hsphaven

“You were blessed by a different kind of inner view: it’s all magnified. The highs would make you fly, and the lows make you want to die.” Missy Higgins, “Nightminds”

In my experience, Borderline “episodes” don’t usually happen out of the blue. They are usually triggered by something, especially things like abandonment or rejection or loss. The episode that I am currently in was triggered by my therapist, who is my “favourite person”, blocking me on Facebook after I told her I’d found her profile. This flicked a switch in me and alas I began a rapid downward spiral that has lasted five days now. Five days might seem like a short time but it is way too long to be experiencing such acute pain. That is what it’s like to have Borderline Personality Disorder. Everything is magnified. Love feels like flying. Sadness feels like drowning. Anger feels like murder. Losing someone feels like death. The emotional pain is often so intense we feel it physically. That is, if we can even feel our bodies at all. Sometimes it is so unbearable that we begin to separate from our body and the world around us. The world begins to feel like a dream, and our bodies feel transparent. Continue reading “What does a Borderline “episode” look like” →

You are so close yet so distant

Your life oceans away.

Who is it that I love, mysterious one?

You hide behind your professional mask

I know you but I don’t. Continue reading “Broken dreams” →

You are the closest person to me. You know just about everything about me.

But there are two things you don’t know about me.

Continue reading “Receding” →

I am a baby. I live in a house at the back of a church, a property which my dad maintains so we can stay in the house. My family fight and my dad threatens to kill my grandad. My dad gets a new job and we move away from the city to a valley full of coal power stations. My mum gets asthma so we move to the mountains. We move again to another house in the mountains. We move to Tasmania. We move to another house in Tasmania. My sister is born. I start school. I meet my best friend Kelly. I say goodbye to Kelly as we’re moving back to Victoria. I start a new school and am bullied. I move schools. I make new friends. I say goodbye to my friends and move schools again. I am bullied. My parents fight and I stand between them to stop them from hitting each other. My pet bird flies away. I make new friends. We graduate and my friends go to a different high school than me. I am alone and don’t fit in anywhere. A year passes and I make new friends. Another year passes and I lose those friends. I am bullied by the same girl from primary school. I move schools. I don’t fit in. I move schools. I am bullied. I move house. I have a panic attack during my finals. I start uni. I am sexually harassed. I see a psychologist. I love the psychologist. I lose the psychologist. I try to kill myself. I see a new psychologist. I am anorexic. I am in an ambulance. I am in the emergency department. I am in a taxi back taking me home at 4am. I am in an ambulance again. I am in the emergency department. I am in a taxi taking me home at 4am. I am in an ambulance. I am in the emergency department. I am in a taxi taking me home at 4am. I am in a residential for young people with a mental illness. I lose my psychologist. I am in an ambulance. I am in a psychiatric ward. I am sectioned. I am back home. I never return to uni and soon people years below me have surpassed me. I see a new therapist. Hope. Connection. My new therapist cancels our session and I never hear from her again. I am in hospital. I become friends with a nurse. I am happy. The nurse cuts all contact with me. I am suicidal. My estranged sister moves out. My parents split up. The police give my dad a restraining order. I am at mum’s house. I am at dad’s house. I am in hospital. I am on a farm. I am back in the city. I can’t find what I’m looking for anywhere. I don’t know who I am and who I could have been if life was different. I cannot fill the hole that follows me wherever I go, and I am homesick for a place I’m not sure even exists.

It is Sunday and I try to dampen my good mood.

I know it is fragile,

That the higher I fly, the further I have to fall.

Continue reading “Sunday” →

Having no energy to brush your teeth, then needing fillings each time you go to the dentist

Getting knots in your hair from not brushing it for days

Needing assistance to make even the smallest of decisions Continue reading “What does depression look like?” →

What thoughts keep you awake at night? The other night it was the memory of a man who I knew five years ago for only twenty minutes. It was the day my psychologist, who was like a mother to me, told me we were going to finish up in a few months time. It was the day my world cracked open and no amount of tears could fill the cavity that remained.

Continue reading “The man on the train” →

I am impressed how Uttar Pradesh, a state in northern India, is handling covid. Vaccines are not the only way out of this, Uttar Pradesh demonstrate. In contrast, just a week ago Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration put a ban on doctors prescribing ivermectin for covid, depriving people of early treatment. I must confess I am rather exasperated as I write this post. I’m sick of logging onto Facebook and all I see is people posting pictures of their vaccine cards and vaccine profile pictures. We don’t need the jab shoved down our throats any more than it currently is, with teachers now being forced to get it to keep their jobs and people not being allowed to go to the movies, hairdressers etc. Never have I seen a product so aggressively marketed. I’m so tired of being here. It’s not just the vaccines, it’s everything. It’s the life I’ve had. It’s what we’re doing to the planet. It kills me to be here and witness all this.

While I say I want to die I’m also scared of death. I’m becoming more and more of a nihilist and I fear I’m losing my spirituality. Lately when I fall asleep it’s like I fall into a big black hole. Many nights I don’t dream at all and it’s like I cease to exist. I wonder if this is what death is like… no heaven, no angels, no reunions with loved ones, no afterlife or “other side”, no life review, just complete nothingness. I don’t find it peaceful, it’s quite scary really. 

I am an empty girl in an empty room. I lock the door of the clinic’s bathroom behind me and sit on the floor. The bite of the cold tiles feels good; I need something else to feel, anything! Therapy is like crossing a bridge. A bridge to a better life. But trolls lurk beneath the bridge, and today we disturbed them. They waited until my therapist was gone to attack. Now they are dragging me down into the sewers and bog. I sit level to the toilet. I feel like scum, but I don’t care. Continue reading “The sweet sting” →