hsphaven

“For I am finding out that love will kill and save me
Taking the dreams that made me up
And tearing them away
But the same love will take this heart that’s barely beating
And fill it with hope beyond the stars
Only love”

– Trading Yesterday, “The Beauty & The Tragedy” 

I struggle to remember the past few weeks, but I do know that I haven’t been sleeping and my stomach still won’t shut up. Sometimes it sounds like water gurgling down the bathtub drain, other times like a creaking door or like my stomach is full of frogs. Every little thing is agonising; just filling a glass of water feels like running a marathon. I’m angry all the time, I want to cry all the time yet all the tears are stuck inside, and I’m exhausted. Yet I do feel the sun peaking through the clouds a bit more. My mood is slightly better, I’m a bit more active, I’m playing badminton again, my physio is ridiculously nice and patient, my mum has been kindly making me meals that comply to my new diet, and I have been commissioned by my favourite vegetarian restaurant to take some photos of the place. The restaurant is run by a couple who are also neurodivergent. They really get me, and always seat me in the quietest spot away from everyone else. They gave me some times when the restaurant will be empty for me to take the photos, which is great as I get flustered around other people.

I have to look over my emails to remember what has been happening the past few weeks. I have been incredibly overwhelmed. The day before I got my period I had absolutely no spoons left. I went for a walk with my mum right after chatting with an angry friend who clashed with another friend of mine. My mum criticised what I wore and she was all fired up about council cutting down some big old gum trees in the neighbourhood. I didn’t disagree with her, but I just couldn’t handle it all. I told her not to show me the pictures of the trees as I find it too distressing. 

“Do you have any comments?” she asked me after her long spill. I was barely able to respond. I just typed into my app that I find it all too depressing. I couldn’t wait until our walk was over.

Every week I work on another section of my book with my editor. That takes everything out of me and I never have the energy to make the edits and integrate it with the main document. Each week’s work is building up. I have so much to catch up on. All the edits are not even saved in the one spot but scattered throughout my emails, which I will have to delete soon as my inbox is nearly full. Plus it’s not easy going over my trauma with therapists every week. We went over some stuff about my last psychologist Gill last session. Even my editor said it was pretty fucked up how she treated me. When I told Gill I’d found her on Facebook she blocked me and changed her name to “U cantfindme” and her profile picture to a white rabbit like in Project MKUltra. Then she laughed it off when I said I was upset, telling me it was a joke. That is why I am reluctant to see another psychologist again, though the psychologist my physio found me seems different from the others. I’m trying to be careful not to form another attachment. As my friend said the wrong therapist can be disastrous for me, and she’d never seen me as bad as when I was with Gill.

I commented in my email to Peter, my therapist who I just go for walks with now as I didn’t want to do therapy, that I felt “depersonalised from my life, like I’m looking at things I’ve done from a third person perspective.” One day I may not even recognise the person who has been in the driver’s seat all these years.

I went on another spending spree, sitting up all night buying the wildest outfits because I couldn’t sleep. I bought Dolls Kill’s “Worst behavior faux fur coat” (the name alone won me over). I also recently bought this little pink dress.

Once the dress arrived, I decided it was my worst purchase ever. I was going to toss to an op shop, or wear it as swimmers. I didn’t care if it got ruined; if people look closely, the dress is printed with highly sexualised female anime characters with bulging boobs. It is quite different from my usual style. I don’t usually wear such short dresses as I am self-conscious about the heat damage on my thighs from using my hot water bottle too much.

I thought what the fuck and decided to wear the pink dress when I saw Peter last Friday. I undid my braids so my hair was curly, and clipped two ribbons onto my hair. I actually rocked the dress. It transformed me into a different person. Peter said I was full of energy and in a playful mood. When I got home I listened to “Change” by Lana del Rey. I felt like I’d reached a turning point. I felt like something was changing and it was going to be good. While I originally didn’t want to see another psychologist, I felt I was meant to see the new, very alterative psychologist my physio found me. There is only one letter difference between her name and Lana del Rey’s. She sent me an email at exactly 1:11PM one afternoon, which she said was deliberate. I was also seeing multiple 22’s everywhere. I listened to “Love” by Lana del Rey, and also “Get Free”. I was able to release some emotion, and I felt like soon I would be ready to speak again, after five months of being mute. I slept a lot better Friday night and didn’t even take sleeping pills.

But it all took a nasty turn on Saturday.

I was woken at 10am by my neighbour. I needed to sleep longer. What upset me most was less the noise itself but the fact that I’ve been over there before in a very distressed state and told them I am sick, struggle to sleep at night and need to sleep during the day. Yet they continue to blast violently loud machinery around 9-10am. It was beating me to the ground. I didn’t know what was wrong with people. To have empathy, care and consideration for others around me is normal for me and it’s disturbing to realise other people don’t actually have this. I would feel very uncomfortable making so much noise as I don’t want to disturb my neighbours, and would be horrified if it impacted a sick neighbour. They had the entire day to make their obscene noise (if they even need to- I actually think they just enjoy making noise), yet they continued to choose the morning which they knew impacted me. I completely lost it, especially after having been woken the previous morning as well by another neighbour’s chain saw. I stormed over there screaming and gesturing what the fuck. He just said “it’s 10am” and continued. I stuck the finger up at him. I was very out of it and wandered onto their property and onto their back porch. I managed to stop myself from smashing their window, but I did throw their bins over. It actually all feels like a fucked up dream. Afterwards I worried I had just made things ten times worse, making them want to assault me even more. The law won’t protect me as they are making noise during a time most people are up. I spent much of the day worrying about getting a knock on the door from the police charging ME (for trespass), even though they are really the ones trespassing, with their noise invading the property boundaries.

I felt like something really didn’t want to see me get better. As soon as I start to regain my strength and step into my power and light, the world drags me back down again. It was like the whole thing was orchestrated by dark forces to make me pay. When I went out there Sat morning someone had parked their car in front of my car in the driveway so I couldn’t even escape. I assume it was my dad’s car, but I am so overwhelmed all the time everything is a blur and I struggle to recognise cars and faces.

It all worsened my irritable bowel syndrome, or whatever the fuck this is. My stomach was whining like crazy, like a grand prix circuit inside of me.

I fell into such a deep depression again. I couldn’t do anything, I felt so weak I could collapse, and was driving me to the point of suicide. I was going to attempt suicide on Saturday. I reached out to Peter who is also spiritual. He said that Hindus believe people who kill themselves end up in this hellish realm just above earth. He also said I would reincarnate into another life and pick up the left over karma. I felt trapped in a cycle of torture, like Eleven in Stranger Things. This is my life. This is what I experienced when I took marijuana.

I wrote the following text to Peter:

My dad said he’s going to ask the neighbour if they can use their machines in the afternoon. I think that is a very generous compromise. If they started at 12 they would still wake me but it’s still better than 9-10am. But I doubt they will agree. I have already told them they’re disturbing me and they don’t give a fuck. They seem to think they are entitled to make noise whenever they like, and they know there’s nothing I can do about it.

I sleep in an insulated box my dad built to try to block the noise. I have to close the sliding double glazed glass door and don’t get much air, waking up sick and breathless. It’s ridiculous I have to live like this just because some privileged prick next door wants to make noise whenever he feels like it. Some of their noise still gets through the box.

I’m probably getting a reputation as the neighbourhood psycho. My neighbour has been quiet the past few days so I am a bit better, but I’m still planning on getting out of here and living in the bush for a bit. I have a friend who lives off the grid there and tells me she has a caravan I can stay in. There is so much in this city that I want to get away from: my neighbour, all the schools I were abused at, the mental health system. Sometimes I search my old case worker’s name on the internet to see if he’s moved on from the case management service and I might be able to see him privately, but it looks like he’s still at that miserable place with those cunts who ripped him away from me, telling me I was too dependent on him and the relationship was unhealthy. I am finding a lot of my anger stems from this. I may head to the bush this weekend. I do have a physio appointment on Monday, but it might be good to have a bit of a break from that too. I am finding my physio has become my new favourite person, a term used in the BPD community to describe an unhealthy obsession we form with certain people. Here is a definition of a favorite person from Jeong, Jin Jin and Ho Hyun’s research paper, “Understanding a Mutually Destructive Relationship Between Individuals With Borderline Personality Disorder and Their Favorite Person”.

“While a best friend can be an FP, it’s usually so much more than that… a favorite person is someone you have an emotional dependence on, who can ‘make or break’ your day.” [20] “You place the responsibility of your happiness onto them. They can make you feel on top of the world, or in the deepest pit depending on whether they are paying attention to you or not.”

The researchers investigate the characteristics that are common amongst favourite people:

“Individuals with BPD commonly describe FPs as someone caring, sympathetic and understanding, and so on. FPs are always there and reassure them when asked. FPs accept those with BPD as they are so that the latter feel free and express themselves around their FPs without fearing being judged and feeling like a burden. Their FP is a good listener, easy to talk to, and takes the time to understand and make them feel better, always being supportive.”

I am finding myself constantly thinking about my physio and all the things I want to tell him. However, I am managing to remain respectful of his boundaries, not emailing him outside of business hours and trying not to overwhelm him with multiple emails or essays about my life. He runs a free chronic pain support group each month, which allows his clients to keep a connection with him. So perhaps, for once, I am not going to end up a train wreck from this attachment. His kindness is changing me and I find myself internalising the care he shows towards me. But I get very anxious during our treatments because I think I actually like the guy. It hurts knowing I can be nothing more than a client. As author Leo Tolstoy writes in Anna Karenina, “The saddest love is the love that never comes to pass, the love that exists only in dreams and silent hopes. A love that is kept in stolen visions, in unspoken words, in the space between what is and what could be. And as time passes, it becomes a bitter memory, a tender ache that never quite goes away, a reminder of what was lost before it even had a chance to be found.”

I got some sleep the past two nights. I took a lot of heavy sedatives Tues night, but it was then particularly hard to get up the next afternoon for my physio appointment. I was fifteen minutes late. My physio was there (he usually leaves before 2pm but hung back especially for me). He sat on the treatment bed next to me and introduced me to the exercise physiologist he suggested I see to improve my strength. He then left, saying he needed to pick up his son from school. Yesterday evening I climbed into bed fully clothed and got some sleep. I had a Lemuria meditation playing. It was a bit loud but I was too tired to get up and turn it down. It eventually stopped when my laptop battery died and not long afterwards I fell asleep. It was like the storm which passed through the city cleared and calmed something in me, and I felt a little less agitated. I was swinging on one of those big round swings in the park that evening. Maybe that helped. I think my mum said she and Dad used to drive me around in the car when I was a baby to get me to sleep. I didn’t sleep much as a kid either. When I woke up I stayed up for a few hours and then fell back to sleep again. I woke up today still with an upset stomach and abdominal pain. I’m also exhausted. I drove to my mum’s to pick up my lensball for the restaurant photography. But then when I got back to my house I realised I’d left it behind. So I drove back to my mum’s house, but still couldn’t find it. I was so annoyed. Why did everything have to be so damn hard? How could I lose something again within ten minutes of finding it? On my way back to my house for the zillionth time I suddenly remembered I’d bounced on the trampoline at Mum’s and must have left the ball by the trampoline. I turned around, and sure enough it was there.

This week I also re-watched An Angel at My Table. It’s an excellent film and I very much relate to the main character, Janet Frame, a socially awkward girl with wild red hair who always wanted to be a poet. All her life society tried to make her into someone she wasn’t. During college she was enticed to go stay in a mental hospital by her psych teacher who she trusted and liked. She then ended up in and out of hospitals for eight years. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was subjected to horrendous treatment, such as ECT without even an anesthetic. It is a very bleak, yet well done movie. It is interesting to see how the mental health system has changed since her lifetime. I wonder whether she was actually autistic. It must have been a shit era to be autistic given the lack of awareness, especially for autistic woman. The film can be watched on SBS here.