They Told Me So

I wrote this post last night but didn't publish it because I didn't realise this was how I felt until I wrote it. It's not necessarily how I'm feeling right now but I want to put it up regardless.  

I've been feeling really ugly this week. It's the only way to describe it. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror one morning and told myself I looked fat and orange.

Fat and Orange. 

I sure do know how to boost my own confidence. 

Today I realised it's because I feel society is now telling me I'm old, that at 25 I'm not young anymore and too old for certain things. This particularly hit me when I was in Urk over New Year, when a group of strangers told me I was too old to go into a pub. Complete bollocks of course, but it still stung. 

Am I supposed to now accept the fact that I can't feel beautiful because I'm on another side of 24? Am I supposed to accept that my body is about to fall to pieces? The thought of this hurts so much, if this is it, will my body ever look the way I've been fighting for it to look? Will I ever get to the non-existent goal I've been focusing on since I was 11? 

I secretly feel as if I have been cheated out of feeling beautiful. My eating disorder stole my teenage years from me, I remember standing in front of my mirror screaming asking myself why I was so ugly. I've always felt fat and my teenage skin has never left me. Although I've never felt "beautiful" in a conventional sense, it's been a long time since I've felt ugly. 

There are a lot of different thoughts woven into this. Sitting on the edge of a relapse after weighing myself last week, diving balls into giving up drinking and realising that I have to actually deal with my emotions instead of hiding under a blanket of dangerous and disfiguring coping mechanisms, and the all-consuming anger inside me that I can't find a reason for.  I know that my goal weight doesn't exist, I don't know what looking beautiful would be like to me, and I hated high school so wanting to relive the ages of 11 to 16 is not the top of my to-do list. I just want to finally feel thin and beautiful. 

xXx

Jealousy

Jealousy is a weird subject for me to talk about. As much as I hate to admit it, I'm a really jealous person.

The green-eyed monster on my back is rarely directed at specific people. I don't tend to lust over people's shoes or handbags, but more where they are in their lives. As happy as I am with the unique path I've taken, there are times when I yearn for something different.

Take, for instance, the people in my life who have recently gotten married/engaged/pregnant or have just had children. I'm 26 next month, it's to be expected that my peers are settling down, but it still kind of smarts.

I don't want kids, I've always been very adamant about this and I'm a raging commitment-phobe which makes relationships kind of difficult. There's no way I could have the life I have with a family and I'm happy with that, but that doesn't mean I don't get jealous of people that do. But does that mean I don't get jealous of people who have started their families and found the person they want to spend the rest of my life wife? Of course not.

The old saying the grass is always greener is 100% true. I plan my entire life around travel, but there is always someone who'll have gone to more places or spent more time on the road than me. People tell me they're jealous of my moving around a lot, but they have long terms homes they love and close friends that make them want to stay where they are. Someone will always have something you want, and you will always have something they want.

The way I see it, as is my usual way of thinking, is that it's best to be selfish. Take care of what you want, of what you love and what you aspire to, that's the only thing that matters.

But that's a post for another day.

xXx 

Holding On

I always say that I'm too lazy to hold a grudge but that's not technically true. Instead, what I'm too lazy to do is properly deal with how I'm feeling before moving on and starting over. This leads me to resent the person involved yet continuously assume I'm the one to blame, clinging on to them for dear life when in reality I should just say bye Felicia and move on.

The reason I have trouble moving on is that, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, I find it hard to admit that certain people don't deserve a place in my life. I forgive people too easily for fucking me around, yet stay angry at those close to me for tiny, insignificant things. 

That's the thing with BPD, it's the little things that really do matter to me the most.

What I'm trying to do at the moment is work on how I interact with people, and how I decide who does and doesn't deserve forgiveness and a place in my life. It's easy for me to say that I've moved on from something, but that doesn't always mean it's true.

Yet again, it's got a lot to do with my being petrified of being alone.

Abandonment issues? Moi? Never!

xXx 

There's the Door

I've been thinking about an old friend this week, one I rarely (if ever) talk to anymore but who I've been close with in the past.

Or so I thought.

Thinking about our friendship, I realise I've been doing everything in my power to try and make her be my friend from the get-go, despite all indication that it wasn't a good idea. The happy memories are there, but they're interspersed with fights, cold shoulders and my complete denial of the fact that we just didn't get on.

And now that I've thought about it, I realise I do this a lot. I've done it with friends, I've done it with boyfriends and I've done it with fuck buddies. Anyone who has ever shown a fleeting interest in being in my life, only to take it away again, I've pleaded with them to stay. Making myself unhappy in order to please them, in an attempt to convince them to stick around.

Thankfully, I'm finally realising this, and I'm making the conscious decision to step away from certain people that clearly don't want to be involved in my existence. If people do want to be there, they will, it's that simple.

If not, they know where the door is.

xXx 

When BPD attacks

The problem I have with BPD is that the length of my 'attacks' can last anywhere from between three hours and three months or longer, at varying intensities.

I can have ten-minute attacks that feel like my heart is being torn out through my throat, my brain is being pulverised into a million pieces and all the energy I have ever had or will ever have is being drained from me.

Or, like now, I can have episodes that last weeks and weeks and months and months and I feel like my head is spinning a million miles per hour and nothing makes sense. I can't get my head around the most basic of tasks and everything around me is so intense it hurts.

I know I just need to ride it out, to wait until it passes and be patient but it's so frustrating. Living a life in a constant revolving wheel of knowing one day everything will disintegrate again, or craving the future for five minutes of feeling in control is suffocating.

I've never hidden the fact that I want more out of life. That I need something more than the wheel of expectations and normality that I feel I'm supposed to want. The 9-5, the partner, the family. One day I'll get there, I know I will. I'm stubborn as fuck and I've never let anyone or anything stand in my way of what I really really want. Giving up never factors into any of my actions or decisions, it's failure that stops be moving forward.

For now, though, I need to rest.

Happy Sunday

xXx 

That's life

I'm not a fan of loud noises. Unless I'm at a gig or having sex I prefer things to be quiet. My condition means I often feel hypersensitive to things and sound is one of them. 

I was at my mumma's a few months ago and there was a lot of shouting. Not arguing as such just noise. It all got too much and I sat in my room and cried and cried and cried. My mum's explanation was it was just daily life, that it was just the way things are. But that's not good enough for me. 

Lately, I've been struggling with feeling like I'm on a hamster wheel. I live month to month waiting in agony for my next payday. I get up, I go to work and I come home. I spend my weekends indoors because I have no money to do anything and then I burn out, get fucked up and drown myself in guilt for the next few days. When I was in my car on my way home from work last week I drove along screaming 'this can't be it, this can't be it, this can't be it' over and over and over. I don't want to live in this state of numbness waiting for someone to put money in my bank account because I sat at a desk for 8 hours a day, this isn't the life I want to live. 

This morning I started thinking and realised that the 'that's life' mentality that certain people run on doesn't really fit with my lifestyle. Having put a mass rapist in prison doesn't fit into the 'this happens to everyone' category, neither does moving to Canada for a man I only knew for three days or travelling to Berlin because I saw a sign on a window. It may fit and be great for some people, but I'm not one of them. 

I'm now making it my goal to remember this, to remember that this isn't 'it'. Eventually, I'll be in Canada and pretty soon I'll be travelling around France for my birthday. My life hasn't panned out like most people's, and I'm blissfully happy with that. 

Happy Saturday <3

xXx

My Alarm Clock

These past few weeks have been difficult, I feel like I'm going mad. Everything is running at a hundred miles an hour, I can't focus and I'm hyper-sensitive to everything. Even silence screams at me. 

This led to a full-blown meltdown in my car last week. I'd just checked my bank balance (idiot) and couldn't believe that my entire life was revolving around the contents of my account or lack thereof. I drove home screaming that this couldn't be it, my primary focus couldn't be working to pay bills and nothing else. By the time I arrived home I was exhausted. 

I woke up this morning with a different perspective. A comment had been made on a late friend's Facebook, meaning his gorgeous smile popped up on my feed and I spent a few minutes talking to him, and for the first time staring at my alarm clock didn't cause me to tense up. 

One day, soon, I will wake up and it will be the day I leave for Canada. It will be the day that I pick up my bags and get ready to start my new life thousands of miles away. The day I leave will be here, I just have to be patient. 

Happy Saturday :)

xXx