hsphaven

Somebody I met in a BPD support group described us as “porcupine babies”. We were babies left out in the woods… we grew up like that. We never stopped being babies. Instead we adapted to the woods. We grew shells, grew veneers, facades, barriers, spikes. This is the way I have lived much of my life: keeping people behind walls. I’m 31 now and have never been in a relationship. I have withdrawn from my family. The only people I would let in were therapists. But these relationships always came to an end and someone always got hurt, usually me. So I grew more spikes.

Up until this point I didn’t really have close friends, more like acquaintances who I see maybe once every few months. Apart from therapists, I didn’t let myself get attached to anyone, or let anyone get to know the real me, warts and all. This all changed recently, and I honestly don’t know whether it’s for the better or worse.

This person has been there for me countless times. She was there for me when I had a scary reaction to some medication I was given and needed someone on the other end of the phone. She was there for me when I was being bullied out of hospital. She even drove me to another hospital at midnight and stayed with me despite hospitals being extremely triggering for her. This person is a saint, and sometimes I feel she knows me even better than I know myself. I realise this person has been there for me all along, but it was only recently my mind somehow let down its guard and decided this person is safe to get attached to. I am traumatised by what the hospitals did to me and formed an intense bond with her as she went through this with me.

We have been texting each other every day since I returned home. While I usually would not like this much contact, this time I not only maintained the contact but enjoyed it and perhaps became a little dependent on it to get through the days. However the other night she told me that she can’t always talk every single day as she sometimes needs space as well. I knew it was perfectly fair enough. I usually need space myself. But something has shifted in me recently. I had no control over the tsunami of emotion that crashed over me when she told me this. I was bawling my eyes out, a complete mess and I wanted to harm myself. I should have caught the signs that I was letting this friend get too close to me earlier. I had been getting insecure, needing reassurance that I was a good friend too (something that is very out of character for me). There were times I felt worthless, needy, too much and just frustrating as she had been so good to me yet I was still so sick. I was quick to feel like a bad friend, and when I felt like I’d failed, I felt so bad that I wanted to kill myself. I’d also been having dreams of other people I had become attached to and lost. This attachment trauma was being stirred up in my mind as it recognised these feelings and knew it usually always ends badly. So it really wasn’t a surprise that I had the reaction I did, but I hated myself for it. She was ready to go to bed but couldn’t as I was suicidal.

My mind seems to have no middle ground. I either want to talk all the time or go live in a cave completely cut off from humanity.

“You can be close to people and not talk to them all the time,” my friend reminded me.

“You’ll be ok without me.”

“I don’t have anyone else.” I said.

She is trying to help me with this, getting me onto dating apps and linking me in with communities. But a part of me feels hurt, like I am being passed over to someone else. It is not easy for me to connect with people, and I cling to those few connections I do make. I am a fiercely loyal person (or perhaps just clingy). I can’t help but feel like I’m “replacing” people when I search for new connections, and that is something I never want to do.

My friend reassured me she is not abandoning me. But she did say she wanted normal boundaries that are healthy, and talked about breaking the bond I had formed with her. My mind was protesting. I don’t want to sever it. At least I am no longer numb and can feel connection to another human being. Yes this may not be healthy either but I don’t care. I don’t want a healthy normal relationship. I am reminded of a quote by Chuck Palahniuk:

“What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.”

I know it’s fucked up but I don’t care.

I thought about driving myself down to the emergency department, but I didn’t want to go crawling back to the lion’s den. These hospitals are awful, their care is fake.

“I am fucked up,” I kept telling my friend.

“There is something really wrong with me and my life. I’m not ok. I just want it all to be over. You’ve just happened to come in at the tail end of it all after too much damage has occurred.”

In the end I woke up my dad and we went to the beach in the middle of the night. The water was agitated like me, waves pounding against the shore. It was cathartic in a way. But when I came back I was still not ok. I was in a fit of rage. I am currently waiting for a bed in a private hospital, but I know what these hospitals are like. They make you go to stupid groups on CBT and DBT. I feel like these therapies trivialise my problems. Our conscious thoughts are not the bee all end all. These therapies are offensive for people who have PTSD and physical/hormonal issues which give them no control over their emotions or behaviour. Time and time again I find I am too sick for private hospitals, which are more like rehab centres than hospitals, yet I am considered too well for public hospitals who are only interested in ice addicts and people who are psychotic. Yet that night, I perhaps would have been considered psychotic. I opened up my laptop and started bombarding my poor, unsuspecting physiotherapist, who made the mistake of giving me his email address, with a whole lot of shit. I was completely off my tree. I went on about everyone in the public mental health system being sick in the head, how they’ve destroyed the past 10 years of my life and now they can “get fucked”. I went on about Monash Hospital really being “Monarch” hospital. I told him to look up Project Monarch, a mind control program named after the Monarch Butterfly, then to look up Monash Health and look at their fucking logo (which resembles a butterfly). My mind was seeing all kinds of meaning in things that, perhaps, were completely coincidental, I don’t know. That is what the psychotic mind does. I was seeing “angel numbers” in document codes. The QR code on my hospital wristband looked like a Nazi symbol. It freaked me out even further when I discovered this article about Project Monarch and the first thing they were talking about was Nazi mind control.

“We’ve all been subjected to terrible things the past few years under the name of “medicine”,” I wrote in another email.

“I fear for my family’s health and lives.”

I told him the past 10 years I had walked into a cult.

I sent him this article, which I think has been stressing me out more than I realise. Here is a paragraph from the article:

“I am not very keen on many of the ‘spirit guides’ who come and get you after you have departed from your body at body death; most of them are Sirian Helpers, such as non-physical Vegans and Grays. Be particularly on your guard if they tell you to follow them ‘into the light’ or ‘to the tunnel’, or go see relatives. If you choose to go with them, you will end up in the Sirian recycling system again with full amnesia, and then being shot down into a new body here on Earth.”

“I don’t know what your spiritual beliefs are, but this article has left me feeling so scared and trapped,” I rambled on to my physio, who is neither a therapist nor spiritual teacher.

“I always imagined death to be like a peaceful end to all my suffering. I never wanted another lifetime on earth again. But now I’m questioning everything. Please tell me the light and love we feel when we die is real? Please tell me we have control over whether we return to this world? Please tell me we don’t forget the few people who were kind to us? I can’t take this pain. Like are we in control of anything at all? Is anything real? I feel like I’m going fucking mental.”

I no longer trust psych people (particularly those in the public system), and am traumatised by what they have done to me. I feel like psych people are just like the aliens dressed up as “helpers”. And I keep on going back to them, I even called them that night (but they didn’t answer). And I keep on getting recycled through the system. And I am trapped. And it’s probably a good thing they didn’t answer as they would just think I’m crazy. I’m lucky my physio didn’t send the men in white coats around to my house this weekend. He did agree to be part of my support team, but is probably wondering what the fuck has he got himself into now.

I finally fell asleep, then woke up early afternoon with bad period pain. I also wanted to vomit. I took three tablets of Nurofen Plus (Nurofen containing Codeine). I spent the rest of the day in bed. Then when I got up briefly that night I was shaking. I then went back to bed and slept until 4:30am. My sleeping patterns are completely erratic right now. When I woke up my heart was pounding in my chest and I was hypervililent, jumping at any little sound I heard, such as the possums on the roof. I believed I was going to die, and someone was going to break into my house and kill me, which was why the dog next door was barking. I heard random words and phrases in my head, as though someone was inserting words into my head. I felt like my brain was disintegrating. I wished I had someone with me to hold my hand and tell me it was going to be ok. I suffered for a few hours until I finally took some Olanzapine and then managed to sleep. I then got up at 2pm. I was still shaking and also felt breathless, weak, lightheaded and had a headache. I was going to see my mum, but I really wasn’t up to it. I had a break down just trying to get dressed. Then when I couldn’t find my wallet/bag I just about started screaming. I just spent a brief time with my mum, then got her to take me home. I then went back to sleep for a couple of hours.

I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. I feel sad, depressed, alone, scared, angry, in pain and sick physically and mentally. I haven’t heard from my friend today. It seems to really trigger me when I get close to people and then they pull back. It makes me want to push them away, but I know that is just my BPD talking and I’m trying not to let it get the better of me.