Borderline Crazy

I am really starting to wonder if I am approaching real acceptance about my mother, my past, and myself in general. I wouldn’t say I feel happy—in fact, I’m just beginning to emerge from a devastating funk that has lasted probably since February. During that time I have flirted seriously with suicide twice, doubted my choice in careers, hated what I was doing every single day, and been chronically physically exhausted as a result of the bad luck of contracting mono. It sounds suspiciously like clinical depression. Only in the last week have I (a) woken up NOT feeling like I had to use self-flagellation to whip myself through the day and (b) ceased to deeply and horribly dread going to work.

Having begun the climb out of my funk, I began to reinvent the old “what if I am making all this up about my mom and am a terrible daughter” wheel. One doesn’t want to allow oneself to emerge from a funk with no repercussions, after all. The wheel reinvention did not last very long. I discovered that my partner and my dad had discussed my mother during a recent visit while I was at work. My partner related all the stories my dad told him. I’d heard them all before or was a part of them, but hearing them again brought it back. I was able to let it go without much of a struggle.

Part of the original funk was that I constantly ran in to patients at work and clinicals who triggered me and caused me to sink into a mire of flashbacks and self-doubt (”someone is going to find out that I used to be like that…”), and this kind of thing started my true loathing of going to work (”I don’t belong anywhere”). A window of probably 6 weeks went by without any suicidal alcoholic patients, but then one came in who so strongly reminded me of myself that I assumed I would barely be able to take care of her. She had, however, no real effect on me other than evoking feelings of gratitude that I somehow managed to escape her current fate and hope that she could get her shit together. She was feeling very victimized, and at one point she said, “You people just don’t understand what it’s like to be deprived of your freedom and not even allowed to shave your legs or do anything alone. It’s fine for you to be all high and mighty, but you just don’t understand.” Yes, I was struck during the moment itself with the incredible irony of her saying this to me (gone in 15 years from crazy patient to “mean” nurse), and I think my off-the-cuff response was good. I crossed the room, pulled up a chair, looked straight into her eyes, and quietly said, “You would be extremely surprised.” I squeezed her hand and left without saying anything else. I’m just really surprised that I didn’t feel upset by being reminded of my own past, nor did I become angry or defensive with her. The other nurses were pretty much taking the “you made choices to get here so quit acting like such a victim” line, which, although true, is absolutely ineffective to people in that state of mind. I hope this lady can dig deep and pull her head out. She’s on my mind lately.

All in all I think I’m creeping toward developing tougher psychological scar tissue, and it feels good.

Nothing much doing in my arena. I am struggling to get well and stop feeling so tired. Just when I almost catch up, I go work a string of three 12-hour shifts in a row (well, 3 DAYS in a row), and it zonks me back to the starting line! Between trying to get rid of my mono, working two jobs, and navigating my partner’s medical crisis (the stress of that wore me WAY down…he seems to have bounced back), the world wears heavy on my shoulders. Things are looking up, though, and I gave away some shifts next month, so I look forward to feeling healthy sometime soon!

I am not thinking about my mom much lately unless I am at work. I see the social worker often who faciliatated one of my involuntary commitments, and every time I see her I have to quickly relive the entire situation in a flash. I peer closely at her to look for any signs of recognition. There are none. Why should there be—I bear little resemblance to the destroyed human I was back then. I am also in the habit of scanning the board for my mom’s or stepdad’s name when I arrive at work. The floor I work on is a catch-all floor, and it’s a small town, so it’s not UNlikely one of them would show up there. I find I watch my back constantly when I am at the hospital…strange that I am so watchful there and so rarely think of those two at other times (although I still arrange my errands to occur at times I’m reasonably sure I won’t run in to them).

I have also encountered a run of “real” families in the last few weeks that have made me feel sad on the one hand and hopeful on the other: I am finding that I enjoy seeing that good parents do exist, rather than feeling resentful about it. I have seen a few EXTREMELY elderly ladies with crowds of children, grandchildren, pastors, and neighbors flooding the room at all times. These matriarchs hold court in the hospital, and their followers are filled with obvious admiration and respect. That doesn’t come from instillation of fear and abuse, for sure. I must be more accepting of my own situation these days, because I used to react very differently to seeing good parents: I felt insupportably sad, envious, and angry. This is a better way.

I’ve gotten a few queries along the lines of “where the heck are you? are you ok?” Thanks for the concern! I’m fine…just busy. My partner had complications with a routine operation recently, so I have been working two jobs and handling medical stuff. He’s going to be fine, so it’s all good. Sure wish I’d had a borderline parent in tow to make the situation into a true crisis! Just kidding. (The thought is too awful to imagine.)

I was a “sad sack” (I love that) for a few weeks, and now I am mad almost constantly. It runs a gamut from testy to rageful, but it’s the reigning emotion du jour. I’m not mad at anyone in particular, nor do I rationally think that I have anything to complain about. Perhaps I am hormonal. It happens. Still. Here is an example of the small, innocent things that cause me to want to start throwing stuff around: I was just at the library, and they had one of those book displays that libraries have. It was titled, “Moms and dads in literature.” The books included could have been titles about murdering bastard parents for all I know, yet I was sure they all contained happy stories of feel-good parents, and it made me mad. I stomped (only in my head) out with my stack of Dean Koontz novels. Take THAT, feel-good literature!

Perhaps this is the anger I experience when sadness and terror exhaust me and anger is the only veneer left over fear. Fear, I am told, underlies almost all my emotions, and generally that seems to be true. In AA, people deal with this by asking, “What am I really afraid of?” They report that by listing their fears they can quickly get down to the bottom of it and deal with the fears. Not me, man. No mortal could stand still long enough for my list of fears. My therapist will respond that it is reasonable for me to be terrified of everything because of my childhood. This is probably true. I am just currently tired of having my mother over my head all the time, even as a convenient repository for deflecting further introspection. I want something ELSE to exist that I am afraid of. Something real. Something worth wasting my life in shaking terror over…not a phantasm of fear created by a psychotic parent to keep herself from feeling the shaking terror.

Feeling terrified is exhausting, though, and I appear to have simply had it with the whole thing. I don’t know what I’m afraid of. It is nameless dread. Perhaps this is why I feel anger instead. I hope I find some peace someday soon; I’m not contributing much to the world right now.

I have had a hard, crappy semester in general, and the last few weeks have been tremendously difficult for me. Stuff that’s just happened to occur at work and clinicals triggered me big time, and I had flashbacks for about a week and then subsided into my current sad state. I started wondering if I can really be in the profession I’ve chosen and fell into a state of hideous self-doubt.

Eventually I spoke to my clinical instructor (who observed me falling apart in a conference room one day), attempting to maintain a reasonable balance between providing enough information and overdisclosing (does anyone else have problems with this???). She knows that I’m a recovering alcoholic, and I added that I had some other “personal issues” that were causing me to have some real difficulties and left it at that. I just asked for her opinions and guidance about how health care professionals handle this problem. I was sure I wasn’t the first one to experience a group of patients that just set me off, but I also felt I should just be able to handle it superbly out of the gate.

This lady was very kind, as she always is, and reassured me that indeed I am not the first health care professional to experience difficult reactions to some patients. Most importantly, she told me emphatically that this has not affected my practice at all. Indeed she said she felt that my past was a great benefit to my patients and that she could easily observe I had great empathy that patients responded extremely well to.

So that crisis was not actually a crisis at all. I needed that feedback. I was sure that I was falling down on the job and everyone knew I was in extremis; it was really good to learn that this was just a case once again of my not accurately perceiving my own self. Maybe someday that little voice that says, “You can’t do this” and all that other shit it says will be silenced. Right now I still confuse that voice with my own self. Sigh.

Perhaps I am experiencing difficulties because I am so close to achieving a very important goal. I have wanted to be a nurse since I was 8 years old, and my mom told me I didn’t want to be one. She ridiculed me and said I wanted to be a doctor. I ended up doing something completely different and then made the leap to abandon my first career. Those of you who are COBs know what it’s like to move against the tide of BPD programming; the last few years have just been…argh. But it turns out that I’m a damn good nurse, and the cognitive dissonance is problematic. How fucked up is this? Normal people are all, “Yay, I’m good at my chosen profession!” Not I. I’m overcome with dread and sadness about potential success.

At least I can spot all of this and take reasonable steps to handle it. I also realize I’m not that different from everyone else from school. The difference is that I take responsibility for my professional reactions to those I am supposed to be helping whereas some other students simply refuse to acknowledge how they are reacting and behaving—IMHO. I’m very grateful for the kindness of this one instructor. She does not know my story at all (only that there IS a story), so she is not kind out of pity. She is kind to everyone and is a good role model for me. I need those…

Happy mother’s day to those of you who are mothers! For the COBs…did this day suck or what? I just had to post. I was at work all day, and family members visited all day with flowers and stuff for the female patients. Most said, “So, what did you do for YOUR mother today?” Sigh.

I guess the day actually wasn’t too bad…just sad. I wish I had the flowery kind of relationship with my mom, but I don’t. Bah.

BTW the Borderline Kids forum is off the ground, so don’t forget that it’s there. There is some good discussion going on there.

Argh. I have nearly fully convinced myself that if I compose an e-mail that says “Happy birthday! How are things?” (her birthday was recent, and I felt like a turd for not sending her a card or acknowledging it in any way), my mother will write back something along the lines of “Things are great! I’ve been patiently waiting and hoping I would hear from you so that we can patch things up.”

I went so far as to comb through my deleted e-mails, where my carefully crafted filters would dump her e-mail unread so that I wouldn’t see it. I felt crestfallen when there were no e-mails! How pathetic is that…

Yet also, last night the dog barked late because of a scuffle outside, and, half-asleep, I thought automatically, “Of course, she’s on the porch with a gun.” This is not the thought of someone who should be expecting a rational response to communication attempts.

Those near and dear to me are becoming alarmed, and I know they are right: the burner is still hot and will burn me badly if I lay my hand on it to check. The same thing happens every time. Some part of me must badly need nurturing, support, or approval, and I suppose it would be better to nurture myself or seek out some other way to meet those needs. I will keep slapping away my own fingers when they pose above the keyboard to dash off an e-mail.

I know. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But it’s true. I realize I simply miss the idea of a mom, because it would be completely insane to miss the dread and fear and low self-esteem and the feeling that I must question reality. What I miss is the idea that I could call up a mom and get some feather-smoothing and some back-patting. Some normal conversation about our lives and some mother-daughter bonding. Perhaps it has been long enough that I have forgotten how bad things get and how quickly they get that way. How could I forget that the last time I tried to “mend fences” with her I got e-mail flames and such? When I ponder the situation I realize anew that I literally cannot do anything different or more to fix the situation. I have been over it millions of times and always land at the same point: I can’t have any contact with her.

My soul continues to reject the idea, however. At the very voicing of that statement a little part inside me begins to mutter and fidget, so I have not truly accepted it and continue to hold out hope–for what I’m not quite sure. Even if, miraculously, she underwent treatment and became able to be involved in casual interactions without completely destroying the situation, it seems our relationship has become so broken that it would be too little too late. And, of course, I have no evidence or hope that she is doing that (my evidence is that she is sitting at home bitterly comforting herself that it is I who am insane and have a diagnosis of BPD). I can’t blame her, in some ways. I did choose to seek treatment and stop the course I was on, and it has been excruciating. Bucking cognitive dissonance and confronting your demons is one of the most difficult things humans can do. Still, I hold out futile hope that she will choose for the sake of her daughter to do just that. It’s stupid. She hates me now.

Why can’t I give this up? I have a flat learning curve. I honestly get to the point sometimes where I am CONVINCED that I can just pick up the phone and call her and we will clear up these “misunderstandings” and everything will be OK. Thank goodness I have just enough of a memory of past attempts at that to hold me back.

I heard this at a meeting and thought it applies so brilliantly to so many of us COBs: “the tree remembers, but the ax forgets.” So true.

I woke up to this charming bit of bullshit.

Am I to assume this person is a therapist and feels that this comment is appropriate and somehow legitimate? I wasn’t mad before, but now my buttons have been very effectively pushed. I have spent the last few days reinventing that old wheel about my mother (you all know that wheel: “maybe if I call her up, she won’t be awful to me, and we can talk, and everything might be worked out somehow…”). It’s so PAINFUL to go through this. Part of that pain is that I know she probably doesn’t understand why I can’t be around her, although I still think she has to know on some level at least. But I know what it feels like to be told to stay out of someone’s life, and it is completely awful. I know it has to be worse when it is your child. I hate causing that. I have done everything I possibly can to “mend fences” with her. Look at the post “West” commented on to see what the results were. Why the HELL would I put myself back in a position that would elicit that letter (the one West comments on)? Do you know what caused that, West? It was me, trying to have a normal relationship with my mother.

I have had ENOUGH of people deciding I deserve to suffer the rest of my life because my parent cannot have a single interaction with me without being abusive. ENOUGH. It’s got nothing to do with empathy. It’s to do with self-preservation.

So screw you and your ilk, West. This here, West, is good old-fashioned anger caused by your judgmental bullshit, which I have seen before from others and will no longer accept. You are an incompetent professional if you have such uninformed opinions and feel compelled to voice them. You should not be treating patients. Your anger statement is less than a brilliant observation given that I say I’m filled with rage all the time, and your “lack of empathy” comment is totally out of line. I WISH I had no empathy. If I were a borderline with no empathy, I wouldn’t tie myself in knots every day, agonizing over the situation and dreading what happens next. If I were you I would stay the hell away from vulnerable patients. I’ve seen the kind of damage ignorant therapists like you can do. And don’t come back to my blog unless you want an education. You’re not welcome here. This is a supportive environment. If readers want damaging, incompetent, judgmental crap from the mental health system, we can get that everywhere else.