Tact: Acute sensitivity to what is proper and appropriate in dealing with others, including the ability to speak or act without offending.

Today I feel terrible and evil.

I hurt someone with my sharp tongue and thoughtless words. I should have really learnt by now, how to deal with normal people. People who don't have BPD, people who don't think, act or feel the way I do. People who are unable to see a situation with as objective a view as mine.

In my last few posts, I was perhaps at my most paranoid and self-destructive state ever. I discovered the comfort of self-harm...mostly just slashing my arms till there is a satisfactory amount of blood pooled on the floor below; enough to atone for my sins.

I did this so often, and so much, my arms are scarred forever and I have developed severe anemia. So much so, that I need to huff and puff to run a few yards. Also, I lost complete interest in life and living. Life is overrated, living is an illusion we create to justify our cowardice towards Death.

Somehow, I cannot explain why I self harm...I feel that by hurting myself every-time I feel awful about a misunderstood act (For which I always assume sole responsibility, even though a third party would argue that it wasn't my fault), I can kill my 'evil self' that manifests, and by hurting it and bleeding it out every-time, I can, in the long run, destroy it, till I am left with a shell filled of goodness, the 'good self' - the normal me. Whenever I stare at the big red pool, I feel free, as though a cancerous appendage has been removed.

I am my worst critic, my best friend and my worst enemy. I punish myself severely for every tiny slip, invalidate my own happiness at my achievements and I'm the only one who I can hold conversations with, without fearing that she will run away.

Over the last few weeks, the paranoia turned to utter disappointment. Now I get panic attacks so frequently to deal with. Panic attacks, and then the total loss of reality. I do not know how much longer I can endure this...

In the past 3 months, I have already tried to kill myself thrice. And now as punishment for  being so careless in my planning, everywhere I go, people make the surroundings completely child-safe. There are no sharp objects, (as I tried stabbing myself with the stolen kitchen knives), no unguarded or exposed pharmaceutical products (I keep overdosing on those), no poisons of any kind (I ingest those too) including bleaches, acids, etc, but a blade I keep hidden with me, remains. 3 months, I didn't step out of my room, 3 months I did not eat food, 3 months I was a disheveled hag, who hated all humans and feared them. Feared their conviction in this 'reality', feared being so close to them that it would hurt. I was mentally and physically broken.

I became a train wreck, with no maintenance car, on a long journey through the desert. I have no destination and I've forgotten my source.

Well, I don't know why I've been longing for human company this much since quite recently. It is quite perplexing. Whatever the reasons, I still wasn't looking a year ago. I'd decided that I was done with online relationships or even real-life relationships with boys (which I do not have, either way), and blam, I meet someone...and slowly, and probably because of my vulnerability, I fell head over heels in love and was determined to meet him and give us a chance. He would not call it love, this person - X. He did not want to commit over the 'unreal internet' and I understood him, so I waited. I don't know where it was headed, but when the initial daze wore off, I started seeing his flaws. I knew they were there, but before, I was blind to it, now I was ready to work around it. I wanted to go in with no expectations, but I figure he didn't. because I didn't fit into his image of a 'perfect' and he wandered. The fact that he wandered did not hurt me. The fact that he didn't tell me, did.
Why is everyone so scared to make a clean cut and yet maintain a platonic relationship that holds no bitterness?
Is it a lack of empathy? A lack of fair judgement or the inability to remove oneself from the equation and analyze a situation?

I do this. I do not know, why it is so easy to me. I can step out of my body as easily as people undress and freeze the scenario that bothers me, jot down the facts, analyze the issues and come up with a third-party report that could solve it all, and then 'wear' my body again and feel from a 1st person view. Like a scientist confronted with a problem, I ask appropriate questions and gather responses, process them and form conclusions that may or may not be helpful.

Back to the point at hand...

He meandered, but waited until I found out. I was terribly hurt by the lack of sensitivity. Then, as usual, the involuntary response of stepping-out to over analyze the situation occurred. I have a knack for asking the most objective questions. I can understand why he was uncomfortable, but I was not disappointed that he was uneasy, but because he thought I was going psychotic on him. When I asked him why he didn't tell em this before, he replied with "I see a physcho".

Whatever does that mean? I truly do not understand! Is all curiosity psychotic?
Or am I just tactless to say "I was just curious. I find Human reactions very interesting", for which the prompt answer was "Go and find another guinea pig".
I do not understand, what provoked his anger?

I feel angry. Angry that I'd made him mad myself and the fact that I should invoke such a response. Alas in my self-criticism I cannot De-personalize the situation at hand. So, I am angry at myself for lacking tact, for lacking insight, for lacking the wits to be sane enough to hold a decent, non-agressive argument. In this moment I cannot escape the pain that comes with empathy, perhaps it is the pain that binds me to my fragile physical form...I do not know. Pain is the only reality I can perceive so clearly. The only one that seems to have the intensity enough to cross that mystical barrier between body and mind, reach that void and attack in the softest corners of the consciousness, making itself tangible.

I do not know who is to blame, and by writing this, I have partially De-personalized myself and go into a place that is less hurtful and provides information for study. Hopefully, I can use this knowledge as part of a fixed experiment result and be wary in the future.

De-realization and De-personalization are such bitter enemies of mine. They cloud my judgement to a certain degree, at such levels that the De-personalized me and De-realizing me hurt the Me, probably hindering the solution to the problem.

My mind is not with me yet, because as I write this...I have partly stepped out.

I find also a beautiful blog on BPD. I can relate to it accurately, I hope people will find some answers there as well. It gave me courage.

http://suebpd-borderline.blogspot.com/

A few scans from my sporadic entries in my Diary, because I feel no motivation to write, talk or type anymore.

FML, and people ask why I want to end it.

I should introduce myself first. I’m A, 22 years old and I’m a girl. Since I’ve been 16-17 years old I’ve been suffering from depression and suicidal tendencies, which was also later diagnosed to exist along with severe Borderline Personality Disorder. Perhaps a brief history…

I like everyone else, was a baby once. I went through them all – toddler stage, 5-10 year old stage, teen age, adolescence, and now adulthood. When I was little I was always occupied, either by myself or people around me, cause I was actually popular then (In general, babies are popular). Weird fact- a Professor of one school in my Aunt’s town wrote a poem on me!! I just found that out a couple of weeks ago as my Mum was digging through old papers she’d saved. Yeah, she saves everything, maybe she’s a clutter-bug.

So then, everywhere I moved, I was immensely popular. People always wanted to play with me, talk to me, cuddle with me…and then started teenage (!) when I showed that I was a strong and independent individual. Maybe I am vain, but I must admit this, I was darned good at everything- sports, academics, extra curricular activities, and this instead of making me popular actually guaranteed a lot of hate and jealousy from my peers. I had problems making friends all through school, and usually found one best friend ( the first one I had turned against me and the second left without a trace) who I’d never know again.

I’m not contriving, I could see it! Eyes filled with hate, words like venom and deeds that always were meant to do harm to me. I remember when I was in my 3^rd grade, how all the girls in the class teamed up against me and threw stones at me, because they didn’t want me. Luckily, my father got a job somewhere else, and I moved from that city, but I spent sleepless nights wondering why.

I’m not a malicious/vicious person. I don’t even think ill of others, and if I do, I loathe myself relentlessly, because its wrong. I don’t destroy things in rage, I don’t like ruining anything, heck, I don’t even kick pebbles (they feel it) off the street.

For some reason, good intentions are always seen with suspicion!!! It’s like people stopped expecting people to be good, just because they aren’t. I think it hurts their ego somewhere and they try to justify their own screwed personalities by proving to the others that ‘good is not the way to go’.

So anyway, what I’m dealing with now, is the worst kind of stress any young person shouldn’t have. You’d disagree, probably say that there are starving Africans who are in greater agony than I am. Heck, I don’t care. For one, lack of food is like the stupidest thing to feel sorry for. No. I don’t feel sorry for it, because while always feeling ‘empathy’ for those poor African hungry people, the same empathetic benevolent thinkers glutton themselves on all kinds of food; and then waste more. You really cared?? Stop wasting, over-eating and donate or help those ‘hungry African kids’. Get your asses off the couch and stop acting benevolent and helpless. Treating hunger is as simple as that – Give food. Hungry again? -Give food. It doesn’t require a great mind to decipher the answer to hunger.

Now don’t tell me I don’t know hunger. You can’t say that to a person who has gone a whole week without anything but water. Not once, twice- many times. My stomach would burn, and its horrible, but my life seemed so much more horrible that I didn’t want to eat, no matter how much my tummy growled. And no, I don’t even eat much, when I do. What I probably eat over a week, that African ‘hungry poor people’ would probably finish in 2 days and then get hungry in another 4 hours.

Let’s just say a brief history of my education…you’ll see why it’s important later on:

School until 10^th grade- 86% scores with a 99% score in English (thus topping the Country, wooo!!)

11 grade – 96%

12 grade (at the end of which suffered a serious attack of anxiety, depression and suicidal tendencies due to fear of failure and abandonment by family)- ~61%

Total 11 and 12 grade- 87%

Joined College, left that year end.

Sat at home for one year (Being tortured all the while for being a foolish and incompetent person. Only idiots and people with flawed IQs lose a year. And what’s more, you dropped out once, so you just MUST be doing it again and for the rest of you life. SO failure in the future is imminent).

Joined college, completed 3 years of Bachelors in Life Science subjects Genetics, Microbiology and Chemistry- ~71% (until 2 years, 3^rd year results pending).

Sitting idle at home for almost a month ( during which I am wasting parent’s time and money. Most importantly money. I’m 22, I should move out and earn for myself).

 Are you freaking kidding me?? This is 2011, no one gets a job with a useless Undergrad degree like mine!!!

Until now I have tried suicide almost 4 times, seriously. Failed every time, because I was stupid enough to stay close to people who fear going to jail for no fault of theirs.

Until now, I’m always hearing “You will never finish degree! I know you won’t! See what happened in the first year! And now you’re going the same way. Useless if you don’t get university Gold Medal”…my Mom must have rattled this dialogue more than 5 times everyday since the past 4 years, ever since I skipped my First exams.

NOW, at the start of 2011 it started, “You’ll not finish the 3^rd year exams, I know it. Start looking for Call center jobs. You’re not fit for anything else”. Skip one day of college and we get –“It’s starting again, you’re skipping college, you’ll not write the exams, if you want to skip classes and this is your intention, start looking for jobs, don’t write the exams, wasted anyway. Just get married”.

And when I’m done with exams on May 20^th. May 21^st, I get “You’re done with exams, start looking for jobs, and earn by yourself, we can’t afford to pay for you. You have to make your way up. Look at your Daddy, he’s come up by himself through scholarships, etc”. Yeah, friggin there was hardly anyone pursuing higher education when my Dad studied (1960’s) and there were loads of scholarships, even for pathetic students. And Mom, your Dad DID pat for all your education until MSc level. I’m a friggin BSc, you owe me another University course. “Oh but I didn’t lose 2 years like you (waste, pathetic, wretched, foolish, disgraceful daughter that I have), and you should have finished MSc by now like all others”.

“Look at your cousins, all of them studying abroad, getting excellent jobs…” Well yeah, their parents paid for all their schooling in top schools from where they had an advantage to get top placements. Plus they’re in the best universities in the World!! Plus they’re not even Indians anymore!!! The job scene is different abroad! Heck, I can get into those Univ as well, but I don’t have the money to pay for it.

My sister on the other hand, sat bumming around at home, jobless for almost 2 years, they said nothing (instead supported the poor soul), then they paid a HUGE amount on her animation course which dragged on for 2 years, after the procurement of which she quit the industry (due to her low self-confidence that she looks ugly, etc and apparent prejudices) and joined AGAIN in her old Bachelor’s degree line- IT (Start from scratch). And they paid for everything. Everytime. And when she worked for 9 months and then 4, she was allowed to keep all her money to herself, encouraged even, to spend it on personal things like a house, car, etc (which she didn’t cause living at home, which was like a lodge for her- free, was easier and a lazy way out).

Then, she’s getting above 26 years old, time for marriage. She does not want to marry, cause she hates males and sex, kids, marriage, and is too lazy to manage a home because she will have to learn to cook, get around by herself(drive, ride), keep clean and do housework, etc. So what do my parents do? Even though Dad doesn’t have a job since the past 1 year, and they are too broke to fund my studies or support me anymore, they go ahead and spend stupefying amounts on her wedding jewellery and save for her dowry (1/10,00,000 of which amount could make my life forever). It’s like they’re bribing someone to take her away rather than giving their daughter away in marriage.

When I ask about her it’s always “She’s our daughter, we have to take care of her. We’re making sure she has enough to live and we will keep her as long as we live, who are you to question what we do?” and when it comes to me it just is “Get a job, we can’t afford anything. You have to earn your own money”.

Am I being paranoid, or is this a tad bit unfair to me?? It’s been frustrating me. They’ve been on my back ever since I skipped that one year from college… “Get a job, get a job, get a job. Leave this house and live by yourself”.

And even if I DO get the opportunity, my control freak mom won’t let me go “You can’t live alone, you’re reckless, disorganized and totally foolish”. She doesn’t let me date, love is forbidden for me, I shouldn’t touch boys, hugs are scandalous and people who hug should get married immediately, “Who are you talking to for more than 1 min on the phone?”, “Your friends are going out to movies? Let them, you can go too, but you don’t need money to have fun”, “Why do you need to go anywhere? You can be occupied at home. You don’t know how to have fun. You are boring, not the place”, “Do housework, you’ll not get bored, you’re bored because you never help at home”, She demands to know all my friends, decides who I should talk to, where I should go, What I should do…if anything is missing, she creates a scandal in front of my extended family, among whom she is a poor and beautifully cultured lady, who has the worst fortune in having a pathetic, retarded, incompetent and disgraceful child who never listens to her wonderful parenting. She wants to dictate my career, my hobbies, my interests…if I don’t agree, another scandal of the really unruly child who doesn’t respond to excellent parenting. I am the Devil Child.

My only relief, started out with a discovery of self-harm, mostly slashing my wrists to let my emotions under control. I love it. I love seeing the bright red gushing out, I love how real the pain is, probably the only thing I can relate to now in this dreamy world. It’s a way to punish my pathetic self, for ever existing and not being that obedient daughter my Mother wants me to be. For not scoring 100% in college, for not getting a high paying job and supporting her and my sister, for not being able to make friends she likes, for not being able to gain her trust that I’m not a bitchy, promiscuous girl who sleeps around with a gazillion boys, for not being her trophy and hallmark of successful parenting, for not being a beautiful and very desirable woman…

Either way, she’s not concerned about the act I do, but the impact it will have on the Society’s view of her parenting Skills. She’s not worried about the cuts on my hand, or the blood and my health, but just the horrendous scars that everyone will see and question. So she tries her best, every time to see no scars are formed…turmeric, bandages, ointments…because people will apparently question her. “What do you want people to think of me?” she asks. Not “Why are you doing this?”

So anyway, I have to finish this. And now she’s proven it, people didn’t believe me that she will abandon me. Now she sees that I’m going to take time to get a job, and that I’m useless henceforth, she’s asked me to leave. Me and my belongings seem to occupy too much space that can otherwise be utilized by my precious sister (who I’ve tortured in the deepest darkest throes of Hell for centuries apparently and whose pathetic state, I am responsible for). I’m not wanted here.

For example, I made some icing flowers, with Mum, and she’s failed to put them on any cake so far, so they were resting on a tray on the Ironing Table. My sister wanted to iron something and she asked me to remove ‘my stuff’ from the table. I said to her “you can eat them if you want, they’re not mine” and my sister retorted “Why did you make them?” in probably the most hateful tone ever. So according to my sister-

1) I should do something, not sit idle at home and waste time and money

2) not make anything because it is occupying precious space

Coming to my sister:

1) Since she is working weekdays, it is her birthright to use the internet all day on the weekends. It’s her house.

2) I should use the internet only on weekdays, since I’m idling at home with nothing to do.

3) Her google searched pictures (she will never use) are more important to download than my friends who are waiting for me on Msn/Skype.

4) I don’t require to talk on Messenger. I must e-mail my friends. If they are busy on weekdays to talk, I don’t need to talk to them, because I am sitting idle.

5) If I tell them “brb” and go to the loo, it’s an invitation for computer confiscation, and my friends must wait for me till next day or at least for 3-4 hours to come back online and say bye.

6) No one should ever touch her rad computer and waste it’s lifetime for petty purposes even when I need a stable system that doesn’t crash if I open 2 tabs on Chrome to finish my Online Job assessment tests.

WTF????

I can’t structure my thoughts well, but this should give you an idea…of my life right now J

NEXT TIME, more about:

Depression

Depersonalization

Anger

Hate

De realization

Suicide