys have, with unwanted sexual humour and flirting. He put my friendship and feelings ahead of anything. I missed the signs that he liked me too. I honestly didn’t believe he would. I had low self-esteem…. I thought I didn’t deserve him. Now I know he didn’t deserve me. Throughout the Hannah thing he didn’t have my back. He didn’t care. And when it came to Gill, who he had been friends with as long as he had dated her, he chose that over our two or three years of friendship. When I told him why I’d disappeared, he didn’t sympathise at all. He didn’t indicate I ever mattered to him, or that he’d miss me. He raved about Gill and how the sun shines out her arse, which it clearly doesn’t if she’d do that to me. But he wasn’t betrayed by her, I was. He benefited from that betrayal so he didn’t have the first fucking clue how devastating it was. He probably still doesn’t. He’s probably living happily in Lala Land with his wife who he shared a ‘strong friendship’ with after just a handful of weeks. Fuck the fact we had a strong friendship for a couple of years…. don’t mention that bit. Make it all about Gill won’t you! Clearly my friendship meant nothing to him. Everything he said was doubly painful, because on the one hand he was listing all these wonderful qualities he saw in Gill, that I know are not true because I actually knew her for years. I knew what she did, and that she wasn’t this angel he was painting her as. But then on the other hand everything he said felt tinged with an implication of ‘unlike you’. He made it seem like I saw him as a compromise nice guy… like a back-up option. He was talking out of his arse there. Nobody thought better of him than I used to. Now I think very poorly of him. I am incredibly upset and sad about how things ended between us. Despite having to see them at a wedding three years ago, in my mind that was the way we parted, and I can’t recover from it. I wanted and I needed, and I FUCKING DESERVED ONE FUCKING CONVERSATION! Especially from him. I thought he was a decent guy. He harped on about being a ‘nice guy’, but does a nice guy kick you when you’re down, and you’ve just lost EVERYTHING, and then let you walk away thinking he hates you?? He is not a nice guy. He was until he started dating Gill. Then he changed. I would give anything to go back to the old days where he was single and we were friends. I miss that friendship. And I miss thinking he was a nice guy that I would want to settle down with. But I can’t have him in my life now. It’s over. It was over the second I got the phone call from Gill. She had put an end to not only my friendship with her, but also a most special friendship I had with Sam. But I still wish he’d get in touch, meet with me and apologise for hurting me so badly, and for not fighting for our friendship. And for not thinking of my feelings. I was bloody hurt. I was in pieces. I’d just lost everything. And he was fucking happy because someone fucking loved him at last. I cannot believe that he was on top of the world at the time, and I was six feet under. And yet he CHOSE to kick me even further down. He is utter scum for doing that to me. Interestingly my anger with him is actually because I am really upset still. I can’t even talk to anyone about this because I’ll start crying. I’m trying not to right now. Nothing hurts me more than this emptiness that’s left in my heart because of losing him, and knowing he’s happy now with the person who betrayed me in the worst way possible. I feel nobody understands this. It’s very isolating. He was my friend. He should’ve wanted to apologise. He shouldn’t have wanted to hurt me. And the fact he did, and showed no remorse, makes me think he’s a robot. I never knew him.
• Somebody at work, when I first started there, accused me of doing something I 100% didn’t do. It was something trivial, but they tried to show me up in front of everyone else by ‘telling me off’ for it. I’m a relatively ‘young woman’ in comparison to her… she’s probably 40 or 50 years older than me. And in my experience old women get a kick out of speaking down to those younger than them. I maintained that I didn’t do it, but she kept on about it, saying ‘I saw you’… ‘you must have done it without thinking’…. no Betty, you must have hallucinated it, or not taken your medication. I was upset and angry and about to flip out. But given that I was trying to get back into work, and had only just started there, I simply went upstairs, cried, scratched at my arm, and phoned someone to talk about it, before calming down and going back downstairs once the woman had left. No apology from her for upsetting me. Never. I didn’t tell anyone about it until recently. I didn’t tell the manager – she still doesn’t know. Anytime I saw her after that, she hardly spoke to me at all, or looked at me. So either guilt, or just a dislike for me. But certainly no apology. And remorse without an apology is no good.
• Just like an apology without actions to back it up is no good. I had a friend who hurt me, and they apologised, but didn’t do anything to change what was hurting me. It’s like saying ‘I’m sorry I’m causing you pain….. but I’m going to continue doing it’ – there’s no point apologising if you’re going to continue doing it. Ultimately this friend did do what was needed, and things were resolved. But when you hurt someone it should be like this: Remorse. Sincere apology. Taking on the blame. Expressing caring for the person. How can I make it up to you? Taking action to stop the hurting. Putting in effort to rebuild trust and friendship. Most people in my life have fallen at the first hurdle. They’ve not had remorse. If they have they’ve not expressed it through an apology. I had one instance where they were sorry, and did what was needed but made me feel guilty about it. That’s not how apologies work. That’s not how friendships work. Nobody has ever seen the whole process through with me. People don’t want to put in extra effort when they’ve fucked up. It’s too much hard work, and I’m obviously not worth it. Nothing I can do about that!
• I met up with my cousin after her first child was born. We chatted about things. I confided in her about something, after expressing very strongly that I didn’t want ANYONE to know about it, as we know what our family grapevine is like. The first thing she does is run to her mummy and tells her a distorted version of what I said. Her mummy then phoned mine and reported to her. And then she came and talked to me about it, to let me know my cousin had gossiped. I told my mum that I explicitly said nobody was to hear about it. I was angry, so was my mum. I took my family off of social media from that point on. I didn’t talk to my cousin or see her again, apart from at family gatherings. I don’t think she even realises why. She probably thinks I’m a bitch for not giving a toss about her life or her kids now. But she broke my trust. I would never be able to discuss anything with her again. If I did, I might as well get my aunty and my mum in and tell them all at once!! She wronged me. No apology or remorse.
• Lots of other examples throughout my life. People saying hurtful things, and not getting any apology at all. I don’t want to go into all of them, because some of these people mean a lot to me, and when they mean a lot, you forgive them. But forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting. You remember not receiving apologies for the damage done, and it all adds up.
• A friend (A) is on the other end of the spectrum from me in terms of politics. I was commenting online about debates I was watching, and talking about a politician. She jumped on my posts and argued. It felt like she was trying to show me up in front of my friends, like everyone else has done in my life. And she was doing this on both Twitter and Facebook at the same time. She took a post I made about a particular politician, and made it about her. I felt attacked. It felt like she was implying I was ‘narrow-minded’, and that I wasn’t listening to her. She said she didn’t want to talk about it anymore as she wasn’t being heard, so what was the point… And that made me feel like utter shit! She was taking out a political grudge on me. I wasn’t even talking about her, I was making a point about a politician. She didn’t have to jump in and make it about her. All I did was clarify my point for her, and she went off on one because I didn’t cater to her opinions on a totally different concept!! She also commented on my Facebook post, patronising me – odd, given I’m 12 years older than her! Talking about me being passionate about politics, and how listening to others’ opinions is important; everyone has different opinions and some are not going to be the same as mine. As if I didn’t know that already! She made her point about her political stance and how important it is that she’s listened to, and the likes of me can’t be the only ones listened to. But yet again my post had nothing to do with her. All I was talking about was the vote for triggering Article 50, and what it would mean if politicians voted against it. Nothing whatsoever to do with her. But she had to make it about her. She had to use it as a way of airing her views and trying to trump mine. I wasn’t even expressing my personal views in that post – just facts!! Anyway, again, after clarifying my point she shut the conversation down…. she said everyone else she knows has given up talking about it as nothing’s certain. That felt like a hint to shut up about it. Any time I’ve mentioned politics she’s made comments like she’s fed up of hearing about the topic. Well don’t read it then. I’d had enough of her arguing with me. We’re not going to see eye to eye, why couldn’t she just accept that? I didn’t like things she posted, and yet I refrained from commenting on her posts, trying to argue with her and show her up in front of her friends! What made this worse was a mutual friend (B), within ten minutes of our conversations on social media, posted on Twitter something to do with, differences of opinion being good, but don’t ram your opinions down my throat as fact! Now… this could have been aimed at anyone. But knowing that she’s on the same side of the spectrum as A politically, and the timing of it, it felt like an attack. It felt like they were ganging up on me. Regardless of whether that was true, that is how it felt. I closed my accounts for a few days. I spoke to someone at work, and decided to rejoin Facebook, but explain my hurt. So I wrote a long post about how I was feeling. I explained that I was close to cutting everyone out of my life – that’s how bad I felt. I explained my political stance but that I do not judge people for theirs. I do not care which way anyone voted. I don’t post to be controversial or start debates. I post to talk to those who feel the same way as me. I said a lot of things. But the one thing I said was if you don’t like something I post, please don’t jump on it, criticise it publicly on my page, or attack me for my views. Just skip past it. Big fucking mistake that was! Since that day, neither A nor B have spoken to me. They either don’t look at my Facebook page or Tweets, or they do but deliberately choose to not engage. And I don’t just mean about politics. I mean EVERYTHING. They don’t join in when I talk about the interests we shared. My mental health has deteriorated this year, and they don’t give a crap. I have suffered my first major loss in March, and no condolences or anything. They have decided to make a point, that if I don’t want them commenting on my political posts, they won’t comment / like / read ANY of them. This is childish and very hurtful. And not something I need in my life after all the shit people have put me through. The fact that I felt ganged up on by them, and then when I have been suffering because of the loss of my grandfather, and they have said NOTHING …. I can’t get over that. That is the most hurtful thing to experience. I feel so angry. And so upset. I feel bullied. I have to see these people soon, and either they don’t realise they hurt me, or more likely they feel they were wronged by me. A I think is spitefully choosing to ignore me and pretend I don’t exist, and given that her outbursts at me were selfish, and out of the blue since I wasn’t involving her at all, this upsets me…. I don’t think it’s on that she’s behaving this way towards me. She should’ve apologised to me. She should have said SOMETHING after my explanation when I returned to Facebook. She could’ve messaged me and made sure everything was alright. Admittedly I could’ve privately messaged these people, but I don’t like confrontation. I was in a delicate place, I felt overwhelmingly upset, I was harming myself, and I actually felt she was volatile at the time. That was my perception back then.. right or wrong. I didn’t handle it right probably, but I did the best I could back then. I was cutting ALL of my friends out, even the ones who agreed with me… all because of these people. I chose to write a post to all of my friends about this, without mentioning names, because it involved more than one of them, in my eyes. I also needed the validation I got from others. People liking my post told me they didn’t ALL hate me, like my mentally ill mind was telling me at the time. You’ve got to bear in mind I had distanced myself from my best friend at that time too. I didn’t have a friend to turn to, so I was in a bad place. A close family member had recently had a heart attack. My grandfather was dying. I’m not making excuses, but there’s a lot more to the story than people would think. Yet they judge you on one snapshot moment. One post. Having one friend say that if people don’t like what I have to say, they can skim past it, helped me to feel better about myself, and the situation. They were saying what I was thinking, and what I wished these others could grasp. B might not know anything about this. It might not have been aimed at me. BUT after my post she’s said nothing to me. That to me says that she took offence at what I wrote. And that would mean a guilty conscience, meaning my perception was right – I was being ganged up on. If this is the case I feel sick thinking about the two of them. Choosing to snipe at me like that… ever so subtle but obvious by the timing. I wasn’t trying to ram my opinions down anyone’s throats and that’s what pisses me off the most. People accuse me of things and make me out to be something I’m not, and judge me for it. I fucking hate it. When people misinterpret things I say and come up with a character trait – I’ve had someone imply I’m ‘controlling/manipulative’ for asking them to stop hurting me. I’ve had someone imply I’m ‘negative’ and ‘criticised them as a friend’ because I dared to speak up against their shitty behaviour and how it made me feel. I’ve even had someone imply I’m ‘conceited’ just because I said I’d catch-up on a Mariokart level, as I was busy taking a tablet! I know that is silly, but if someone says I’m conceited because of it, or that it sounds conceited, that fucking sticks in my mind. You could go on to tell me all the wonderful things about me, and I will always only remember the one bad thing you said. So yeah, to have B imply I shove my opinions down others’ throats fucks me off. I was stating facts of what was actually possible. But never mind. I said I wouldn’t talk about politics as much but that I’d hope they could accept the occasional post, in being my friends. But since neither of them have given a fuck about being my friend since, I decided I’ll say whatever the hell I want. I’m not censoring myself for people who aren’t bothered about being my friends. I feel sickeningly upset about this, and terrified about having to see them sometime soon. Might cancel, which would be a shame, but probably best for all. I don’t know how else to handle this. I’ve read their posts, and did comment and like things to begin with, but they don’t bother, so I’ve stopped bothering. I feel victimised, and because of the state of mind I’m in this year, I can’t challenge that. If they think I was at fault, and they’re the victims, then fine, they can think that. I haven’t the energy to make them see my point of view. If they can’t see my point of view and realise I am hurt, then we’ll never talk again. I’m not reaching out. They hurt me. If they’d apologised then all would be fine and dandy, now I’m not sure it can be fixed. Oh well. Main thing is I know who my real friends are.

This is just a snapshot of my life. Some would say I’m a ‘perpetual victim’. I always ‘play the victim’. I wish I was ‘playing’, but you know what, I’ve had people shit on me for years. You try bouncing back from that. I have serious mental health problems. On top of that I’ve had people continuously hurt me, and express no remorse. They’ve all dodged responsibility. If I’d had a few decent people in my life, do the right thing and say ‘I’m sorry’, then I might feel less victimised.

I’m hoping that some of you might understand what it’s like to have BPD and feel this way – although I hope you don’t feel this way… it’s not nice. When everyone you meet eventually treats you badly, and doesn’t make up for it, it can make you feel hopeless about life. It makes you hate yourself. And it makes you ‘split’ with other people. The lack of a genuine apology from a friend after they hurt me, and their avoidance of even talking to me, is more than enough to make me go from thinking they’re wonderful, to hating them. And if they only acknowledged the pain they’ve caused me, and expressed an ounce of friendship to me now, it would be enough to make me like them again.

I don’t like feeling the way I feel. I hate feeling so reactive to the actions of others. It depresses me. Why can’t I be normal? But no matter how much I hate it, it is a part of who I am. I need those in my life to understand BPD and my triggers. I need them to understand my needs. And respect them. Otherwise they’ll only be in my life for a moment. How do I get them to understand though? I’m a very fair and forgiving person, but only if the wrongdoing is acknowledged. Does this make me unreasonable? I’m sorry that I don’t just forgive everything regardless. But life has taught me to have this boundary. People have to earn my friendship, and that means apologising when they’re in the wrong. But if they can’t do that, then they’ll just have to forever think I’m a bitch. Doesn’t mean I am though, that’s what I’m having to tell myself. I know what happened and how it made me feel. I know the truth of myself. If they want to misunderstand me and push me away then it’s their loss. There’s nothing I can do to change their minds about me. We won’t move forward if they can’t self-reflect and act like adults. My long post I made wasn’t an attack on anyone. It was an explanation in a bid to save friendships. It clearly didn’t work how I’d intended. And whilst a part of me thinks I should apologise, I also think ‘WHY?!’ … I was the one who was upset to the point I came off social media, and had to write that post in the first place… and did I see an apology? No. And if nobody ever shows me apologies, why should I always do the apologising? I’m honestly one of those people who will willingly apologise when I’ve done wrong, and sometimes when I haven’t done wrong. It’s how I was raised, to not want to hurt others, and to take responsibility. It seems nobody else was taught this as a child. I think what it comes down to is pride and ego. People think saying ‘I’m sorry’ is admitting they’re flawed, and terrible people – but what makes them flawed and terrible people is the inability to say sorry and fix things. It takes humility and someone actually valuing a friendship more than their own ego. I’m just done with people. If they want to be in my life they will be. If they want to talk to me they will. I only have my friends on Facebook, and if I get the sense people don’t actually want me as a friend I will remove them. I’ve got to protect myself from this emotional abuse. That is the feeling I get from it. It’s emotionally stripping me and punching me, when I think about this year, and their lack of caring. And when I think about not knowing how to resolve it. I shouldn’t be the one resolving it. It should be them. So I give up. A few months ago things were ‘good’ – or as good as they could be with my grandfather dying. I had friends who supported me and shared common interests. They even did something nice for me for Christmas. But now……. At my lowest ebb where are they? I have so much resentment towards people now. The longer they appear to ignore my existence the deeper the resentment and anger, and the closer I get to cutting them from my life. I deserve better than this.

Do you often feel like a victim? Do you feel like nobody takes responsibility for the pain they cause you? Does it make you want to give up on everyone? How do you recover from this pattern of neglect and disrespect? I’d love to know.

 

Friendships are hard for me. I never used to have them. And once I did, I was exposed to interpersonal difficulties…. that people with BPD experience. And as much as I want friends, it feels like a minefield, and too much heartache. Because nobody understands me, I sometimes think it would be easier to be alone. Perhaps it’s what I truly deserve. I hate myself for the resentment and bitterness, and for making this all up in my head if it’s not really what’s happening. But I can’t tackle it with anyone, so until they speak to me all I can do is assume. And I hate it. I get so tired of my mind. I wish it had an off switch.

My only thought for what I could do, is to take each encounter and write myself the apology I should have received. Pretend it’s from them and say what I needed to hear. I will certainly give it a go. Until people learn to take responsibility it’s the only option I’ve got.

xxxx

Words Can Kill.

*Contains very bad language*
*Names have been changed*
*Personal post, but you may relate to some of it*

What I wish people without BPD knew is, without walking on eggshells, be careful with your words… particularly if they’re written ones. Because the words you choose to write to me will be forever etched in my mind, and replayed over and over again in times of crisis.

It’s different writing to me than speaking to me. In person conversation is spontaneous. We can sometimes say something without thinking. But writing…. there’s an opportunity to step back and think what to write and what not to write. Okay I admit I’ve written many things I’ve regretted, whilst in emotional mind. Sometimes the adrenaline pumps, or you’re crying your eyes out and not thinking straight, and if you don’t have the awareness to take that step back, you’re going to say something you might regret, or that might hurt someone’s feelings. I’m aware everyone makes mistakes.

But most people don’t have BPD. They’re not impulsive. They’re not taken over by their emotions to the same degree. They’re likely more ‘rational’ in difficult times, so they should know better. The trouble of course is they don’t understand the impact their words will have on someone with BPD, as they don’t have the same problem of replaying hurtful words as they harm themselves.

Below are some of the many harmful words which replay through my mind when my thoughts are snowballing. There are others, but these are just a few:

 

Holly:

 

“Hi, if I don’t hear from you today I’ll assume you cannot meet and make other plans xx”

The reason to not be like this with someone with mental health issues, is you have no idea what they’re going through. The person who said this to me asked about midnight, and then sent this about 10 /11 am the following morning. I hadn’t had time to read her messages, let alone think of my answer. It wasn’t about meeting that day, it was a couple of days in the future! All this will do is get my back up. It’ll make me think ‘ well, if you want to make assumptions go right ahead, OR you could have a little empathy and check everything’s okay with me instead of getting bolshy’.

“Ellie. All your friends care about you so much and we are all really worried about you. You are not gonna like what I’m going to say but it’s only because I really care about you! This obsession you have with Nick is not normal, I know you say it’s more complicated than that, that’s fair enough but I’m just worried about how this is all effecting you, you seem really depressed and I’m worried it could get worse and you might try and kill yourself – I know that’s extreme but it sounds to me your statuses are a cry for help and I really think you should seek professional help maybe counselling or therapy. Your problems won’t go away unless you confront them and I know that can be extremely difficult but you can do that, you have a great support network around you and I think sometimes you forget that”.

I can never forget how this girl very openly accused me of being mentally ill. She bluntly told me that I was obsessed with someone and it wasn’t ‘normal’. Some think being blunt or direct is a good thing… it’s ‘just being honest’ – but actually sometimes it’s just plain rude and hurtful. I was not obsessed with that Nick guy. If that was how she chose to view it then that’s her decision. Maybe she was obsessed with the situation. She always seemed to have a lot to say about my personal situations, and got stressed out over things that should’ve only stressed ME out! All that was happening was I was trying to survive a highly upsetting experience with a complete and utter jerk. And when I was younger I did the thing young people sometimes do, and expressed my feelings on social media. I did that, so that my friends didn’t feel pressured into helping me. I couldn’t directly turn to one of them and say, can I talk to you. So she was right, the statuses were a ‘cry for help’, but not in the dramatic way she meant, only in the sense of ‘if anyone’s available to talk, I’m not in a good way’.

She didn’t know the details of what I was going through. But to be honest if she was that concerned I might ‘try and kill myself’ then that’s an in-person conversation. It just sounded harsh and emotionless in a message. What she didn’t know is I was already receiving help. But things don’t magically fix themselves with psychological help – there will always be ups and downs. And I was confronting my difficulties – I do it every day! She also made it sound like I took my friends for granted, which was the furthest thing from the truth.

Bottom line, some things should only be said in person. Writing lives forever. This was one of those things.

“Try and help me understand coz at the moment I feel like you don’t even wanna be friends. The other night you only invited me coz Laura couldn’t make it, otherwise you only ever invite Laura. Is there something else bothering you? I think with the Nick stuff we just need to agree to disagree x x x”

This wasn’t true. But so what if it was? So what if I only invited Laura… maybe she was being supportive whilst everyone else seemed to be against me. I don’t actually know where Holly got these ideas from. She obviously had some deep-seated jealousy issue. She was bothering me, that was the answer to her question. And I was happy to disagree with her on the ‘Nick stuff’ – she didn’t know what she was talking about anyway.

One thing not to do with someone with BPD is falsely accuse them of things. Even though we know the truth it will still mess with our heads, and we may doubt ourselves. We’ll also harbour thoughts, such as ‘well, if you think that of me, you obviously don’t know me or think very highly of me‘ and then we’ll be more prone to splitting with you. And that’s something very hard to recover from.

“Can I be really funny and ask you not to chat about him to me as well as it just stresses me out because he’s told me to my face he’s not interested in you and I’ve told you this but you’re not listening that’s fair enough but I just don’t like this stressed feeling I get coz I think you’re gonna get hurt. Hugs x x x”

Can I just say really blunt cold things that show I have no understanding of mental health issues or how to talk to people or how to use punctuation and then I’ll make it seem so much nicer by putting ‘Hugs x x x’ at the end…… I had just made a really flippant comment, a joke about the guy, and she replied with this. She banned me from talking to her about this person and situation, because it stressed HER out thinking I was going to get hurt. She showed no hint of thinking about the stress and pain I was feeling, given that I was in the middle of it. It was such a selfish view.

If you don’t want me to talk about something anymore then there’s likely a much nicer way to say it than that. I’m sorry Holly wasn’t taught about tact. It was quite funny that she said I wasn’t listening when she would be the world’s guiltiest person in regards to that. Basically don’t be a bitch to someone like me. To ban me talking about something that I’m going through which hurts me, is to tell me it’s wrong to talk about things, and that I should deal with it alone. And unfortunately my way of dealing with things like that alone, was self-harm.

“Ellie I’m really worried about you. Nick has contacted me and we are both really worried about you. You are harassing Nick and he’s close to a restraining order. Please use the time we would have met tomorrow to talk to someone and arrange more therapy or to up the therapy as it’s obviously not working. You really need to get some more help. What you’re getting now is not enough! Hugs! Xxx”

She didn’t want me talking to her about things, yet she’d happily talk about me behind my back with him. This was an issue blown completely out of proportions by two narcissistic arseholes. Holly loved ‘drama’ so would relish in the concept of ‘harassment’ and ‘restraining orders’. Nick meanwhile was a jerk. He thought he was that special, that he had his own ‘stalker’. It was after my final contact with him. I was NEVER going to get in touch again, and never did! Just like with Holly they jumped on the drama train after it had left. They may have thought it would make me continue to pay attention to them, to try and ‘fix’ things, but no such luck. When I’m done I’m done.

“…. arrange more therapy or… up the therapy as it’s obviously not working”. Fuck you Holly. You don’t know the first thing about therapy – you could have done with some yourself! What exactly did she mean by ‘up the therapy’ – yes I’ll have a stronger dose of therapy today. Shows what a complete lack of understanding about mental health she has. To have that kind of comment thrown at me, when I had worked SO hard to improve myself, was extremely upsetting. I’d been in therapy for a good couple of years, doing DBT. I was still in therapy. It was enough. The only thing making me as mentally ill as I was at the time were people like Nick, Laura and Holly herself. I can’t believe the way she used to talk to me back then. And she’d always make it seem like she cared, and she’d put ‘hugs’ at the end. Which is the equivalent of ‘Fuck you! * Smiley face * ‘

Many times I could’ve said to Holly that she needed help for her narcissism. But I didn’t. I had self-restraint. I’m not rude like that. But she had a disease that made her blurt out anything that entered her mind. She felt okay telling me ‘you need serious help… you’re mentally ill’. She ought to be made to attend lessons on mental health and how to be a sensitive, kind person to her friends.

Never write anything like this to someone with BPD. It’s rude. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you won’t be appreciated for it. Also don’t talk behind their back with the person causing them a load of pain, and then challenge your friend – it comes across as you ‘ganging up’ on your friend. You’ll lose their respect.

“I’m really sorry I’ve had to remove you as a friend on Facebook. I get a bit paranoid when I visit your profile to check you’re ok and find you have hidden your statuses. It makes me wonder what I have done and I have so much stress going on at the moment that I know it’s such a small thing but I can’t handle it at the moment. I think not being Facebook friends will be easier on our friendship xx”

She got paranoid. SHE got paranoid. And it was paranoia. Please don’t use social media as a weapon against people who have BPD. If you have a concern or are paranoid about something, please just ask. Had Holly asked then I could have checked my settings, found out what the issue was with her, and seen if anybody else had the same issue. But since she removed and blocked me I couldn’t do anything about it. What she did was rash. It was dramatic. It was immature. Funnily enough she’d go on to accuse me of always falling out with her and blocking her as a friend over and over again. She was the one who did that. She uses Facebook as a weapon. Even when in a relationship… if they have an argument, she’ll unfriend them and become ‘single’, to make a point. And then have to re-add them, and rejoin the relationship. I know she’s done that three times at least with one of her boyfriends. It was her preferred method of communication and control… it was actually drama-stirring. One thing she did a lot was talk about all the stress SHE had, using it as an excuse for her behaviour. But her behaviour stressed me out. So she was just passing her stress onto me so she didn’t have to deal with it and I did. This was selfish.

People like me react intensely to these passive-aggressive gestures on social media. Whenever people have disagreed with me on something they’ve removed themselves from my poetry group that I run. It’s like a great big cyber ‘fuck you!‘…. and it really hurts. I still remember when Holly removed me as a friend and I had no clue why. I was sat at 3am, a big ball of anxiety and confusion. Behaviour like that, intended to send a message to someone, it really does if they have BPD. Sometimes a gesture like that is enough to make me harm myself. It’s rejection… abandonment…. two things people like us can’t tolerate. It’s also a loss of control, as you feel they’re about to start talking about you publicly to their friends, and there’s nothing you can do about it… you’ll never know, as you’re not friends anymore. It’s not nice, so don’t do it. Just talk to us and find out the truth before assuming things and acting off of those assumptions.

 

“Hi not coming tonight, just been put in a bad mood so won’t be good company anyway hope you guys have fun xxx”

This was sent to all my friends, and the comment was aimed at me. I was the one who had apparently just put her in a bad mood, by trying to help travel arrangements against her wishes she claimed. 1. It’s not nice to bring other people into your ‘arguments’, no matter how subtle it is. 2. Way to make me feel like shit. That was the last time I’d ever help with plans. People never appreciate kind gestures.

“Glad you had a good time I was exhausted last night and everyone was making me grumpy then you asked Em to give me a lift when I had asked you not to”

This was what she said to me the next day. I hadn’t been asked not to. I had been told she didn’t like to ask. But actually I never got round to asking. My friend Em was the one to offer. So up yours Holly! Despite me being the one with BPD, which can involve impulsiveness, I actually took time to cool off and let the words echo for a bit. A few days later I said I was a bit upset about it, and she said she’d forgotten all about it. Yeah, great for you Holly… convenient memory loss.

“I’m not even gonna discuss this you’re making an issue out of nothing”
“It’s only an issue for you I’ve moved on and have invited you along to group events you need to move on and stop making it an issue and discussing it and making it awkward for our friends”
“I’m not discussing this anymore on here or in person”

Each of these statements came after she created an argument with me over her phone number, and she decided the place to do that was in a group message on Facebook, instead of in private. When challenged on this (in private), she shut me down like this. She wouldn’t hear that she was hurting me with her actions. It was an issue to me, so it should have been an issue to my friend had she been one. If it would impact our friendship then she should’ve wanted to talk about it to clear the air. She claimed I was making it awkward for our friends, when she instigated the whole thing, showed me up to them, bitched about me to them, and then she carried on socialising with them whilst I was ostracised. How fair was that? She was a narcissist and a bully, no doubt about that.

 

Shutting someone down who has BPD is one of the worst things you can do. Telling them you’re not going to talk about it anymore. All that will do is make someone like me stuff it down inside. The pressure will build. We won’t be able to contain our feelings and thoughts on the subject. We need to feel heard and validated. Imagine if someone hurt you by showing you up in front of all your other friends, and you told them you found that upsetting and asked if they could just come to you next time, and their response was ‘I’m not talking about this, this is only an issue for you and doesn’t matter to me!’ How would you feel? You’d probably ditch the ‘friend’. Us BPD sufferers have a hard enough time stopping our emotions bottling up and bursting out, but if you give us a reason to resent you, I promise it will build up and eventually will come out in a way much worse than if we just discussed it like adults in the first place.

“We had a friendship but it’s gone downhill one thing after another first you thought I was after Nick then Liam and wouldn’t believe me when I said I’m not. I know you used to bitch about me to Rachel. Then you keep falling out with me as a friend and I just cant deal with it anymore.”

More false accusations and projection. Here’s a tip to those without BPD. Just because you can’t handle flaws in your own personality or behaviour, that does not give you the right to project them onto someone else, someone you perceive to be better than you, therefore wanting to drag them down to your level, in your eyes.

Do not accuse me of bitching about you to someone who you also claimed bitches about EVERYONE including her now husband! I didn’t bitch about Holly. I have since. But not to Rachel, as she’s no longer in my life either. But I definitely never bitched about Holly to Rachel, as I knew they were good friends also, so anything I said to Rachel would get back to Holly, as Rachel was not the most trustworthy secret-keeper. I was on the receiving end of a bit of stirring I think. The two of them clearly talked about me behind my back, that much is evident. And any bitching that occurred was likely Rachel’s thoughts blamed on me. Moral of the story – do not play someone’s friends off against each other. Whoever was responsible out of the two of them, threw me into uncertainty. And I no longer trust friends.

“I think I have grown up a lot in the past year I know life is short and how important it is to live in the moment and be positive. You always seem to have a lot going on truth is everyone does it’s just the way you deal with it you’re very different to me and I think we’ve just grown apart as friends which is fine that’s life. I think you make life very difficult for yourself by letting things get to you”

This was a big one. This is one that I can recite in my mind’s eye almost in full. Particularly the thing about I always have a lot going on. I always had time for my friends. I didn’t always have a lot going on. But I did on the day of this conversation – I was preparing to go and have an MRI scan of my brain, to see if I had a tumour. Which I did it turned out. So the insensitivity of that comment cannot be forgiven, partly because it was never acknowledged or apologised for. But can I just say THANK GOD I’m different to Holly!! And thank God I’m free of her. Just thinking about her causes me stress and anxiety. She takes drama with her wherever she goes. And with BPD drama is the last thing you need in your life. You need stability and predictability, not always waiting for the next attack to come.

But that last comment… “I think you make life very difficult for yourself by letting things get to you”… that’s the worst thing you could say to someone with BPD. You make life difficult for YOURSELF. Thanks for that scar Holly. Letting things get to me. Do you think I choose to be hurt? Some people would say, ‘yes you do. It IS a choice’. These are the people who don’t truly understand mental health issues. They don’t understand depression and they don’t understand BPD. What this comment did was communicate that Holly wasn’t prepared to filter her words, think about her behaviour or take responsibility for hurting me. The problem to her wasn’t her actions, but how I reacted to her actions. Instead of her doing something that hurt me, I just let it get to me. This was the behaviour of a narcissist. They always blame the victim. And unfortunately a lot of people side with the narcissist and don’t believe the victim. I’m a casualty of that.

“Hi Em
Sorry to drag you into this I know you have a lot on with the wedding and baby but I feel if I message Ellie directly she will turn it into a conversation and I’m sorry to say I really don’t want to hear from her again, I still think she is a lovely person but I’ve outgrown the friendship. The falling out and blocking me as a friend time and time again, criticizing me as a friend and not having any trust and all the negativity it’s just not the kind of friend I want in my life, I’m happy for you to forward this message to Ellie and hope everything’s going well for you and Chris xx”

After falling out with me we stopped talking for about 9 months or so. I then stupidly wanted to clear the air with her, even though she was the one in the wrong and should have been the one to apologise and sort things out with me. She refused to speak to me. And in fact after receiving my message on Facebook she blocked me immediately, which showed her negativity, her immaturity and the grudge she was obviously still holding towards me. Instead of speaking to me or just quietly ignoring me, she decided the right thing to do was to talk to my best friend about me, behind my back. Despite our issues having started and continued because of her involving my friends in her issues with me, she thought the right course of action was to drag my friend into it… my friend who was in the middle of the most stressful time of her life! She showed no care for my friend, and after a couple of messages aimed at me, she blocked my friend… she just used her to get at me. And boy did it have the effect she wanted….

I can’t get over this message she wrote. There was no need for it. If she didn’t want to hear from me again, all she had to do was say so to me, or just ignore me. What she did was bitchy and again, immature. And passing stress onto someone else. She claimed I was still a lovely person BUT…. and then listed all these apparent bad qualities in me. Apparently I fell out with her, not the other way around. I kept blocking her, when it was she who did that. Criticising her as a friend, that was her interpretation of me asking her not to address our issues with the group in the future, as it hurt me. She took that as a criticism, rather than saying ‘yep, that was wrong, sorry I hurt you’. I didn’t trust her for very good reasons – when you’ve hurt someone it takes a long time to rebuild and re-earn that trust. It’s not just a given, you have to work for it. You have to WANT to work for it. And she didn’t. She gave up. I was ‘negative’ for many good reasons at that point in my life. But at least I was honest about my negativity. She was the world’s most negative person, yet she pretended she was all happy and positive. She was a liar. She was fake. What she did by writing this to my friend was harmful, toxic, and damaging to my friendship ultimately. Don’t ever involve other people in disputes, not like this. And if you’re going to, then expect the same back!!

“Hi Em, I was hoping to say this in person but seeing as we’re not meeting it’s probably easiest to send quick message I just wanted to apologise for being so distant it’s just Ellie still won’t leave me alone so I’m trying to make it so she can’t contact me but hope you’re all ok take care sorry you can’t meet tonight hope you’re ok xx”

I opened a new account and messaged Holly, to have my say. As it was trademark of her to have her say and then prevent me from having a say. I initially asked my friend to help me out, but she chose not to, so I messaged Holly myself. I asked her not to involve my friend anymore. I let it be known I didn’t want to hear from her again either. I set her straight on a couple of things and made it clear I was only acting with the kindest intentions and it was regretful that she didn’t see this. Holly didn’t reply to me. I didn’t want her to. In my mind that was closure. That was having my last say on the issue and forgetting all about her….. But she had to get one last dig in….

She messaged my friend AGAIN, and said this. She was hoping to say it in person, therefore she intended to bitch about me to my friends without me there. That was her intention. She was blaming her distance with my friend Emily, on me ‘not leaving her alone’. Get your head around that one! I had sent two messages in two months, and then that final one in response to her nastiness. It was final. It was clear if she read it, that was it, she’d hear no more and I didn’t want to hear from her directly nor through anyone else. The point here is that she knew full well that was it, unless she can’t read! She wanted to continue the drama. She wanted to hurt me. She wanted to disrespect my wishes for her to not involve Emily. Because I’d disrespected hers by contacting her again in response. And she’s immature remember – tit-for-tat. She wanted the last say, the ‘power’, and to leave me in a state of chaos. Which she very much did. I know she badmouthed me after we fell out. It’s what she does best. I know this one existed for instance:

“Enjoying the peace and quiet. Some people are so toxic”

She was of course referring to me, as it was at the time we fell out and she blocked me. She thought I was toxic. But she thought everyone who didn’t kiss her arse was toxic. I know I’m challenging. I know I’m a pain in the arse sometimes. I know my depression and self-pity can be draining. But I wasn’t the toxic one in that situation. Unfortunately she was pretty good at convincing others that I was. She’d always slap a smile on her face, act innocent and friendly, and act like the victim, yet be positive and carefree about it, just so that people thought I was the problem as I was the ‘negative’ one… the one staying away from our group of friends. She wrapped them all around her little finger. It’s what people like her do. People with BPD can be difficult at times. Narcissists are toxic.

Nick:

“Ellie. I don’t know why I’m getting all these messages about stuff. We sat down that time and talked and “sorted things”. I don’t understand why there has been any need for these messages from the start. You asked Laura to speak to me she did and then lied to you not that you seem to accept that fact. Holly spoke to you and told you what I said and again you chose not to accept it. You asked me whether I liked you and I said I didn’t know you and that I’ve got so much going on atm I’m not interested in getting to know someone new. But how dare you message my ex gf and best friend. Its got nothing to do with her. How you think messaging me all the time is going to make me like you I don’t know.”

I made a mistake. One I learnt from. That’s the point of mistakes after all! I sought help from the wrong person. They didn’t help me, and they blabbed and landed me in deep shit. And then this nob of a guy decided to take it all out on me. He didn’t understand that I had mental health problems, worsened by a pathological liar of a friend, and a blunt, stirring bitch of a friend, who totally cocked my mind up for me. And he was blowing hot and cold, and was a blunt bastard himself at times. I didn’t know the truth. He wouldn’t tell me the truth. He would tell the ‘truth’ to Holly. And he would tell something to Laura. But he wouldn’t talk to me himself. Immature. And then he expects me to KNOW the truth, when told two completely different stories. Okay he obviously thought I should know the clear truth is that he wasn’t interested, because that is of course the most likely answer – who the fuck would be interested in Ellie?? I was young, and didn’t have much experience with men. Ha, still don’t!!! But I deserved to be treated with more respect than any of that.

‘How dare you?’ – the worst words you can say to someone like me. I hate to upset people, make mistakes, do the wrong thing. And this is a very patronising teacher-ish tone to take. I can’t forget this. It makes me feel like I’m the size of an ant. It makes me feel like I’m a terrible person who doesn’t deserve anything good in life.

But the killer line from that message, which is the main scarring phrase whenever I’m in distress…. ‘How you think messaging me all the time is going to make me like you I don’t know’ – who the fuck says that to someone?? People with BPD often do send multiple messages to people, particularly someone they like, because they worry they’ve ruined something and are going to be abandoned for it, so they try to fix it with more messages. They also need more reassurance than most people, and this is a way to try and attain that. We are aware of how annoying it may be. We hate ourselves for sending yet another message, but the fear of abandonment is so huge and sickening that the only way to quell the anxiety is to try again to get them to talk to you, so you know they’re not leaving you. What Nick said to me was the cruellest, most disgusting thing anyone’s ever said to me. I’m fully aware nobody likes me, and nothing I ever do will make anyone like me. A part of me wishes he felt guilty about what he said to me and would apologise for it. But I know there’s more chance of pigs flying than that. Do people sometimes say things like that, and then reflect on it and think ‘I shouldn’t have said that, that was really unkind’? I would. Do ‘normal’ people not self-reflect like those with mental health issues do? He likely forgot what he said as soon as he said it. The more I replay that last sentence in my head, the more I want to harm myself. Because it’s true. And it must be what everyone thinks of me. People don’t want me to talk. They want me to leave them alone. They want me to BE alone. This is what these people from my past and present, teach me.

Charlotte:

“Could you please, stop talking to my husband I don’t think it is appropriate for you to be sending him suggestive messages like you do.”

Sent by the ex-wife of someone I really liked. They had split up. If I’m understanding things I’ve heard since, she had actually already moved on herself, and was just trying to mess things up for her ex, and claim him as hers still. I didn’t intend to fall for someone who had been married. I would never in a million years have gone after someone married. I would never be ‘the other woman’. Ever. We were just flirty. He was helping me through my break-up with his friend, by boosting my confidence. That was all. And this was after they broke up. She didn’t need to make me feel like shit, as they weren’t together still so her ‘husband’ could talk to whoever the hell he wanted… especially if she had already moved on! She chose to make me feel like crap, and it worked. But I know I did nothing wrong. Other than fall for him, as he turned out to not be a decent person to me. Maybe she thought I was the reason their marriage fell apart – he did cheat after all… a good reason to have not ended up with him myself. Maybe she thought it was with me as well. It wasn’t. Nothing happened with him… thankfully.

Jon:

“I don’t like you overreacting to me cancelling.”

Speaking of. He would make plans with me, and cancel last minute – one time I was at the bus stop, minutes away from meeting him. Another time I turned up at his place of work as planned, and he had completely forgotten our plans, and made a lame apology and turned me away in front of a colleague, for me to find a bus home. That was the day I had enough and wanted to throw myself off the nearby bridge. It was sad that I was so used to him cancelling that I came to expect it. But just as much as you expect it it’s still disappointing when it happens. You spend all day in anxiety wondering if you are actually going to meet, and then the inevitable let down last minute. Sorry, that will take its toll with someone like me. And what may seem an ‘overreaction’ to you, will be a normal reaction to me. I think it’s quite normal to be pissed off with someone who KEEPS standing you up and wasting your time. He probably got an under-reaction actually! An overreaction would be me storming to his house, banging on his door, shouting so the neighbours can hear, and threatening to kill him unless he sees me – THAT would be an ‘overreaction’.

Someone with BPD being told they’re overreacting is heartbreaking, because we’re feeling so much pain already, to then be invalidated and told what happened wasn’t a big deal and didn’t deserve the reaction that naturally came to us…. Again it’s like with Holly… not taking responsibility for what his actions or lack of actions did to me. He thought being disrespectful, rude and cancelling on me all the time was acceptable and the problem was how I reacted to it. Screw him! Why don’t people take responsibility for their behaviour and words, instead of piling the guilt onto me!?

Dan:

“I would love to be able to sit down with you and have a coffee to find out how things have gone for you but I’m busy working. The big reason for me leaving and not being in touch as much. The big event in my life that I’m extremely proud of. If that isn’t good enough for you for having a friend like me then fine. I just figured I’d put you straight before you make up false ideas about me.”

Dan hurt me with this, as yet again he assumed things of me, like I was selfish. He had no clue how proud I was of him for his achievements career-wise. I was always cheering him on, despite how poorly he treated me. Just like his friend Jon… despite how HE treated me I always had his back. I was always quietly cheering on his successes. I was so proud of Dan. And his implication that I wasn’t was extremely hurtful. My issue was that he wasn’t able to read the emotions in my messages. I couldn’t convey them right. More than anything I was upset how things were between us, and I was so proud of him that I wanted to SHARE in that with him. I wanted him to know, but he kept me at arms’ length. I think he’d just been a bit short and sharp with me, and I was upset by it, and this was his response to that. It broke my heart, that he thought the exact opposite of me to the truth.

“No it wasn’t a test. And yes I was going to come see you. I honestly didn’t know about this. But know what, think what you like. I’ve got work to do.”

Men in his circle had a habit of ‘testing’ me to see how I’d react. Just like Jon he’d stand me up. That’s fair enough (well it’s not really!! It’s NOT acceptable)… but to say ‘Know what, think what you like. I’ve got work to do’ was not the kindest response. The trouble a lot of my ‘friends’ in the past had is they weren’t aware of my BPD. I do wonder what difficulties I may have avoided had they understood I wasn’t simply some needy, emotional mess and that it was part of a mental illness beyond my control. But then maybe some people like Dan, would always be insensitive bastards who don’t give a fig how they make someone feel with their words.

Emily:

“I know you said that I don’t need the added stress, but it is already starting to stress me out.”

I had just acknowledged in a message that I didn’t want to give her more to think about. I’d said that myself. I was fully aware of the stress at the time. I was also stressed at the time, having to organise my own dress for the wedding. Plus having Holly be a bitch behind my back. And the fear of seeing two people together at the wedding, who I couldn’t face seeing. I had enough stress of my own. And I knew I was a burden. In fact before this message I already decided I didn’t deserve friends and people would be better off without me around. That’s why it hurt when I got it. I was ‘stressing her out’. Forget the fact I defended us BOTH to Holly and told her Em didn’t need any more stress at the moment and how annoyed I was that she’d caused that for her. That’s obviously irrelevant!

 

 

I was trying my best to not inflict myself on others at that time. I kept a lot to myself, through the wedding and beyond. I wanted her to not be stressed. And she was accusing me of stressing her out. This has stuck with me for three years, and cuts like a knife when I think of it. It was the first time she’s ever said anything that’s scarred me. And I no longer like to inflict myself on people. My issues stress others out. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry, I know you all want me to suffer in silence on my own. I just thought that’s what we’re here for on Earth… to lessen the load and make each other’s lives more bearable. I’m sorry that’s not the case. I’m sorry I’m alone. I’m sorry I’m such a burden. These are the thoughts that make me suicidal. They trigger the thoughts of ‘I’m such a burden. I have to suffer alone. I am alone. The size of the pain I feel from the things that stress others out, is too big to hold inside me. I want it all to stop. I want it to end. I could make it end. Then I wouldn’t be a burden to them anymore’.

Implying that someone with BPD is stressing you out with their issues…. please don’t do that. I get it, okay, I get it. You’re fed up with hearing about our pain… our problems. You’re sick of it. Just thank God you’re not the one experiencing it. You wouldn’t last a day. A problem shared is a problem halved. A problem shared, and thrown back for stressing the other person out, is a problem doubled. It’s worse than before we opened our mouths, reached out to our friends and said ‘please help me!’ … just remember that when you’re stressed out over OUR problems in life. We’re living it. It’s a million times more painful and stressful for us. And if you admit we’re stressing you out with it, not only will we never open up to you again… it will double the burden on ourselves.

 

Liam:

“I would rather be with someone that could embrace their emotions than to pretend they didn’t exist or worse vow to ignore them, and to take into account my own feelings, which I figure was not considered in this equation.”

Let me tell you why this was hurtful – I had just opened my heart to the guy. I had also just lost my friends. The woman he ended up with betrayed me badly. She was one of my best friends. I had just told Liam what his friendship meant to me and that I’d miss him. And he said nothing even resembling the same about me. He just told me how amazing his new girlfriend Rachel was… forget the fact I knew the truth about Rachel, having known her three times as long as him! He claimed I didn’t take his feelings into consideration. Shove that where the sun doesn’t shine! If he thought that then he never knew me at all!

And the point that would hurt someone with BPD…. “I would rather be with someone that could embrace their emotions than to pretend they didn’t exist….” – we have issues with our emotions. ‘Embracing my emotions’ is what I went to therapy for. It’s a work in progress. Sadly his girlfriend also has BPD, so therefore struggled with her emotions… that’s what really rubbed the salt in the wound. He likely didn’t know about her BPD at the time, as they’d only dated as long as they’d been friends which was two months. Had he known that we met through DBT for the SAME issue with emotions, he might not have been such an insensitive twat towards me. I won’t have him or anyone else commenting on what happened. Only I, and my family know the truth… about me, about my feelings for him, why I never told him how I felt, and how wrong it was the way Rachel swooped in there, against my knowledge of her feelings for him, perfectly aware of how I felt for him. Nobody will change my mind. And nobody has the right to tell me what happened was okay and I should be happy for them. Nobody. I will heal in my own time, at my own pace, in my own way. And if I ever forgive Rachel it will be for my own sake, not hers. I will never condone what she did, and anyone who is friends with her should be cautious. She’s not to be trusted.

Rachel:

“I do understand it’s for your mental health but unfortunately I have a lot of my own stresses. Life isn’t exactly plain sailing for me at the moment. I haven’t seen Wayne to even have a conversation since Saturday as I’ve barely been home. I’m hoping tomorrow to be able to maybe have time to watch a film or something after I’ve been to dad’s and sorted out my car and paperwork. Maybe you should ask someone else to do it as I can’t get my head round anything at the moment. X”

I asked my friend to help me. She said she would. She kept finding reasons not to. If you’re not intending to do something don’t pretend you are. I’m sick of people letting me down. I was harming and wanting to die, and she was going to help me. It was simple. It wouldn’t have taken five minutes of her precious time. I wasn’t worth it obviously. It made it seem like I was selfish for asking her to help me. It was so rare of me to reach out for help. And the one time I did, that’s what I got. Unfortunately this pattern has continued in my life. Nobody actually has my back. They make the sounds like they do, but when push comes to shove they either can’t be bothered to do something that would help me, or they ‘don’t want to get involved’.

“Ellie, you are one of my best friends and have always been there for me. I will always be there for you and think a lot of you but I will not hear any more on the Holly issue”
“I have no idea what has gone on or been said. Obviously some stuff has happened that I don’t know about and would rather not get involved with. She has not said anything about you that I know of – and I’m offended that you’d think I would get involved with anything said.”

“I will not hear any more on the Holly issue” – okay then. Hush my mouth. Funny that she stopped me talking things through with her, yet clearly kept talking to Holly about me, from accusations I was to later receive from Holly! Double standards. If it’s Ellie she’s not allowed to talk, but Holly, sure. I understand people not wanting to get involved or take sides. But given that Holly was badmouthing me behind my back to my friends in group messages, I would expect MY friends to hear my side of the story also. I’d never want friends to take sides as such, but there comes a time when you don’t want your friends to sit on the fence anymore. You want them to have your back and DEFEND YOU! My friends could have been the ones to sort the issues between me and Holly. Had my friends stepped in and given her advice to stop being a bitch to me, and actually spoken up for me, then I might still have been friends with Holly. Because they did nothing, said nothing, it told Holly what she did and said was okay. It alienated me, and ruined any hope of she and I reuniting as friends. Though they didn’t want to get involved or take sides, they may have held the key to the continuation of our group of friends. Having said that, Rachel actually put the last nail in the coffin with her choice of actions the following month.

 

Rachel knew Holly had spoken about me, and lied to me. But I was soon to find out that’s nothing new. She does lie. I can’t guarantee how involved she got or didn’t get. I don’t trust her words anymore. All I know is that was a comment to guilt-trip me. When she met me and apologised for betraying me, she guilt-tripped me by crying and saying she was suicidal. I comforted her. I shouldn’t have. I had more reason to cry and feel suicidal thanks to her. I apologised to her for offending her, and she was like ‘I’m going to bed now. Hopefully you’ll feel better in the morning’. She was letting me know I was in the doghouse. Whatever. She always had a moody tone. Even Holly commented on it once.

“Because its getting too complicated. I don’t understand why I can’t just walk from here and meet you there. I’ve got enough stress at the moment without a night out which is meant to be fun being stressful. You guys will have fun anyway. Xx”

I would somehow usually end up in the centre of organising plans, as people didn’t talk to each other. She would often throw selfish comments out there without thinking of the consequences. We all had stress. Just because I didn’t shout all mine out at the time like she did, didn’t mean I was okay. I wanted a fun night out too, and having to organise everyone else wasn’t exactly stress-free or fun for me!! On the days I miss my old group of friends, I remember what a nightmare it was trying to help organise getting to places, times etc, and being the brunt of everyone’s hissy fits and getting no thanks for any of it! It really stressed me out in the end.

“I have obviously taken what you said the wrong way but that was the whole point in calling you – I was about to admit I was wrong. I guess more than anything I was surprised it was newsworthy! Please cut me some slack, I have a hell of a lot going on at the moment. X”

Rachel phoned me and accused me of showing her up in a group message, just days after I fell out with Holly for her having done that to me. I have no idea what got into her. I simply commented on the fact I heard she’d had a drink, and I missed it….. all my friends met up for Holly’s birthday, but having been upset by her I decided against going. So I missed out. I felt left out. So I was simply asking about what I missed. I told her there was absolutely nothing in it. And with everything going on for me I got overwhelmed, she wasn’t listening to me and I swore down the phone and hung up on her. It’s the only time in my life I’ve done that. But I’m sick of false accusations. There was less than 0% malice in my comment…. I simply wanted to feel included. She kept texting me afterwards. In the end she said it was probably about 95% her fault and 5% mine. I stand by the fact it was 100% her fault. Complete misunderstanding on her part. And was really upsetting for me.

But “please cut me some slack, I have a hell of a lot going on at the moment” probably wasn’t the best way to sign off her text. It’s like ‘give me a break‘. Why?? Why should I give you a break? I’ve been excluded from my group of friends because Holly was a bitch to me in front of you all and none of you defended me! I missed out on a meet up, so try to feel included… you then phone me and accuse me of doing what Holly has just done to me!! It’s the furthest from the truth, and it shocked and upset me. Why should I cut YOU some slack, for offending me under those circumstances? Why?! You had a hell of a lot going on? What about me? No, that’s right. My friends keep telling me how much THEY have going on. How stressed out THEY are, and can’t for ONE minute stick themselves in MY shoes before having a go at me and implying I’M selfish.

 

—

Friendships are hard with BPD. That much I’ve concluded from this post. I have moments of thinking of giving up on them entirely. That’s where I am right now. Yes there are good moments, and happy memories. But in between those are doubts, fears, arguments, bad memories, chaos, anger, loss, betrayal, disloyalty, scars, misunderstandings and isolation. Splitting.

Looking back on what I thought were good friendships, seeing how they ended, how people treated me, and wondering if they knew the damage they were doing to me and my outlook on life…. would they have done it? And knowing that sadly the answer is probably yes. Not even your closest friends look out for you. You’re truly alone in this world. That belief that has been instilled in me by my past experiences and the way people treated me, is enough to put me off of forming close friendships with anyone. I can’t trust or count on anyone. The world is selfish…. my old friends looked out for themselves and not me…. I gave… but ended up being the one labelled as ‘selfish’. I know they say life isn’t fair, but that’s just taking the piss.

The harmful words that people say or write to me, will never fade. I’m a very visual person. The looks on people’s faces… the words they wrote to me, or about me… the images of my distress and of harming myself because of how someone made me feel…. are always fresh in my memory. I can’t escape them. Most people would drink or take drugs to forget, but I don’t have that option. So I just have to sit with those feelings and memories. None of you without BPD will EVER understand the struggle it is to live with that. So be thankful you’re not inflicted with such constant, intrusive, overwhelming emotions and loneliness, whilst being misunderstood by your closest friends, feeling like a burden and thinking the world would be better without you in it.
And more than this….. JUST THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK / WRITE …. AND JUST BE KIND.

Thank you for reading xxxx