There are ups and downs with Border Line Personality Disorder (BPD). Sometimes you’re cruising along, and everything seems to be in place, and you’re in control. Then something happens, which makes you realize that it was all an illusion.
I fell off my horse in February and found myself coping with my anxiety and compulsive behavior. My anxiousness was the result of being angry with myself. I was angry that I had pushed myself and my horse too far and had gotten hurt.
I began spending too much time and money internet shopping. Compulsive behavior is part of BPD. But compulsive behavior, such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), is also driven by anxiety.
My inability to do normal things kept me from doing normal things, which included cleaning. I was on crutches, and as I hobbled along, I could feel my hair on my carpet. It would wrap up in my toes and get on my socks.
I was so angry that I could not vacuum my carpet or clean anything. My anxiety’s OCD drove the compulsion to need to clean everything. But I physically could not do it, which lead me to become angrier.
I was angry at my situation and myself. I had made a mistake and broken. It was all my fault, and there was nothing I could do.
I felt so useless and as though my world was spiraling out of control. Obeying the compulsive need to shop did not make me feel any better. All of the shiny new things did not make me feel any better.
It makes think about the song “White Men In Black Suits” by Everclear.
The first verse that hits me is:
“She is just a girl, she is doing what she can
She dances topless when she’s not playing in her band
Such a pretty girl, happy in an ugly place
Watching all the pretty people doing lots of ugly things”
She is projecting that everything in her life is “normal” by pretending to be “happy”. Sometimes the illusion of being “normal” is just that. You tell people that you’re doing better than you really are and you hide your skeletons away in your closet. Keeping the “true normal” hidden away behind a smile.
The verse that speaks the most to me is:
“Yeah, she takes the bus over to the north side of the city
She goes to work stripping for the rich white men
All the words they give her make her feel so soft and pretty
She wears them but they never ever seem to fit...”
A lot of people have said a lot of things to try and make me feel better. These are usually people that do not know what it is like to suffer from a mental disorder. I try to wear their words and show them that I am “fine” and that what they have said helps me. But deep down, “they never seem to fit”.
I still feel lost, alone, and afraid of what my demons will drum up next. They gather power from my weaknesses, my health issues, and use them against me. They are my personal demons and they are not something that I can simply “shake off”. The demons are me.
People say that they want to be “normal”, but there is no normal. As Morticia Addams said, “Normal is an illusion. What is normal to the spider is chaos to the fly.” What make appear to be chaos to everyone around me, is normal to me. It is how I am, it is what I am, and I will not bend to the words of others.
It is through the words of Morticia Addams and music, like Everclear’s, that I found my way out of my pit. I dug into my journal and wrote down everything I was angry about. I wrote and I wrote. The more I released the pinned up anger, the better I felt.
But I walk through every day remembering the words of Morticia Addams. “Normal is an illusion.” Who wants to live an illusion? Who wants to be something that they are not? Not me. I am perfectly fine being far from “normal”.
My Journey with Depression and Anxiety 