Monthly Archive for June, 2007

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I’m Not My Mother

Published on June 18, 2007 in Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Mental Health, PTSD, Soapbox and Therapy. 8 Comments Tags: .

I actually called myself by my birth name this weekend. I can’t believe it came out of my mouth. I usually call myself Austin. Heck Blossom calls me that too. It just comes out, Austin this, Austin that. So I was looking for whatever and couldn’t find it and said, “Okay (insert birth name) where is it?” Usually I would have said, “Okay Austin, where is it?” I was shocked that name came out of my mouth. I think it might have happened because I ran into an old school mate who called me by that name.

Last week in therapy Dr. T and I talked about characteristics of my mother’s that I do not have. I told him I recently added a bit of red to my hair like when I was little because I look just like my mother. It’s rather disturbing to look in the mirror and see her. I’d rather look like my father so I added a bit of red, just a bit mind you. This lead to the discussion that I may look like my mother’s twin but I’m not my mother. I listed a few things that we don’t have in common. I have my mother’s lips. I have my mother’s hands and facial expressions. But I don’t have my mother’s spirit. I do not have a love for violence, for violating others, for humiliating or demeaning. I have my mother’s shape but I do not have my mother’s personality. I have dark hair like my mother but I do have a dark heart like hers and I do not find pleasure in the pain of others. I try to remind myself of these things when I see her reflecting back at me in the mirror. I look like her but I’m not her.

One of the things my mother and I also have in common is OCD. She likes to laugh and so do I. My mother is quite spontaneous. I’m not spontaneous but we share a love for art and poetry. She’s interested in cultural history as well as language arts but she’s not interested in how you feel when she’s hurting you. My mother likes the colour gray best on the colour spectrum. She likes her ice cream soft and prefers butter pecan to any other. She loves nuts, diet Pepsi and Snickers candy bars. I happen to like them all as well. My mother and I have tastes that match like our love of cars and choppers, the country side, historic landmarks, caving and tennis. Even so, we do not share a lust for offering up pain. So no matter what traits we have in common it is the things we don’t share that makes looking at her in the mirror tolerable.

I have her hands. I have her face and her body type but I’m not my mother.

 

Update: A Nike ad says perfectly that we may look like our parents but we are not them unless we choose to be. Image compliments of Jigsaw Analogy .

Austin

I’m Not My Mother
Monday, June 18, 2007-7:46PM EST

After Thoughts

Published on June 15, 2007 in Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Mental Health and PTSD. 6 Comments

Why do I do this? Bad coping skills are still coping skills right? No. I know very well that bad coping skills when practiced take me one step backwards and harm the success rate of leaps in healing. So why do I still use the negative coping skills? Desperation and need for immediate relief (however brief) causes me to turn back to old ways that have proven time and time again to not work long term.

I could smoke a pack of cigarettes, one after the other, back to back and tell myself I’ll feel better after just one more. I could eat Dunkin’ Donuts out of business and tell myself just one more bite and I’ll cover the emptiness with jelly donut filling. One more violation of my skin and I’m certain to cut away the bad that’s surely in my veins. One more cigarette, one more bite, one more cut but I don’t find the lasting peace I’m looking for. But for just a second, however brief, I do or I think I do and that is why old coping skills are revisited. For a half a second the pain is gone and fleeting relief sets in. That’s all I want is relief, however brief, that’s all I want.

After Thoughts
Friday, June 15, 2007-12:39midnight EST

Relationships with Transference and Mother Issues

Published on June 15, 2007 in Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Mental Health, PTSD, Relationships and Therapy. 2 Comments

I told him we’ve been cutting. I told him when I look at Blossom I see my mother. When she calls her father Daddy I hear my mother. When she hugs me I feel my mother. It is not pleasant to say the least. Transference issues are at large here and man they seem to really wreck things. Yes, the boundary issues are hers but the transference issues are mine and mine alone. But when I see Blossom my mood changes. So why go back? Because this time, maybe this time I can get “it” right. I keep doing this. I keep saying that maybe this time I won’t be such a disappointment. I know full well this woman is not my mother so what is there to “get right”? logically I can’t erase all the hatred my mother has for me by making things right with Blossom. She’s not my mother so what on earth can I do to change how I feel inside about it? It’s a vicious cycle but deep down I just don’t want to be the bad girl again. The other day she left all giggly and bouncy-like. I wanted to tell her to go shove it and never come back. But I didn’t want to do that because it would have been a sucker punch. There she was smiling and having fun and inside I thought to myself, “Here comes a truck. Go play in traffic ya little….” I wasn’t being truthful with her. I didn’t tell her “When you hug me I see my mother.” How do you break that to somebody? “Oh, by the way I see my mother in your eyes and I hear her in your voice” followed by, “It’s not you it’s me.”

We talked about how sometimes their behavior is the same. I rescue Blossom. I make her laugh. I do the chameleon thing just like how I did with my mother clear up until about 5 years ago. She may be the type that wants to be rescued but I don’t have to answer the call so this too is my issue. Once things get so confusing I toss my hands up and think, “I don’t know what’s her issue or what’s mine so I’m not going to tell her to go away.” I just don’t want to be the sick one, the bad one this time. It gets old. So I stay around her and try to figure out where things went wrong and what can I do to make them right. What can I do to right the past in the present? It’s vicious I tell ya, vicious.

I’ve acted on my impulse to self injure based on unchecked and red flags disregarded. Why didn’t I show her the door when she told me when I broke up with her she watched my house with binoculars so she could see how I’m doing? I shushed that alarm. I gave a sarcastic response and stuffed the fact that I’m disturbed by her behaviors. Was I really that worried she’d retaliate when I broke up with her? Hell yes I was. That too was a trigger because her acting stupid is my mother acting stupid. It’s a well people don’t really want to tap.

When it comes to protecting myself due to a physically altercation I think I’m okay. I don’t throw punches when I’m angry unless I hit my boxing bag. I don’t care how angry I am at a person I’m not going to start throwing punches UNLESS they cross my physical boundary and throw punches. So when it comes to protecting myself during a physical altercation I’m okay. But you toss in sex with that assault and suddenly I’m a wet noodle. I crumble. I lose all the strength I have or think I have and I crumble. Now leave out the threat of rape or something like that but toss in intimate touch and a trigger you still end up with the same result: I crumble. The other night when she hugged me and kissed my cheek I swear it was like my mother stood in front of me. I said nothing. In bed several times before I saw my mother. My heart froze. I felt small. I said nothing. I was scared and I said nothing. I was with my mother again and I couldn’t say anything.

Clearly Blossom and my issues are deeper than annoyance based on lack of manners like not covering her mouth when she coughs or giving too much of my personal information to strangers. I talked to my therapist about how unhealthy our relationship was and this friendship is. I told him how I loath her and me and how our issues are mostly based on PTSD responses and borderline behaviors like…I hate you. Don’t Leave Me.

Relationships with Transference and Mother Issues
Friday, June 15, 2007-12:53midnight EST

MRI after 5

Published on June 14, 2007 in Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dreams, For the Record, Mental Health, PTSD and Therapy. 1 Comment

Who on earth has an MRI after 5PM? Only me. Tomorrow/today I see Dr. T as well as go get an MRI at the hospital. I’m still up, still putting off sleep. Tomorrow has to be a light session or I may not be able to make the other appointment yet I need to tell him about today. I’m kind of torn…keep it light or tell him we crossed our line of safety. I guess I worry that he’ll want to talk about why we cut and that might end up messing us up so that doing the MRI will be hard.

Sheshhh, it’s 3:30AM. I have to go to bed. I hope Bella isn’t stand offish tonight. I could use her planted on my chest purring up a storm. It seems to take away the pain like a sponge when she does that. She just sits on my chest and purrs and it’s like I can feel it slowly leave me. I like it when she does that.

I have to sleep now.

Me

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

Published on June 13, 2007 in Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Mental Health and PTSD. 0 Comments

Several nights in a row I’ve rolled into bed, turned on my side and came so close to a soft spoken prayer. My heart aches. I really want to pray but I just can’t. I fall asleep thinking, all you have to do is start talking. I never start talking.

What would I say other than the customary, “I’m sorry, please forgive me for being me?” I use to talk to him like we were friends.

What would I say now? I’d say “I miss you” and “I miss being your friend” and “I feel like I’m wasting my life” but most of all “I feel like I’ve given up on ever being friends again, especially when my head hits the pillow and I can’t bring myself to say your name. I could use you this evening. Here it is 5:39AM and I’m still up…tears streaming, stomach in knots, throat tight and dry. I’m tired but I’m fighting it.

Joan of Arc

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep
Wednesday, June 13, 2007-5:36AM EST

Letting The Past Die

Published on June 13, 2007 in Abuse, Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Female Sadist, Mental Health, PTSD, Soapbox and Therapy. 3 Comments

I’m 35 years old and I still think about stuff that happened in the 4th grade, in high school, etc. I think about the good stuff and the bad stuff but when I think about the bad stuff I worry people will think I’m wallowing in self pity. If I talk about the good stuff then I’m building up, inspiring. If I talk about the bad stuff I’m stuck. I won’t move on and let the past die. But that’s not so easy, letting it die. This is why……..

Of course I still have nightmares but doesn’t everyone who was abused? That’s not excuse enough to still be hurt over the past. But when I think about what I did to survive I have a harder time rationalizing things. When I think about the fact that I had to teach myself to enjoy needles in the roof of my mouth just to survive it or when I think about how I danced in my head to the beat of dowel rods against my back I have a harder time “getting past” the past. The guilt of what I did to keep going is what is hard to get past. I can almost justify my mother’s actions. If you give me enough time I can come up with a reason for why she did what she did and then excuse her. Plenty of people would call that forgiveness and tell me what a good Christian I am for giving her room for her sins. That would all be about her and “them” not me. I’d still try and forget that I wet the bed clear up until the 8th grade. I’d still feel the sting of not spending the night someplace when I actually had permission for fear I’d wet the bed. I still smell the stench of urine on my body despite the passing of years for fear of showering because my mother might watch me. It is easy to “get over” what others did to me. It’s harder to “get over” what I did to live with what they did. In all truthfulness, it is my own guilt and my own reactions to their sins that keeps me up at night.

I have a cavity. I have a fucking cavity and I know damn well as soon as I sit in that dentists chair I’ll kick into old coping skills and you know what? I don’t have to strength to survive “liking it” again. Fuck the tooth. I’m not going. I can maybe get over what “they” did but what I can’t seem to move past is the humiliation of what I did to survive them. That is what troubles me at 2am, feeling the past today.

J of A

Letting The Past Die
Wednesday, June 13, 2007-1:56AM EST

I Was Afraid

Published on June 13, 2007 in Abuse, Art, Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Mental Health, PTSD and Therapy. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Catatonic

(other art therapy pieces can be found here.)

Christine Lawson, in her book, Understanding The Borderline Mother, says:

“Emotionally stable parents share their children’s joy and quiet their fear. But caretaking roles are reversed for children of borderlines whose mothers are chronically upset. Children repress their fear in order to calm their mother. Situations that should frighten children may not because they have learned not to feel. A dramatic (an hopefully rare) example occurs when cildren rescue the borderline mother from suicide attempts.” p.23 (cited from Markham’s Behavioral Health)

I said I don’t feel fear but I take that statement back. I feel fear I just express it covertly. I didn’t want to be like my sister who I always saw as weak. She jumped up and down, stomped her feat and screamed in pain. I thought she was weak for showing it but now I think maybe it got her less trouble than my lack of response. Continue reading ‘I Was Afraid’