This isn’t going to be a long post as it’s 1:10 AM and I need to try and sleep. The past few nights I’ve been sitting up all night shopping online. My shopping addiction has reached an all time low. Only people who have suffered addiction would understand how crazy and out of control you feel. It’s reached a point where what was initially something that made me happy is now destroying my health, destroying my bank account and destroying my life. My eyes were blood shot. I fell asleep around 10 AM today and when I woke up at 3 PM there are no words for how dreadful I felt physically and mentally. On top of all my other issues such as my tremor I was breathless, nauseous, in pain, my eyes were burning and my nerves were buzzing. I knew I had to do everything in my power to turn this around. I just feel so hopeless about all the damage the mental health system and psychiatric drugs have done to me that I just let myself go. It’s now been half a year since my overdose and I’m still suffering. I can’t lie on my right side as my pulse pounds like a ticking clock in my ear. I feel a great deal of sadness about what I did to my body that night. If I could take it all back I would. I really beat myself up over it. But I try to tell myself that it wasn’t my fault. That I can’t help this. That I’m unwell, and the mental health system let me down. The overdose may have been prevented if I had of been admitted to hospital when I presented to the emergency department earlier that week. But unfortunately I have a diagnosis in my file that I wish I’d never received. Once you are diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), you are discriminated against by hospitals and mental health professionals. People don’t want to work with you or give you an admission, even when we have many other co-morbid physical and mental health issues. If you do get an admission they won’t let you stay more than 48 hours. You receive substandard care. This is something that’s been documented in research literature. One study by Gemillion (2003) looked at those with eating disorders. After being marginally, physically stabilized, patients who also had a diagnosis of BPD were removed from the ward in favor of caring for other patients who were seen to be truly sick rather than manipulative. These patients with BPD met all of the same markers for anorexia as other patients, but their anorexia was labeled as a form of acting out for attention, rather than a form of sickness, as it was for other patients. Despite identical physical markers, patients labeled with BPD were then denied care because they weren’t actually sick, even though the diagnosis of anorexia was otherwise made based on physical markers. Patients with BPD must meet standards of illness above other patients. Continue reading “Shopping addiction: rock bottom”
I feel like the weather here in Melbourne: all over the place. It is the start of spring and we have had a couple of sunny days, but most of the days are still cold, wet, and overcast. The past two days we have had storms with thunder and lightening. Apparently it even snowed on the mountains.
Sometimes I’ve had the energy to put some effort into my appearance. One night I was watching N3ko Mom’s channel on YouTube. She identifies as an adult baby and also has BPD. Her outfits are art. She pairs cute onesies with beautiful make up. It awakened something in me, and I pulled out the black and white party wig I bought a few months back at the $2 store. I tried it on and it actually suited me. It instantly shifted my mood. I will share a photo of me in the sound-proof box I sleep in wearing the new hair. I am with my clowns, which I bought to nurture my inner child. I had two clowns just like these when I was a toddler. Their names were Coco and Noddy. I took them everywhere with me. I think my mum threw them out, but I managed to find some just like them online (they are now considered vintage). The clowns and I are starting to look alike.
After a bit of a rough start, I am finally getting the respite that I need. I am staying in a motel set in a quaint garden. People often have weddings here. I have been the only one staying here the past few days which has been lovely. Below is a view from my window. Small birds with long, thin beaks often stop by and suck nectar from the flowers on the bush.
Continue reading “Loss, home, space, solitude and developmental trauma”
On Sunday and Monday I felt the most crushing depression. I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t enjoy anything. There was absolutely nothing I looked forward to. On Sunday night I went to bed early with pills but then woke up again after a bad dream, which I’ve been having a lot of lately. It took me a while to get back to sleep. I woke up at 9am the next day which was extremely early for me. I woke up feeling like my legs were vibrating, as though I was lying next to a generator. It was a distressing feeling and I didn’t know if the vibration was coming from inside of me or outside of me. It reminded me of the mysterious Hum a friend told me about, a noise which torments a small percentage of the population and drives some people to suicide. Yet instead of hearing the noise, I felt it. My life started to feel like a test to see how much pain, suffering, torture, and distress one person can take before they finally die. I felt I had nothing to live for but more misery and very much wanted to make another suicide attempt. Continue reading “This week so far”
In the aftermath of that night I overdosed, I’ve been hiding away as I deal with the wreckage. It’s been a few months and I still have a tremor and heart issues. My heart literally aches and it races when I change position. I’m also not able to sleep on my right side as I hear and feel the pulse in my right ear pounding. All I want in this life is to feel comfortable in my body, and if I could take back what I did I would. Sometimes I wish it had of killed me. I have suffered enough. Continue reading “Post-OD update”
“Oh, angel lost, where do you go? In this cruel world, you feel so low.” AiMusic, “She Was an Angel “
I am not okay, and I have not been okay for a long time. As Alanis Morissette, a fellow HSP, sings in “Diagnosis “, I no longer give a damn about things that used to matter. I don’t give a damn about my life, and I’m beyond giving a damn about what anyone thinks of me. I will take packets of drugs. I will go to the park at 2am in winter and skinny dip in the lake. I will dance without needing alcohol to loosen me up. I will go into public in my PJs. I have found posts written in caps lock I made while having a rage episode on Facebook the other night. As someone commented on a Florence + The Machine music video, the only way to be at peace with death is to live your life without fear and make full use of it. Earn your eternal rest, because death halts for no one. Continue reading “Despair”
“You were blessed by a different kind of inner view, it’s all magnifiedThe highs would make you fly, but the lows make you want to dieAnd I was once there, hanging from that very ledge where you are standingSo I know, I know, I knowIt’s easier to let go”
Missy Higgins, ‘Nightminds‘
When I was a child, my mother described me as a live wire. I had an inner motor that never ran out of fuel. I was constantly running, climbing, moving, bouncing off the walls, smacking people with balloons, rolling down hills, flying through the air on flying foxes, winding the rope swing which hung from our gumtree up until it couldn’t get any tighter and then sitting on it in great delight as it unwound and the world became a blur. When I look at photos of myself when I was about two my mouth would be open so wide that it reminded me of those laughing clown ball machines at carnivals. It looked like I was screaming, but if I was, it would have been out of sheer love for life. My eyes sparkled blue as the ocean. I really was, as s.c lorie @ butterfliesandpebbles wrote, the girl who had sunflowers for eyes and fireworks in her soul.
I barely slept, and didn’t need much sleep. My parents said that I was a wide-eyed child the minute I was born, as though thinking “wow! Isn’t this world amazing!”
My mum said that she would ask other parents if they thought her child was “normal”. I was a force of nature with the energy of a tsunami. One carer said she’d rather look after ten kids than one kid like me.
My mum blames my father for my hyperactivity. She said he was always tossing me around and putting me up trees. But I think it was just me. Continue reading “Bipolar”
Imagine a time when you were worried about something. Now, imagine that this feeling does not go away after the thing you were worried about is over. Instead your mind will find something else to be worried about. Imagine being in a perpetual state of dread and anxiety over anything and everything. That is what it’s like to have Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Continue reading “Anxiety and having a crush”
hsphaven 