Bang Bang, He Shot Me Down...

Bang bang he shot me down~
bang bang I hit the ground~
bang bang that awful sound~
bang bang my baby shot me down...

Or...

One of Oprah's "Ah Ha Moments".

On Wednesday in a blinding flash of clarity, I realised that my husband is one of my key "Triggers".For those of you who are not familiar with BPD triggers, it's what drives my world, but not always in a good way, unfortunately.

For example, he can come home from work and say, "I'm home!" in a cheerful and loving manner and I immediately feel cheerful and loving! Ah, he's happy, he's had a great day, being home is a good thing and the evening will go well. Everything is fine! Alternately, he can come home and say in a tired voice, "I'm home," and I immediately start wondering if he's depressed, or if he's just sick of living with me, or if something I've done in the preceding day has irked him, or if the whole bpd/bipolar disorder thing is just weighing him down. Could be he's just fatigued. Of course as soon as these thoughts (referred to as "twisted thinking") start to run rampant through my head, it's like horses through a starting gate, and I am, at this stage, powerless to stop them, as I've yet to learn the techniques I need to turn the tide in a different direction. Can I? Apparently. Am I? No.

Triggers are powerful, powerful signals for those with mental illness. Anyone who's been abused in any fashion will more than likely have triggers from those events. I know I have, and my husband knows what they are. For the most part, the triggers from my past have mostly been worked out. Unfortunately, there are new ones cropping up all the time.

What frustrates me is how your (my) day can go from average to downright-shit-in-the-toilet with the slightest trigger. And while an outside observer may say, "well, don't LET IT!", mental illness simply isn't that easy to control. An example:

I read the newspaper on my husband's computer. I have mine set with some freakin' setting that has locked my local newspaper out, so that all I get is gibberish if I try to open it. He knows I use his computer. He doesn't mind. He's free to use my computer, and I don't mind. He has access to my email if he wants it. I have access to all his files and he has access to all mine. In my mind, if you have an honest marriage and have nothing to hide, this shouldn't be a problem. Anyway, I was looking for the bookmark I had set for my newspaper, and came across some bookmarks HE had set for BPD groups; essentially, support groups for him. BANG BANG!

Everything froze. For a brief moment, everything stood still as I stared at the undeniable proof that the man I love so dearly needs support in living with his wife. Undeniable proof that he seeks shelter from strangers when my behaviour becomes so unpredictable that he cannot understand it, or deal with it, on his own. Undeniable proof that he looks elsewhere in desperation when I am so crazy that he has no other option but to search for some sort of answer when I am not rational enough to give them on my own.

And I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, and the blood rushing in my ears. BANG BANG!

Hands in hair, fists in eyes. BANG BANG!

Anxiety level rising up, shooting up! I can't breathe! BANG BANG!

And then my mind breaks free~takes off on it's own and runs it's sick path; of COURSE he needs these groups! I'm wretched! Look at all the awful things I've said and done! No one would be able to cope with it. Who'd want to? Who could love me? *I* certainly don't! I'm nuts. I'll never be anything but nuts. If I can't do it, how can I expect those around me to? And the pain keeps rising and rising, twisting and clutching at my chest and in my head, my thoughts so completely skewed and wild that finally, I stop...because I'm too tired to go any further.

And I want to hurt myself. I want so desperately to punish myself for what I've put him through. Those thoughts slip through my mind ... so many ways ... and I scare myself. I drive faster and faster, more and more reckless, and the only things stopping me are the knowledge that I'll have no control over who I take with me ... and the look on my husband's face when he gets that phone call. But I need that pain! I need that punishment. Oh gawd, I want that hurt.

I collect the blades and alcohol and bandages and cotton and polysporin and butterflies. It's such a ritual. It's alternately neat and tidy and messy. The first pull doesn't hurt: it's just a marker. the second one over the first stings. The third and forth hurt some; then the fifth, sixth, seventh ... they hurt ... go deeper, wipe up, go deeper. When it stops hurting, you clean it up, and start putting it back together. Take pride in putting it back together. Never more than an inch long because that's longer than the bandage, and I can't go to an emergency ward: if they find out you cut, they drop you in psych. Make sure the butterflies are tight: faster healing, less scars.

And for thirty minutes, you feel better. For thirty minutes, you've bled away the pain. And as it gradually wears down, the humiliation sets in and you realize what you've done, again. You've acted out, like a child. You'll have the marks to prove it. And you feel worse than ever ~ especially when you see the sadness in his face when your loving husband sees the bandages you're trying so hard to hide.

Don't get me wrong. I don't put this on HIS shoulders; the blame goes where it belongs, which is squarely on mine. In more rational moments, I recognize that this is nutty behaviour. Normal people don't torment and abuse their bodies out of frustration. Normal people don't NEED pain to soothe their mental anguish. Normal people can use a regular formula of math to guide their lives: 2+2 will nearly always equal 4; for me, it can equal nearly anything.

Because I suffer from two mental illnesses, when I'm struck with symptoms of rising mania or panic which can mimic each other, I have to more or less try to calm myself enough to assess the symptoms based on thought processes, and then medicate myself. Can you imagine how difficult this is during an Olympic Nuttiness Event like the one described above? I try, and I'm getting better at it. Mania is more agitation, shakiness, irritation, sometimes energy. A BPD attack has more twisted thinking attached to it, so I have to pay more attention to the thought processes. If I'm thinking, "everyone hates me because I'm worthless", or "of course it turned out like this, I might as well just quit/leave/die right now", then it's more than likely BPD.

The medication is nearly the same. How I THINK is very different.

At the end of the day, when my husband comes home, it's crucial to make every effort to turn that back off; it's not his fault that these thoughts go through my head. And here's why:

Every day my husband tells me he loves me, and that he'll never leave me. He's NEVER harsh or mean. He assures me that the rough times are a small price to pay for the joy we share when the stupid illnesses are under control. And he says that even though it's damned difficult at times and he does get tired, I DO refill the cup, by loving him right back.

Today I'm busy trying to control those thoughts. I really don't want to fuck up another weekend.

It's Just The Wine Talking

I really don't drink. But I'm sitting here with a glass of .... something with a long name .... and decided that I really need a slightly more upbeat blog. The past I-Don't-Know-How-Many have been uncharacteristically unpleasant!

I've been shopping. You see, it was my birthday, and any excuse is a good excuse, and a birthday is a better-than-average excuse! What did I buy? JEWELRY! What else? It's my all-time favourite thing to buy, followed closely by shoes and purses, and then clothing. I guess if I could buy cars and houses with any sort of regularity, they'd be on the list as well, but you know how that is.

I was researching amethysts for a friend of mine who was getting anally raped by a jeweler who was charging her nearly $2000 for a large lab-created stone in a platinum setting. Now I recognize that platinum is "THE" setting of settings, and the stone was huge, but even so, this entire fiasco was making me nuts. One of my hobbies is researching high-quality diamonds, and precious and semi-precious gemstones; I recognize when a jeweler is hosing a customer who's completely clueless! He had this poor girl convinced this was a "purple diamond", man-made, because the "real thing" would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Uh, folks? This is an amethyst~~not a precious stone, even~~but a semi-precious stone, and man-made, at that. The only thing costing any money was the setting.

Anyway, at her request, I began looking into amethysts, and wowza, what a bonanza of sizes, shapes, colours, cuts and clarities! Me being me, I hate the kitschy things like heart-shaped cuts or very dark colours. Give me cuts and colours that show the beauty of the damned stone!

So anyway, I began looking in very typical BPD fashion (for those of you who are new readers, you're going to have to go back to the beginning of the blog). I hit the internet for about six hours a day, and malls for about five days. Over the course of about three weeks, I learned everything I needed to know about this gorgeous purple stone, and reported back to the young woman in question. And during this endeavour, discovered that I must, must, MUST have some of this
jewelry for myself!

I'm a fan of bidding sites; away I went to Bidz.com and eBay; I found lovely rings on eBay, but waited too long to bid and lost both the rings I wanted. Then I changed my mind and decided I wanted to make my OWN ring, and went to sites that sold loose amethyst stones. Cheap, cheap, cheap. A nice stone, 6 mm x 8 mm, can be had for as little as $10. Of course you can go obscenely large, and get an eye-clean, 16mm x 12 mm mid-colour amethyst, beautifully clear, for around $160. If you had something like that set into a simple gold band, it would look lovely! But alas, too many of them are channel-set or pressure-set, which means you can't see light through the cut of the stone. It just dies there, and you have a purple stone. Whoopy.

ANYWAY, I went back and forth between Bidz.com and a ring I found in a jewelry store; my fear was that even though the description sounded lovely, once I got the ring off the internet, I would be dissatisfied with the diamonds it featured. It's the one thing you can't get around when you're buying from a discount jeweler. So I decided to buy what I could see and try on, and picked up a large, medium-coloured stone, about 12 mm x 8 mm (the equivalent of appx 5 cts), with two small diamonds channel set on each side. The ring also has a thin, independent band of gold that comes up off the original band to the top of the ring on each side, just to make things unique, and those bands are in white gold, instead of yellow. It's very different, and I like it. I'll post a picture of it if I ever figure out how to post one.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!
It was April 17

This was from my husband, who knew I was looking. He tries each year to find something that will be a surprise, but is gradually giving up on it ever happening.

Anyway, after the ring, I started looking at pendants. I was looking at one on Bidz.com, and it said "sale: $79". I clicked it, because I wanted to see what the terms were. It said no sales available for the item and to check back later. I tried again in a few minutes, and then again later. Well, you can imagine my surprise when I discovered THREE emails that said CONGRATULATIONS...YOU HAVE PURCHASED THIS AMETHYST AND DIAMOND PENDANT FOR $79.00!!, not once, but THREE TIMES! Off I went to the Powers-That-Be to explain what's happened, and of course it's my fault, and I'm slapped on the wrist and told to be more careful, and pay for one. BLAH. I do, however, find some really cute earrings to match. My husband has told me to cease and desist (hmph).

Anyway, I'm waiting with barely-concealed excitement for the new stuff! I love the ring, and have decided that I don't care that amethysts are cheap stones. They're damned pretty! And I'm currently wearing a big new honkin' chunk of stone on my hand, and that always makes me happy.

As a postscript, my mother-in-law gave me an American Express gift card for my birthday, and I went looking for diamond studs yesterday. I found a lovely pair and got to do one of my favourite things, and my husband's LEAST favourite things: talk the jeweler down in price. I kept saying I wasn't sure, and wanted to go to this other place. The young man called his manager, who of COURSE told me that the other place would give me no guarantee, and a much lower quality of diamond, and if it would help, she would lower her price a bit more. My dear husband was behind me, saying, "If you're not sure, we can go and tomorrow you can try the other place". I was desperately trying to whisper to him ... "Honey, I'm working here!!!!!"

I need a career in gemology. Life would be good and I'd sparkle from top to bottom!

THIS IS YOUR WAKE-UP CALL-IT'S DARWIN CALLING

Good morning. This is your wake-up call. It's from Darwin ... I'm trying to isolate the exact moment we turned into Trash Nation, and nearest I can tell, it was one second after Nancy Kerrigan took a telescoping blackjack to the knee. Now there was a cute little soap opera. What an absolutely fascinating underwater view into the Kmart inflatable backyard America gene pool. I have a dirty little confession. I loved it! We may have learned everything we needed to know about life in Kindergarten. But you know what? We can learn everything we need to know about the incredibly rude, selfish, infantile country we've become by observing the human spokes revolving around the Tonya Harding sociocultural axis. The Greeks reveled in Homeric tragicomedies; the English lived out Shakespearean dramas. But we, America, are the cast of the Kerrigan farce. Is it any wonder we've thrown manners, compassion and respect out the window? We've become one big, self-absorbed nation holding up an ice skate, pointing at a broken lace and blubbering our eyes out. We don't know our neighbors anymore. We have no shame, no consideration, no sense of duty or sacrifice. Need more metaphors? We don't go the extra mile, meet anyone halfway, and if, somehow, somewhere, anything at all goes wrong in our pathetic daily wanderings, if some random misfortune drops at our feet and splatters like a Taco Supreme, we don't commence to tidying up the floor and getting on with our lives. We start making a litigious radar sweep of the room, seeing if there's anyone in recrimination range, some entitlement cadet to whom we can construct a Bridge-over-the-River-Kwai blame-path of tortured logic and sheer, reality-sculpting self-deception. Maybe they handled a taco once, maybe even MADE tacos. Maybe they could have warned you~~yes, they knew all about that treacherously viscous emulsion of grease and sour cream on wax wrapper. They deliberately chose not to say anything as they saw it slipping out of your hand in Peckinpah slow motion while you were trying to eat, talk on the phone and log on to eBay at the same time. Well, here's a news flash for you. Believe it or not, the blacks and the gays and the Jews did not drop your taco. YOU dropped the fucking taco, my friend! It doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't even mean it's your fault. What it does mean is that this cosmic slapstick we call life has just elected you the schmuck who has to go get the mop. So go get the goddamn mop already! Don't just stand there staring down, reliving the lunch-that-could-have- been and trying to figure out how affirmative action did this to you. That's just the way life is. It can be exquisite, cruel, frequently wacky, but above all utterly, utterly random. Those twin imposters in the bell-fringed jester hats, Justice and Fairness~~they aren't contestants of the natural order like entropy and the periodic table. They're completely alien notions to the way things happen out there in the human rain forest. Justice and Fairness are the things WE'RE supposed to contribute back to the world for giving us the gift of life~~not birthrights we should expect and demand every second of the day.

What do you say we drop the intellectual cowardice? There is no fate, and there is no safety net. I'm not saying God doesn't exist. I believe in God. But he's not a micromanager, so stop asking him to drop the crisis in Rwanda and help you find your wallet. Life is a long, lonely journey down a day-in-day-out lard-trail of dropped tacos. Mop it up, not for yourself, but for the guy behind you who's too busy trying not to drop his own tacos to make sure he doesn't slip and fall on your mistakes. So don't begrudge the poor because they have a fucking food stamp.DON'T speed and weave in traffic; other people have babies in their cars. DON'T litter. DON'T be rude to overwhelmed minimum-wage sales clerks, especially teenagers~~they have that job because they don't have a clue. You didn't either at that age. Be understanding with them. Share your clues. Remember that your sense of humor is inversely proportional to your tolerance. Stop and think on Veterans Day. And don't forget to vote. That is, unless you send money to TV preachers, have more than a passing interest in alien abduction or recently purchased a fish on a wall plaque that sings, "Don't Worry, Be Happy." In that case, the polls are a scary place! Under every ballot box is a trapdoor chute to an extraterrestrial escape pod filled with dental tools and squeaking, masturbating little green men from Devil Star. In conclusion, keep your chins up, grab your mops and get in the game. You don't have to make a pile of money or change society. Just clean up after yourselves without complaining. And, above all, please stop and appreciate the days when tacos don't fall, and give heartfelt thanks to whomever you pray to.

Credit: Tim Dorsey

Like Sands Through The Hourglass......

In the hopes that we would find a way of cohabitating in a more comfortable and orderly fashion, my husband and I presented "the girl" and my son with a list of house rules. Our thinking here was similar to that of training a dog: if you give firm, clear guidelines, everyone is happy, right? Everyone knows exactly how to behave, and what's acceptable. HA!

Wow, did the shit hit the fan. Apparently, giving rules to teenagers does NOT make one popular. Telling them that it's unacceptable to spend hours spooning on each others' beds makes them cranky. And to tell a 19-year-old who has spent four months lounging on your good nature, baking brownies and watching tv, to get a second job so that she can become self-sufficient is absolutely OUTRAGEOUS!!!!! I don't know where my head was!

Of course, this is all my fault. I'm completely out of line. And as such, she has begun to tell him so, spending hours doing her "Moony--Scientology--Demon" spell, spinning tales of my wickedness, and her terrible, terrible fate. Life has dealt her a terrible blow.

Last night was the worst of it: my husband walked into the family room, to find them on the sofa. My son was sitting on the sofa and she had backed onto his lap, and was rubbing back and forth, dry-humping him. Needless to say, my husband is NOT A HAPPY CAMPER. He wanted to toss her out right there, as one of the rules was to keep that shit to a minimum. I figure...the boy is perfectly capable of saying, "get off me", and he might have, but it accidently came out as, "get me off".

At this point, I think she should take pity on the poor bastard and just fuck him already.

The rules were basically: stay out of each others' rooms, stop leaving the kitchen a damned mess, stop making full meals an hour before I make dinner, look for a job on your days off (she works two days a week and lays on her ass the rest of the time; leave him alone while he does his homework (she tries to do it for him, or harasses him while he does it and he really is too polite to say anything; stay out of our business when we're talking to him; let him make his own decisions regarding college; let him do his own time plans for homework, chores, etc on weekends; expect to have chores (him) on weekends; stop UNtraining my damned dogs. That was it. Now are these out of line? I don't freakin' THINK so.

I believe I need to do what one reader/friend of mine said: make it so miserable for her that she can't wait to leave. Who would have believed I'm too nice to do it????

Not A Jury In The Land Would Convict Me!

My mother lied.

I always believed that if you did what you thought was right, deep down inside, then somehow, something GOOD would come from it.

Holy FUCK, was I wrong.

It's amazing how things can turn out so horribly disastrous when you make what appears to be a simple decision based on the ethics you're raised with. And it's just as amazing how you can look back and see all the things you never considered, and should have, when you made the damned decision. In this case, it was moving "the girl" into the house. Now, we can't get rid of her.

Foolishly, I thought I was saving a young, helpless child from being sent to the streets; I imagined that it would be for a few weeks while she got her life together and found a job and a place to stay. I even imagined, that since *I* am the type of person who wouldn't continually take from others, that others wouldn't continually take from me. Can you SEE me coming a mile away? She could. Ohhh, she could.

The girl is still here. She's happily ensconsed in our home. Her room is a disaster, although from the beginning I made it clear that I expected it to be relatively tidy. The kitchen is a perpetual mess, which I find wretchedly difficult to deal with. If there's one thing I hate it's a dirty sink! But worst of all, she's walked all over the boundaries I've set where my son is concerned ... to the point where any other sane person would have kicked her ass to the curb long ago, but because I'm a marshmallow, I've allowed her to walk all over me and my family.

The rules are irrelevant. No matter that it's a household where morals and values were always the norm; now, a pint-sized redhead has simply walked in and said, "oh well!" and what she wants, goes. She's in and out of my son's room at will. Every time I turn my back she's slipping in there, early in the morning and late at night. I watch for it ... oh, I watch for it. And each time I catch her, I get the same answer: "we're not doing anything!!" I don't care. I DON'T CARE! It's inappropriate to be hanging all over him in his bedroom, on his bed, IN MY FUCKING HOUSE. It's just as inappropriate to be laying on him, with her head in his lap, six feet away from me in my family room while we watch tv, in MY FUCKING HOUSE. But she doesn't seem to care, even when told, time and time again. So I tell my son. I take him aside, and I tell him. And he says, "ok". I see him trying to tell her. I see him gently trying to extricate himself from her, and then her STOMPING off like a child to her room and having a damned tantrum, and him following, trying to placate her because he's hurt her feelings. Ludicrous. Ludicrous. Ludicrous. How did I get here?

She ignores my rules. I have two dogs that need manners. I teach them not to bark, not to paw, not to jump on people. I am firm. She, on the other hand, loves to have them jump up on her and will encourage the behaviour, all the while saying in her baby voice, "you KNOW you're not supposed to be jumping up, you bad dogs...." while petting them.... They lap it up, all the while standing on their hind legs, and trying to figure out why I'm hollering at them to get down. This isn't a once in a while thing. This is DAILY. Of course there's the odd time she gets dressed up and then complains bitterly that she cannot figure out why they jump on her! And when they're happily resting after hours of play, she cannot leave them be. She must go wake them and get them wound up. Not once in a while; two or three times A DAY. It never ends. She doesn't feed them, or put them out when they need to be out (only brings them in when they're mucky), or walk them. Just causes problems with them.

But the worst of it is still the lack of boundaries. Her rudeness to me. Her insistance that even though she recognizes that "I" have some issues in my life, hers are much, much worse (her words, not mine). And even when I offer the most gentle of advice, she will argue; I know nothing. She has pushed my son away from me with the worst possible brainwashing I've ever witnessed. It's constant, never-ending rubbish. How does she do it? By repeating over and over and over, "I love you, I love you, I love you". Sounds nice, doesn't it? Well, you might think so, except that it IS, literally, fifty or sixty times a day, and follows insults, brainwashing, and the never-ending sagas she blabs on about that make the rest of us hide in our rooms with our fingers in our ears.

This is truly the most self-centered, egocentric girl I've ever had the misfortune to meet. She's ruined the calm, loving nature of our home. She's even driven a wedge between my husband and I as he pushes to throw her out and I continue to keep her there because I know that she simply has no where to go. Her "job" is two days a week, and she has to continue saving to pay off her student debt before she can do anything else. We have insisted she get a second job, so she applied for ONE. Didn't get it. The rest of the time she does NOTHING. Something's got to change.

We have managed to override one of her latest brainwaves; she had persuaded my son that it was perfectly normal for EVERY child to go away to college and pay $80,000 in student loans. In her words, EVERYONE does that! It's just what you DO. That's how it IS. Well, where I'm from, that's not what you do unless you HAVE to. Well, guess what? The child was accepted to several colleges and one of them is a top-40 university within commuting distance from the house, with a very good department in his major. Does it make sense to spend $80,000 rather than $30,000? Does it? All we have to do is get him away from her in order to talk sense into him, but getting him alone is nearly impossible. She doesn't let him out of her sight.

This week, he's away. We thought it would be a nice treat for him to have the leash loosened a bit, and he was excited about it. However, we discovered last night that he's expected to check in with her twice a day. But he swears up and down he loves her. ARGGHHHH!!!!! We know he finds it restricting. This is the first girl he's ever dated. He needs to get rid of her!

Have you ever tried to ask someone a question, and before you got the question out, they interrupted with the answer?

Have you ever asked someone a question, and while you're asking, someone else keeps interrupting and answering for them?

Have you ever answered someone's question, and their response is, "I WAS JUST ASKING" as if you'd done something wrong by responding?

I live this. Daily. Mostly I live in my bedroom. For four months, I've lived in my bedroom, and in the coffee shop at the bottom of the hill, and the bookstore, in order to avoid her. I keep taking my pills, for the most part, and my husband deals with the aftermath.

Oh, did I mention that on the days she DOES work, I'm the one who's driving her to and from work? Yes, there's a knock on the bedroom door, "Bo, can you take me to work?"

I recognize that all of this hinges on the fact that I have allowed it to happen. I did what I thought was a "good deed" in taking this person in, and now I don't know how to fix it. Kicking her out doesn't seem feasible because there's nowhere for her to go, and she doesn't have the money. Today when I found out she's got to pay off her student loan before she can get her transcripts for school was just the final kicker, because it means she's back to square one and there's absolutely NO light at the end of the tunnel for me. She has nothing saved for an apartment. And if I DO say, "out ya go, it's not my problem", I risk causing permanent damage to my relationship with my son. I'm between a rock and a hard place and I wandered in here all by myself.

This will not be a good week.