An Explanation

I want to try to explain a few things in response to a comment left for my previous post:

At this point, the Little Red Headed Girl may be a catalyst, but she's only the catalyst THIS time. It's not the first time I've been this ill. She just doesn't give me any room to work on recovery.

This response is a struggle. My mind won't form rational thoughts without a real fight, but damn, I'm trying. You see, BPD skewes my thought processes. If it didn't, she wouldn't BE in my house.

I'll give you a couple of examples.

There's no way I'd ever consider leaving my husband. He's loving, kind, giving and gentle. We "get" each other. Our sense of humour complements each other's. The most banal of comments can send us into laughter while people around us look at us as if we're nuts (ya, ya). It makes no sense to them, but it makes sense to us, and for whatever reason, it's positively hysterical. On top of that, I've developed the ability to "hook" my husband into saying the goofiest things; as soon as they leave his mouth, his eyes close and his head falls to his chest ~ and I collapse in laughter. And each time, he says the same thing: "You'd think you'd get TIRED of doing this to me!" Hell no, this is entertainment. Then he tackles me.

But when I get like I am now, things change; my thoughts run the gamut from isolating myself within the house, to isolating myself elsewhere, for some pre- determined period of time, to actually leaving permanently. Why? This part is important: because I feel as if he deserves so much better. In my head, he didn't sign on for this. He deserves someone happy and healthy and NORMAL. To me, leaving would be better than "forcing" him to stay married to someone who could conceivably be ill forever. Besides, if I leave first, he can't leave ME.

My husband's thoughts are different, though. Because I work so hard at not taking my frustrations out on him, and do work at recovery, he accepts the bad with the good in the very Zen-like way that works so well for him. In his mind, the benefits far outweigh the unfavourable. He likens it to any other illness, and vows to stand beside me. Ending the marriage would be unthinkable. And when I'm thinking rationally, I feel exactly the same way. I adore him.

Another example concerns my fear of abandonment and is another key issue with Borderlines.

Last summer, my son went with his girlfriend and her family, and another family, on a day trip to Catalina Island. They used the other family's boat, promising to be back in town by 4pm. My son was to keep in touch by cell phone at key points throughout the day, as my fears of injury/death are very real to me, even though others may find them silly.

I got one phone call from my son at the appointed time. After that, I didn't hear from him again. As the hours ticked by, my panic rose. I called his phone, and there was no answer. Time and time again I called, leaving message after message. I called his girlfriend's house, trying to find her mother, who hadn't gone on the trip. There was no one anywhere, and I had no idea where to turn. I didn't know the name of the people he had gone with (a one-time mistake I never made again). My husband, in an effort to help me, began making calls, trying to find out if there had been bad weather, or accidents out on the water where they had been. He went so far as to call the coast guard, but they couldn't help since we didn't know the name of the people, or the boat they'd been on, or the exact location where they'd departed from. It didn't take too long before hysteria set in. And it wasn't contrived in any way: I was convinced that he was dead, either at someone else's hands, or in a boating accident. Nothing anyone could say would change that. There was no reason that I could think of that he would simply ignore my request to stay in touch unless there was something wrong.

Six hours after the last time I was supposed to hear from him, he called. Turns out that the cell phone towers wouldn't work in close proximity to the equipment for the sailboats. And on the way back, the family insisted on going scuba diving; then they ran into rough weather, making the trip take three times as long as it should have. And through all of this, he was trying to call.

Abandonment: the biggest curse I face with BPD.

If I toss this wretched LRHG out in the manner that she truly, truly deserves, I believe I'll lose my son. YOUR mind can rationalize his anger, then acceptance, and finally, forgiveness. And even as I write it, MINE cannot. He'll simply stop loving me, leave home, and eventually write me out of his life.

You see, the way it works for "us" is, when you're out of our sight, you cease to exist, in some ways. We need constant reinforcement that you love us, or some other tangible proof of your existence. When I moved here, I brought my eldest son's shoes, and my middle son's jersey. Yes, I have pictures. I needed something else. I needed that "proof" that they still existed.

So my choice is ... the very real risk of losing my son, or two more months of hell. It's really not as cut and dried as it seems.