Do BPD's Feel?

I've gotten alot of people asking the question, "Do BPD's feel?" I've gone through a couple of forums and dang! They address the BPD as raving lunatic who are devoid of all sincere emotions. Woa hold your horses there Tonto... that is entirely not true! Yes the BPD can act crazy and wild and deranged. But that is the symptom of Borderline Personality disorder.... the root cause is the fact that they either feel way too much or not at all.

As a recovered BPD, I can atest to how demoralizing it is to read the plethera of blogs out there that label us as hopeless causes and advise all to run as fast as they can from the BPD's. It's extremely painful to think that they are worthless and not fit human beings.

Okay, okay, I do admit that if a BPD is abusive to others and or themselves and refuse to believe that they have a problem, well then no one on God's green earth should stay around and ask for second helpings of abuse. But there got to be a good exit strategy to leave a BPD one that is healthy for you and the BPD...hmmmmmm is that even possible???? rrr wait! It wasn't until I was alone did I begin to work on recovery...then again I still had many a people near and dear to me who stayed and I still recovered without lashing out or hurting them... Mental note must write a blog on that too. But alas that must wait until next time. Back to the topic at hand Watson!

DO BPD'S FEEL?

The answer is yes they do feel. But imagine that they recieve emotions through a broken radio, either the volume is stuck on high or mute...no sounds in between. That is because for years as children they were told not to listen to themselves and their feelings. "Stop that crying! Do you want me to give you a reason to cry? You shouldn't feel that way!" said someone over and over again once upon a time. Instead of teaching the future BPD child how to cope with their emotions the important people in their lives taught them to ignore them. Have you ever tried to ignore an emotion??? It's purrrtttyy darn hard aint it? Or they were physically abused and to survive they learned to cut off those icky soul killing feelings. The problem was that they severed all ways to feel healthy in the process. The way a BPD learns to do that is by adopting other peoples emotions as their own. They learn to box up their feelings and make em disappear. Well at least they think so until they are alone and these feelings return with a vengenance. Since they don't know how to deal with them they act out in various ways to drown out their overwhelming feelings. They'll do everything and anything to silence the feeling. Or they try really hard to never ever be alone. As long as there is someone near to draw feelings from their own feelings stay at bay and away from their attention. Ergo the reason they are afraid of abandonment.

So how does one deal with a person who can't deal with their feelings? How does one stay with a BPD and not get sucked into their emotional vacuum?

First and foremost, they need to accept that there is a problem that they must address. Actually that is the case with anything unhealthy, not just the BPD. Can't fix anything until you admit its broke right????

Chances are the BPD knows there is something wrong inside them, they just can't put a finger on it. Most definately the BPD wants to be rid of whatever it is that's hurting them, even if it inside of them. Think about it... the BPD at their worst try and cut away at themselves to be rid of the pain. They are willing to change but the path to change is very unconventional and definately not mainstream.

I think that society has set rules on how we are to feel. And so when we look at a BPD we automatically want to tell them that they are wrong in feeling a certain way. But isn't that exactly what made them to be like that in the first place? I'll be honest... it magnifies the feeling a million fold. Instead of doing that maybe consider encouraging the BPD to work through their feelings and not to act out on a feeling.

The BPD needs to re-learn how to feel. You can't feel for them. They need to know they won't die if they feel a scary feeling all the way through. It feels like they are gonna die but point out that they survived feelings like that before.

The truth of the matter is that BPD's act the way they feel. It's the action that is unacceptable... encourage them to find new ways to express they way they feel without abuse.

Eerrrr I gotsta go for now gotta pick up a kiddie from school.

PLEASE PLEASE SEND ME A LINE IF YOU NEED ANY HELP IN UNDERSTANDING BPD.

How To Urge Surf

Face it we all have "urges." Having an urge does not mean that we are dysfunctional or broken somehow, no matter how odd the urge is. For me urges seep up from out of nowhere and overtake my common sense. It feels like I am being filled with warm urgent water. Slushing around inside me and in a bad need of release. Way back when it seemed I was led by my urges. I possesed no control over them. There were urges to please in order to keep my loved ones near. Defensive and offensive urges that kept me safe from ill precieved harm. Dr. Feel Good Urges that led me around like a donkey with a carrot dangling in front of me.





When I was in particular amounts of angst and anger these urges would rage inside me. I literally could not see straight. In retrospect, I think I didn't even think about them, they had become a force of their own. And I always ended up victimizing myself. Secretly I hoped that others would "rescue" me from myself. I felt whole and loved if someone would swoop down on eagles wings and take me to a warm and safe place.





How can one learn to surf the urge?





First and foremost, one needs to recognize an urge when its coming. For me there are distinct symptoms I feel... its surreal the world seems just a bit off kilter. From underneath my skin I feel a warm tingly sensation. The longer I prolong satisfying an urge the minutes seem to stretch into eternity. My physical sensations are on a heighten alert. I am repeated thinking about the act of the urge as if I am stuck on a broken record.





I know how hard it is to not act upon an urge. It can sap the life out of you just fighting not to do it. It's like trying to ignore an elephant in your bedroom, impossible. The one way I've learned to deal with these unruly urges is to change my mindset about them. Perspective-perspective-perspective.



This too shall pass, my mantra. There has yet to be a feeling, thought, or circumstance that I've experienced that hasn't passed by me. Granted sometimes it feels like forever and it seems that I might not make it. But that in itself is the key to remember... it is not FOREVER... You WILL survive. Take a truthful look back at your past- given the fact you are able to look back means you survived whatever it was that urged you before.

When I first heard the term "urge surf" I found it funny. Waves, peaks, highs, and lows--riding them without drowning. In my minds eye, all of the conflict, misery and pain was combined into one hell of a tsunami wave. And I wasn't a surfer but a villager thrown violently and unwillingly into the chaos of it all.

Here's one disclaimer to surfer the urge... it helps to be practicing some form of meditation in order to help focus rampant thoughts and feelings. One cannot surf an urge without the ability to watch their mental horizon. Especially if there is tsumnami like waves headed your way. Meditation helps you to steer clear of old habits and thoughts and keep you focused on your goal.

I can feel an urge creep up ---nasty feelings well up in me. And all my urges boil down to fighting or fleeing a feeling or thought. Before learning new coping skills I floundered in the tide of my urges and most likely ended up drowning in shame and hurt.

I personally have never hopped on a sleek longboard, paddled into to ocean deep, watched the waves lap into shore. Waiting until the big one wells up ahead of me. Frantically paddling into the wall of water. At break neck speeds jumping on top of thin wood with no seatbelts or airbags to protect me. Only to come crashing down and sinking into the undertoe and current that can smack you unto coral or rock. Hmmmm sound more like emotionally I have. Yup that was me...wreckless barreling into dangerous emotional highs and then damaging lows. To me that was what surfing the urge meant then.

Urge surfing takes coping skills. They are your surf board that keeps you afloat. The more skills the better buoyant you are. Well practiced coping skills are your best bet in surviving the waves from within us.

Okay lets just say you're having a pretty crappy day. You haven't gotten out of bed or taken care of your personal needs. After a few hours of trolling the internet on your laptop from your bed you find yourself looking at your ex's "friendspacester" page. There are pics of the ex's new lavish life without you. Parties- new friends- and all around general happiness seep of the page. You wish this person were miserable like you...in bed smelling like yesterday's laundry. Warm fuzzy feelings burn underneath your skin. There's a huge hole from your chest to your stomach and its throbbing in pain. In your mind you're going over and over those last moments when your ex left...its all your fault you think to yourself. The pain gets unbearable but there is no outside wound to patch up and heal. You want the pain to end but where do you begin????

Soon enough you've come up with a list of last ditch efforts to stop the chaos raging inside. All of them designed to match the inside pain with an outside marker. Make the pain go away that's the plan. Your in danger of disappearing to your pain. Its scary because maybe just maybe you really aren't worth saving. These thoughts compound the pain and the pressure is on to release yourself from this madness.

You know what ever it is that you do at these times. I will not glorify any action that hurts yourself and others. So just fill in the blank with what ever it is that you do. YOU WANT TO DO THAT SO BAD to make sense of the hurt and pain. However you know you're not supposed to. You can really die from this or damage yourself to a point beyond repair. Part of you cares and begs you not to and the other part is almost done convincing your whole self to do it. Good angel and bad angel. You also know how you feel when you do that which urges you. Sometimes the remorse or shame hit ya like a brick wall almost instantly and then there are time when whatever it is you've done feels good for a few moments and then you begin to realize the full extent to what you've done.

Either way after succumbing to dangerous urges the release of pain and its pressure is enough to get you by for a length of time. But still you know its gonna be back. And you sit and you wait hiding under blankets until they are back.

NOW lets look at the same scenario and autopsy from a different angle shall we?

Your in bed feeling crappy... so you give yourself a time limit to feel crappy (a coping skill acknowledging the feeling), you tell yourself "It's okay to feel crappy, it happens to the best of people" (woa another coping skill positive self talk). After brushing your teeth and so on and so forth ( self care Again another coping skill) you feel a little more human. On the internet, you see your ex. Nasty feeling well up again---breath in deep, close your eyes and focus on your own heart beat and deep breaths (COPING SKILL). If you must gawk at the pictures--- actually I recommend dont but on occasion I do it too. I feel crappy after I do tooo. So then I take time to self soothe... its my version of giving and receiving a hug. I do it by eating a bit of my favorite candy or spraying my fave perfume to bring my senses into the moment (coping coping coping skill)

Normally that's enough to bring me into the moment and feel the urge subside. BUT there are times when that urge is purtty darn strong. It's more like a hurricane charging in. These urges take much more than just me to handle. Dr's and Therapist- your circle of friends, medication maybe needed.

But the most important aspect of urge surfing is to know that just as waves come in and out---up and down---RIDE EM OUT. Don't try and fight them or join in on them. Don't follow Bugs Bunny's advice "If ya cant beat em join em." Do what you have to do to keep yourself safe.

IT's Okay To Have Urges!!!! It's Not Okay To Deal With Them In A Unhealthy Manner That Hurts You and Those Around You.

Dear Non,

Hello my friend, we meet because you have a loved one who has been diagnosed or exhibits symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder. As a recovering BPD, I remember what it was like during the depths of my BPD crisis. For me its been a year since I have experienced any of the Nine DSM-VI criteria. I know how hard it was for all those around me. Some left me and some stayed. To those who left, I understand why and to those who stay- I am eternally grateful.

So you are here trying to figure out what to do with your BPD loved one. Its much like the Clash song "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" You look over at this person they look very familiar to the person you love but then again there are these times where out of the blue they turn into a raging madman. They call out to you to help them and then get angry when you get to close. Believe I know how tiring it is. Its just as tiring being the raging madman.

You wanna know what going through the madman's head. Deep emotional pain--- that cannot be compared physically. Irrational fear of real abandonement. I knew the way I was acting was chaotic, but I couldnt stop it. The pain emitted throughout my body from a throbbing hole inside my soul. I couldn't show people exactly where it hurt. I was driven crazy... there WAS pain...I felt it...but everyone kept telling me it was I was over reacting. The problem was I could not soothe myself. I relied on everyone to soothe me. I did not know how to feel without external validation. How does that happen? Years and years of invalidating relationships. Abuse so extreme that the mind learns to severe itself from the body.

Its a parasitic relationship...the BPD needs you to feel like they exist. You walk away for a moment and they feel like they've disappeared. Seconds to you seem like an eternity to them. It's painful for them. For me I felt as if I was a walking open sore... raw and sensative to even the slightest emotion touch.

Should you stay or should you go???? Well that depends, I don't believe that BPD's are hopeless cases that should be locked away forever. But on the other hand, if your BPD is working towards recovery and healthy behaviors I recommend distance. That doesnt mean that the distance should be permanent. The truth is you need to take care of you. If the BPD is abusive-- stay out of harms way.

If your BPD is working at recovery, you still need to take care of you. But you need to come up with a game plan on how to live healthy. Make sure that they are in some type of therapy and/or seeing a Doctor. Its important that they take their medication. Think of it not as behavior control but HELP, to take the edge off of what they are feeling. Learn new coping skills--- for both of you. Marsha Linehan's Dialetical Behavior Therapy has a wealth of coping skills that will help the BPD mature and learn to soothe themselves. And you also learn new things as well.

Set healthy boundaries. What are healthy boundaries?
*Emotional and physical space between you and another person
* Acknowledgement that each of you are individuals with individual needs and wants, likes and dislikes
*The ability to allow, disallow, accept or deny negative or positive influence that impact you without fear of punishment from others.
*A two way street of respect given difference in opinion in a relationship
* A freedom to be the real you with healthy behaviors without fear of alienation
*Balance and Acceptance of emotional and physical limits set on interacting with others and remaining independant in a interdependant relationship.

Even God says "No." It has to be understood that by saying "No" to a BPD does not mean you dont love them. If you cannot do what the BPD request... calmly explain that you are unable and that it is possible for them to rescue themselves. Reassure them that you will be at the other end cheering them on. It is extremely important that the BPD learns that they will survive the impending sense of doom that they feel. They need to learn to feel REAL on their own.

Validate, validate, validate their feelings. I am not asking you to agree with them and admit that they are right on some issues. Instead look at the situation from their point of view. In BPD moments they are the equivalent to an emotional toddler in a grown body. What seems innocent and not scary to you...may be totally terrifying for the BPD... I've learned to talk to those feelings on my own...but in the beginning my sister who was my support then would talk to me over the phone saying, "Its understandable you feel like that but what can you do to deal with situation that is healthy? Its not understandable that you feel its okay to act out in this way because you feel scared or angry."

That's it for now, I've got four kids who wanna go to Chuck E Cheeses' YAY!

IF you have any questions don't hesitate to send me an email, I am glad to help.

Jenn

Acceptance Is Key

Some say that we should forget our past, some try really hard to do so, and then some by sure genious of the mind totally forget traumatic events, all if this in order to survive.
As in my case, my sense of memory and forgetfulness is shakey. I can remember vividly things that happened years ago, be it good or bad. Then there are times when my efforts double in trying to remember how things feel. But feelings of happiness or sadness are intense and fleeting to me. One moment I am the happiest woman in the world then in a blink of an eye my world turns black and white and cold. I forget what happiness feels like and I become this shivering little girl. lost among thorns.

I am convinced that intense feelings last but for a few beats of a humming bird’s wings, yet they FEEL like an eternity. Much like a flash of a camera that stuns my vision. The bright light last only a fraction of a second but a bright light is stuck in my view for minutes after. Annoying isnt it?

These flash bang feelings of mine are so complex. Intertwined amongst whatever triggered the initial feeling is a plethera of rebel feelings that make no sense yet feel right. Shame, confusion, desperation, fear, and abandonment are but a few aphids that pepper the garden of my life. Unnoticable to the naked eye spying beautiful roses, however, upon closer inspection you find these tiny little parasites eating away at the blossoms.

Recently, I’ve felt both good and bad.

I’ve met a great guy who I like but I wasnt totally myself that first night we met. So instead of enjoying the wonderful night we spent together, I was plagued with shame and decite. Over and over again I kept feeling like a bad person. Until I fessed up to him and told him who I was. The funny thing is he did exactly what I didnt expect him to do. He accepted me for me.
That’s the thing, these flash bang feelings are the stumbling block to me accepting myself. I can’t I don’t know why. It’s not for a lack of understanding the good in me. It feels as if during those bright moments of flashes all my negative aspects of me are enhanced. They make no sense, I know I am not perfect but seeing all these serrated edges of mine exposed and glistening in the light, makes me uneasy. I am stumped.

Crystal says that one big turn off to a guy or anyone for that matter is insecurity. Which I think shows its appearence during the flash bangs. Truly, I am not a insecure person, okay not all the time. But rather I am in an altered state a few moments after the unsettling flash. Much like that feeling after spinning round and round then stopping abruptly and landing on the ground. It makes no sense-- you know you are no longer physically spinning but it still feels like the world is spinning. The unbalanced feeling combined with fuzzy dizzy perceptions makes you laugh and feel sick all at the same time. Ah..... welcome to my world.

My disability to feel proportionate to the circumstance has hampered the way that I live. I love when I feel elated and dread when the high evaporates. I detest the feelings of angst and the fact that time seems to drag during these periods. Somedays I am frozen in fear and refuse to move because I dread either happy or sad feelings.

Realizing that part of this phenomena stems directly from my past, helps me to understand what is going on. The labels of my odd diagnosis sounds like a foreign language alphabet... PTSD, BPD, and so on so forth are all physical manifestations of my past.

The cunning way the mind seeks to protect itself and its will to survive. Without us even knowing it, the grey matter within our skulls creates awesome electrical changes to promote survival. Chemically hardwired we all are due to what has happened to us in the past effects the present and the future.

Yet, at the same time our mind plays tricks on us or is it society?????

There is that belief that any mental disorder can be overcame with sure will power. However, one must understand that will power is birthed from the same electo-chemical substances that are already hardwired without our choice. So it seems that believing in the force of will power to overcome is like a dog chasing its tail.

Accepting and celebrating the wonderful capabilities of the brain is a good start to wellness. Its something I do on a moment to moment basis. Accepting that some feelins are automatic and hardwired helps to ride the waves of uncertain emotions. Accepting and believing that I will survive at the end of a tsunami gives me small shards of hope. These strands are just enough to hold onto when I am overwhelmed with flash bang feelings.

If not, I know that I have made some places and met some people in my life that are safe enough for me to lose it around or just plain freeze up like an ice statue. The key was acceptance-- accepting people who I was able to accept myself around that made all the difference in my life today.

Streaming Consciousness

Today I was reading a book about PTSD and BPD, the author described part of the BPD experience is the astute awareness of our consciousness, a ticker tape of thoughts, ideas, and feelings. For a BPD this consciousness cannot be avoided, it is so loud and overpowering that the sufferer is unwillingly trapped in it.

Reading this brought back memories of being caught in the current of my own consciousness, dragged under, and drowning. Like some surreal sci-fi movie in which I cannot die, but I feel like I should be. To make matters worse, only I could see the dangerous undertow, everyone around me unaware of it, but what they thought was an imaginary monster was truly and utterly real, even though I could not see it, name it, or describe it. I could not avoid it.

The only part of my streaming consciousness that I was aware of was my constant inner dialog. When life was good, the dialog disappeared, I had no need for it, other than to say to myself, “Wow, I feel good.” It’s much like a nice inviting breeze. But when life went askew, my inner dialog went haywire. It’s like walking through a wind tunnel, where your are immersed in a torrential wind, not one part of your body can ignore its velocity, and then try walking forward its near impossible.

When I was diagnosed with BPD, I was forced to look at a side of me that I tried so desperately to avoid. It was nice to have a name to it, but then to honestly look at yourself from outside in, it’s unnerving and scary. When I finally “pulled my head out of my ass” and looked at what I was doing and how it affected those I loved, I wanted to die. But it was activating that vicious cycle. It’s a horrifying experience. I needed to stop.

Finding the solution to stopping the problem, brought me to DBT, a godsend. I can’t stop expressing how I love “MINDFULNESS”. The first time I slowed down to meditate just on my thoughts, watching them come and go, fill me up and empty, trail away from the path, morph into other thoughts. Just sensing when they immerged and where they faded. I began to understand my consciousness at a level I had never experienced before. After hours and hours, weeks and weeks of just watching my thoughts, I became more apt to turning them back to the task at hand. Understanding that my conscious was just one part of many in me that I could use for information on how to deal with life. Discovering my conscious had three channels (if not more- still looking) past, short term (present) and the long term (future).

I began to see where the discrepancies lay in my streaming consciousness, each one effecting the other. I saw how my past and everything I took from it, influenced both my present and future. Literally, I began to see and feel the past affecting me, events triggered thoughts that translated into physical feelings of pain (my present). The pain so unbearable that I did everything and anything to end it, at the mercy of my future. I was sacrificing my long term goals/plans, my future, to appease the insatiable urge to end the pain and anxiety in the present.

Life was so much easier when I had no idea what was wrong with me, ignorance is bliss. Before I was diagnosed with BPD, all my thoughts, emotions, and behaviors were unchallenged, I blamed everyone and everything as the source of my streaming consciousness.

Things were different the moment BPD was unveiled to me. I felt like I was in some warped version of the PRICE IS RIGHT. Bob Barker’s voice….

“Is it curtain one, two, or three?” Then he proceeds to show me the two curtains I did not pick. “ Let’s see what is behind curtain number 1, ohhhh a dream life, your husband is with you and your four kids, your still in your house, wonderful job, you will be unhappy but you’ll have everything you think you need and want.” The audience is going wild. “Jenn, do you want to see what’s behind curtain number three?” I nod slowly. “ A donkey.” Hehaw sounds are blaring around me.

“Now let’s see what you’ve won, but first look at what you past up, a dream life, and a donkey.” Barker says. “You better hope that what you get is better than your dream life. We know its better than a donkey. Okay folks what behind curtain number two? Borderline Personality Disorder.”

There in the middle of the stage is me, writhing in agony on the ground, razor blades scattered around me, little white pills showering me, hanging from string are words “abandonment issues, lack of sense of self, sexually promiscuous, self-harm” The audience grows quiet. Even Bob Barker is pale.

Once I knew I had BPD, it was like having a fly bother me in a room, but this time the fly was the size of a elephant. I began to see BPD in every odd or normal thing I did. Ignoring it wasn’t an option. I had to learn everything about the enemy within me and train like a prize fighter. My first battle conquering the streaming consciousness.

I had to step outside of my own thought process, watch my thoughts from the outside in. Remember, those picture prints that were filled with tiny colorful dots. From the initial glance it looks like nothing, but when you un-focus your eyes, and relax, a 3d-ish picture would pop out. This skill takes practice, it seems unnatural, but over time the pictures jump out faster.

Suddenly my streaming consciousness that once resembled the static on an unused TV channel, loud, abrasive, incomprehensible, through meditation and mindfulness, 3-d images of real issues began to form behind my reckless thoughts and behaviors.

I began to understand myself. In instances where inside me there was this uncontrollable fear of abandonment that caused me to runaway, I secretly hoped to be saved, or fought the ones I loved, hurled insults, crushed them verbally, I was trying to be heard. But behind them there was small but powerful and vibrant need to be seen or validated. All the tiny dots of thoughts and feelings, in my picture, created my madness, but when I began to relax and allow myself to think past my initial perception, the real picture shone through. I understood, I need to save myself, listen to myself, and validated myself.

When we relax while looking into our streaming consciousness, it allows us to watch what goes on in our heads, it gives us the opportunity to not be so judgmental regarding our own thoughts. In stepping outside of the stream we are able to regain control of it. We are able to change direction of the stream from the outside. Tensing up, fighting it, judging it, only wears us down ultimately giving in to the stream. In effect tensing, fighting, judging causes more damage.
I once was in a really bad car accident, after it, my neck and shoulders were in severe pain. I went to a chiropractor to see if he could help me alleviate my suffering. He asked me an interesting question, “Right before the car hit you, did you tense up?” I thought that was a weird question, duh of course I tensed up, a ton of metal was careening towards me at sixty-five miles an hour, what was I going to do sleep?

He explained to me that the force of the collision combined with the tenseness of my muscles caused the whiplash I was experiencing. Had I been relaxed at the time of the accident, my body would have followed the flow of energy, chances are the only damage I would have had, would have been from the seatbelt near my shoulder. That my neck would have suffered less injury.

I think that the same with our self aware stream of consciousness, we are standing in front of a formidable force and our instinct is to brace ourselves, prepare for the worst. And at the moment of contact, we injure ourselves just to survive.

An important part to recovery is to understand what your stream of consciousness is telling you, Weigh the consequences effecting your present and future. . Decide if you want to act upon it. Not acting upon it is a option too. Or just to simply step back and let it wash over you and away. Somedays I chose just that, watch how my stream twist and turned. Slowly change it’s direction. Gaining back my control.

Nowadays, I am able to just sit at the banks of my stream, watch it flow to and fro. Then walk away to live another day.

Mission Impossible: RECOVERY

If you are in the middle of a crisis- great or small. There are a few things you need to do for yourself before you do anything drastic. Seriously, waiting a few moments , to as long as day, it makes a huge difference, and while you wait, do this:

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF

Eat
Sleep
Shower
Meditate

I know it sounds silly, “How can I eat at a time like this?” I thought that too. “You want me to sleep, I feel most alive when its night time?” Yup that too. “I don’t feel like showering, I don’t plan on going anywhere.” Uh-huh me too. “I’ve got too much going on in my head to meditate.” Exact-ta-mondo! I completely agree with those statements on an emotional level, nothing feels worth doing, not even the basic necessities of life.

But you are in a battle against yourself and the raging emotions and thoughts inside of you. A soldier does not go into war, hungry, tired, and stinky. (kay the stinky part I don’t know- but come on do you really want to be stinky). To fight your opponent you have to be at your prime.

Ever tried to concentrate on an empty stomach, it’s near impossible. Your tummy just won’t stop bugging you, but if your like me, ignoring your hunger becomes second nature to you. Unfortunately, your mind can ignore the hunger sensation but your body itself cannot ignore the effects of malnourishment, you become tire, irritable, and at best irrational.

There have been times when I was getting really moody and I recognized the pre-signs, I am able to focus on my stomach and determine if I was hungry. If I was, I would then eat a quick meal, definitely not for pleasure. After letting the food settle, I’d gauge how I felt, most of the time, what ever I felt subsided at least to a manageable level. It was easier to determine what I wanted out of a situation and how I was going to express it, just by feeding my body, I was able to focus on other issues.

Sleep, apart from breathing is important element in our lives. Unlike food or water, where you can go without them for a few days. Sleep deprivation, can be detrimental to your live. Studies have shown that grown men of good character and stature have been know to do uncharacteristic behaviors when sleep deprived. Our brain NEEDS to REST.

Getting a good night sleep is easier than you think. Chamomile tea and honey and warm milk are known sleep aides. Drink a good cup of tea or warm milk at least a half hour before bedtime. Ask your doctor if you can use Melatonin, which as is a over the counter herbal pill that will make you sleepy. Next, eliminate all distractions, turn off you tv or computer; cell phones, or pagers. Make your room relaxing: turn down the lights, light some candles, a little bit of soothing music helps too. Did you know that listening to classical music is equivalent to a very small amount of Valium? (Heard John Tesh say that on the radio) A good nights rest, helps the brain rejuvenate.

Taking a shower sounds silly, but think about how refreshed you felt after taking a shower. It’s about taking care of the whole you, inside and out. Taking a shower in the morning signifies a start of new day, preparing yourself to take on that day. Rinsing off the dirt, literally makes you feel just a little better.
Meditation doesn’t mean prayer, but taking time to reflect and reset your thoughts and behaviors. When I meditate, I remind myself what my goals, beliefs, values are. It’s about slowing down to remember the uniqueness about you- not the you that inter-acts with the world, but the beautiful core within you. If you try to take on the world, without knowing who you are, you will be swallowed up. It’s not an easy world we live in, the potential to be chewed up alive and spit out is great.

I’ve read blog after blog on people with BPD who are caught in a whirl wind of madness, confusion, and hurt, it’s so paralyzing that they no longer feel the urgency of taking care of themselves. They get lost in their worthlessness that they don’t want to work at changing themselves (intention is different than actually doing it), yet they don’t understand why they hurt or why others frown upon them. Yet, those people who have helped them once passionately eventually were drained and left. Then the BPD, freaks out, all of a sudden they don’t know what they did to repel the people they love away. I know I was one of them.

It was when I realized how much of my life I let go of, that I finally saw how much pain I really was in. My passiveness to BPD, let me aggressively acting out. There’s got to be a better way than this. I had to stop justifying my behaviors, and accept them for what they were doing to the quality of my life.
The first step to recovery is taking the reigns to your life, like taking care of yourself. Not expecting others to do it for you. (It sounds harsh, but it’s true) You’ve got to take responsibility for how you feel, think, and act. And that is hard to do when you are physically and emotionally fit, imagine how much harder it is when you aren’t.

RECOVERY IS A POSSIBILITY

But you’ve got to be able to challenge every thought, feeling and action. And be willing to change what is unhealthy-- even when it hurts to much to let them go. We’ve got to realize that these unhealthy patterns have become security blankets we hold on to. And embrace a new you- it’s scary, I know, but is better than how BPD has taken hold our hearts, minds and lives.

Breathing in Crisis

I have a favorite mug that I use for my tea everyday, its lavender and written on it is one simple word: Breathe. I picked this up at discount store where everything is under a dollar. Every time I drink from it, I love to look at it and it reminds me to breathe.

There was a time when I didn’t understand the importance of breathing. It’s one of those bodily functions that go unnoticed, unless when you are running and breathing can become painful- I know I am a out of shape smoker, so the thought of jogging and my lungs cringe…. I know…Breathing that’s what Im talking about.

It took the most devastating moment in my life to really understand breathing. Okay, apart from breathing as being totally essential for living, knowing calming skills through breathing can be extremely helpful in neutralizing negative stressors.

One night, last year, I was on the phone with my sister, sobbing- it had to do with something regarding the end of my marriage. Man, was I crying, hysterical, eventually I was crying so hard that my chest was heaving and struggling to catch my breath. My sister told me to breath.

“I, I, I, ammm BREEEEEEEAAAAATTTTTTHHHHHIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGGG.” I tried to tell her in between sobs.

On the phone she had me close my eyes and breath in a slow and deep inhale through my nose, until my stomach stretched to it’s capacity. All the while counting very slowly until she reached 10 and than she had me slowly control my exhale- until there was nothing left to breathe out. We went through this breathing exercise for about 15 minutes, over and over again. I had calmed myself down. It only took a few minutes but I felt just a little relieved, not much, but enough to get me through those attacks.

I do Thai Chi and one of the main components to it is breathing. It is a discipline to control your breathing, but erratic breathing does not help in focusing. As I take a step into a Thai Chi stance, I am slowly breathing in, this is called “fill”, and moving out from one position to another, I exhale just as slowly as I move, this is “empty” Thai Chi is an elaborate martial arts where empty and fill are it’s main points. You begin to master your body though waves of empty and fill. (It’s a great practice for mindfulness) If your breathing is fast, your movements will be too fast as well, holding your breath you will find it is difficult to move from one stance to another.

Breathing during a crisis is important. Once the brain recognizes threat, it signals the rest of the body to respond, heart rate and blood pressure raise. In response to the heart, the lungs work harder to supply the brain and the body with oxygen. Your lungs start to hyperventilate, short quick burst of oxygen is introduce into your body, your body works hard to sustain itself in crisis. The greater the threat or tension (whether it is real or imagine) the shallow your breathing becomes. The less oxygen is in your blood, Your body works harder but oxygen levels drop.

No one can avoid threat, fears, anxiety, and panic, it happens to the best of us. But we can work at reducing our physical reactions to those emotions. Breathe.

Meditation breathing, helps slow everything inside us down- if we focus our mind and thought on the particular task of breathing in crisis, it will also slow down uncontrollable thoughts. I used to think this type of breathing as a hippie, new age thinking. Once I started to learn how to breathe in crisis, I don’t know how I lived without it.

In the beginning, I actually had to sit myself down, find a quiet spot, get as far away from distraction as possible. The whole process of calming myself down could take up to an hour, if things were bad. But now, I can be sitting in my car at a stop light, and I can take a few deep breaths and almost calm myself down immediately.

Learning to breath through crisis, is a coping skill, a good one too. You don’t need any other contraption but yourself to do this. I strongly suggest learning to breathe!!!!!

~Jenn

BPD and Brain Function

Trying to figure out BPD is quite confusing. And then working on recovery is even harder, when we don't understand what's going on to us. I know it sounds strange, but the first thing that needs to be understood is how the brain works.

It's obvious that we need to start where we process information and then make decisions from the infromation. Guess what even emotions are processed by our brains, even though its felt in the heart.

How the brain works.

Traumatic External Event --------> brain process determining what type of threat it is.------------->Anxiety / Fear (Fight / Flight)--->Brain sends messages to Autonomic Nervous System (controls unconscious bodily functions)Alerting the body to Release chemicals that Raise heart beat and blood pressure Muscels tense up (adrenaline)-------------------------> neurons are firing rapidly the brain is assessing info, making decisions on how to survive. ----------------> Chemicals to glue newly formed pathways for future use (just in case) -----------------------> Once action is determine the brain will send the message to "GO" newly formed pathways for future use (just in case)





Let's say that this trauma is a regular event in a persons life. Those newly formed pathways, get used so often that our brain concretes them. And over time, the triggers get more and more sensitive- just about any event that is similar to the first trigger will set off the brain to go back down that pathway.

The initial pathway was designed to ensure survival. Years later, the survival skill was used in similar situations but now they are not appropriate. The good news, is that understanding how your brain works, it's not too late to learn new skills called coping skills that will be healthy and get you to your goals.

Guess what- the less you use old survival skills- they actually begin to die- where those pathways that resided in your brain- once they go unused- the less the blood flows to those paths. And the more you use new skills, the more blood flows and new neural pathways are created- they become hardwired.

It's possible!

Happy thoughts towards recovery!!!!

Jenn

p.s. please let me know if this made sense. comment please!!!!

Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder is a scary diagnosis. The first thing that comes to mind is "Multiple Personality Disorder", I know I thought the first time I heard it. I personally think that they should change the name to "Emotional Regulation Disorder" But then again "ERD" sounds stupid too. At any rate, when Borderline Personality Disorder was first coined, they used the term "Borderline" because the individual "bordered" psychotic and neurotic.

As a BPD myself, something in that term "psychotic and neurotic" bugged me, it lacked the humaness of the disorder. Seriously, I just didn't connect with that. I know I am not a psycho, but when I am scared or angry, I do act psycho. Does that make sense. Ahh... hence the complexities of this disorder.

For the most part BPD's are functional people. From the outside they seem happy and chipper. And quite honestly they are. But there is this underlining "feeling" that a BPD has, something is amiss. It's behind closed doors, when they are most vulnerable to their own feelings. It scares them to be "alone" as if they do not exsist, unless someone is near. For me, I drew upon others feelings to somehow feel "real" And when I was alone, there was no one there to do that for me.

It's physically painful for a BPD experiencing "aloneness". I was paralyzed, I felt like I was a video placed on pause. Deep down I knew that something was wrong but I couldn't put my finger on it. My heart throbbed this wierd fuzzy energy that overflowed into my stomach. I couldn't think, I lost all motivation to move. I was so extremely scared of the feeling of being alone, I'd do anything to muffle its effects on me.

Filling myself up from someone elses energy was how I did it. Which meant I'd do anything to stay near people. I was a parasite, for lack of a better word, draining the life out of people. But I didn't know it at the time. I thought I was just being a "good person"

If you were my friend, I'd listen intentively to every word you said, making note of your favorites and dislikes. I would wear myself weary doing everything to give you what you want and make sure nothing you hated came near you. In exchange, I needed to see you "happy" and then I'd be happy. Without that connection between the two of us, I'd punish you.

And oh how I'd punish you. Attacking you personally, throwing tantrum, because I thought that this was the way I'd express my feelings- somewhere in my conscious I thought that you would know something was wrong. In my head it went something like this " Normally, I am not this horrible, I am good, I give away everything I can to make them happy, why can't they remember what I did? Why can't the see Jenn is calling out for help, because she's normally not like this.Let me help her" Nope, no one got it- of course who is a mind reader. Each attempt to call out for help was left unaided.

I would think "I must be so unimportant, so invisible that I am not worth saving. I should just die."

But I didn't want to die

Nah-ah, I wanted the pain to die- to stop, GO AWAY.

Emotional pain, now that's worse that physical pain. It makes no sense, there is no wound to attend to, no tylenol to ease it. It simple just festers. Most non-BPD's know how to deal with emotional pain, they've got coping skills to comfort themselves. Sadly for a BPD, as the pain increases, it becomes like an infection within them, it begins to corrupt the rest of their lives.

A BPD will do anything to counter act emotional pain- physical pain is not a factor- actually its a relief- matching the pain on the inside to what's on the outside. And when destroying ourselves didn't help- we resort to suicide.

Temporary relief comes when those a BPD loves runs to their aid when they are attempting to injure themselves or suicide. To a BPD it means the world. Unfortunately, it's not healthy, period, for the BPD or the Non. Accidental death is a reality. Draining our non-BPD is also a reality.

Ultimately, to help a BPD is to help them recognize that the behaivor is not healthy for them, and to also spot the feelings before the behavior. Emotional validation is very important as well, simply saying to a BPD, "I understand you are hurting, I can see how that hurt you." May ease the emotional suffering, just enough that they can get a handle on themselves. Understanding someone's feelings is not admitting right or wrong. It's just understanding. Believe me when I say BPD's know that they are acting irrationally, but what they can't get over is the feeling.

The BPD must learn coping skills on their own. To learn how to soothe themselves, encourage and believe in themselves, it's vital. They need to make healthy connections within themselves. Once they learn that, the demand on others to "feel" for them lessens. I am not saying leave a BPD, but support them to find it in themselves, in a loving way.

When my husband heard I was BPD, he left me with four kids. )Abandonment at it's finest wouldn't you say), he read that I was a helpless case- incurable. Everything he read, told him in affect to "run for the hills," and he did so. I don't blame him, by the time I was diagnosed, I was irrational and violent for a whole year. I'd drain him.

I wouldn't suggest staying in an unhealthy relationship, if the BPD continues abusive and violent behaviors, and is not working towards recovery. But if they are consider supporting them. A non-BPD in a relationship with a BPD does not have to endure abuse, period. Firm but loving boundaries should be in place for the non's safety.

In my case, the moment I was diagnosed, I did everything I could to work towards recovery: medication, therapy, group, DBT, in and out patient. I researched everything about BPD.

Understanding BPD moves us towards recovery. I read and re-read all 9 dsm criteria and cross refferenced them with my own patterns. I had to be brutally honest about my behaviors. It sucked. But think of it like this: it's a wanted picture- a description of every behavior you don't want or is extremely unhealthy to you and those you love. Once you know what BPD looks like, you can spot it out in a crowd, and nip the behavior in the butt.

Once, I had memoriezed all the horrible crap I had done. I was able to internalize the big question: "WHY"- Why did I do that? Most likely a set of feelings present themselves- because "I was angry." could be an answer. This is where accepting the feeling or understanding it comes heavily into play, right along with the event in question. "I was angry that he came home late, so I threw a plate at him." A BPD must accept the angry or whatever the feeling was. "It's understandable to feel angry."

Here's where the hard work seriously comes in, the switch- read carefully and see if you get it... "It's understandable that I feel angry that he came home late, that's normal, but is throwing a plate at him is that acceptable behavior?" Did you see it????

Understanding the feeling and acceptable behavior.

An easy way to think of this is "The message is important, but so is the delivery of the message."

It is possible to convey your feelings without being your feelings.

You non-Bpd's- nothing cuts into a BPD like invalidating them. "You are making mountains out of mole hills.", "There's nothing to be upset about." Actually, it makes matters worse.

There is a reason that they are BPD, over years they have learned to not trust themselves- to feel what you feel, but when their own feelings are so overwhelming that they can avoid them (if they could avoid it they would)- telling them that their feelings don't count is so painful, it justifies their feeling of invisibility. A BPD thinks how can you tell me that I shouldn't "feel" this way, but I DO!

Recovery is a long and hard process, but it is well worth the effort. Mindfulness, Acceptance, and Balance are some of the keys to unlock the door to recovery. But you gotta start somewhere.





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Feeling Her Way Out the Darkness: PART FOUR

*CONTENT WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS DISTURBING MILDLY EXPLICIT CONTENT, (*) asteriks are placed to signify beginning and ending of said content.

Her therapist, Danielle, was a redheaded woman, soft spoken, yet her quiet words were poignant and to the point. During this hour, they were discussing issues of her childhood. When they first met, Sarah told her about her current situations and also her turbulent childhood, her parents, brother and sister, and the cousin who molested her as a child.Along with the Borderline diagnosis, Danielle added to it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Sarah couldn’t understand how she could have PTSD, her experiences were not the same as what she saw on TV. She never felt like she was in an old memory and disassociated from reality. Danielle insisted that she possessed the characteristics of PTSD.

“I really have gotten over what happened to me as a child. I know it wasn’t my fault. It was horrible what happened to be. But, I decided long ago, that it wasn’t going to effect me.” Sarah said, “I am never going to do that to a child. I’ve moved on, I want to live my life, without feeling terrible for my childhood.

“That’s great, Sarah. You are a very strong individual, but even if you don’t know it’s there- it is really.” Danielle spoke in a soft tones, “it effects you. You just connect it to something else happening to you at the moment.”

Puzzled, Sarah smile, “I guess your right.” Deep down she didn’t believe it.

“Sarah, you had a very strict and rigid father, who was absent at the time when you were molested. A mom who buried what happened to you, in order to maintain peace with her family. Your sister raised you, and you had a brother who was abusive both mentally and physically.” Danielle peered over to Sarah, over her glasses. “No child under these circumstance would walk away from such travesties and not be harmed.”

“Yeah, but I worked through it, I survived.”
“True, but in order to survive that, you developed within you coping skills to do just that- survive. Many BPD’s suffer from child abuse, just like you, they had to separate themselves from their body- their mind lingered somewhere in the space of your mind- many kids report living in a fantasy, because reality was to awful to live in. Over long period of abuse, you just kinda get stuck there in your head. And as you grew older, those same coping skills that saved you- they are destroying the present self and the reality surrounding it. You are on a road to rethinking the way you think, you will learn to distinguish between fact and feeling.”

“Uh-huh” Sarah nodded.

“You’re going to have to take a hard look at you childhood- paying attention to all the sensations and thoughts happening in your head. Once you recognize how you felt and coped with such tremendous stress, you will be able to see how if affects you now.”

The bed was messy, Sarah had decided to strike against the bed. Because when it was nicely made, Sarah was tempted to crawl in and fall asleep. Throwing her purse and coat on the bed, she headed to the kitchen for a snack and some tea. She had quit drinking coffee when she learned that coffee heightened her anxiety experience.As the water boiled, Sarah sorted through her mail. Junk mail, bills, more junk mail. She tossed the pile of mail across the counter.

The kettle started to whistle, after selecting from a variety of teas, Sarah chose a pomegranate mango tea. Pulling up a stool, she sat down, striking a match and lighting her cigarette. The house was quite, as Sarah surveyed the living room, from across the way of the kitchen, it was too quiet, Sarah thought. The feeling of empty boredom started to rise up in her.Trying to mediate and soothe herself, she instinctively reached for the mail again, in effort to distract her thoughts.

Flipping through the mail over and over again, she stumbled across one of those mass mailer where the printed pictures of missing kids, in hopes to find them somewhere in the United States. Sarah turned the flyer around and saw a pair of familiar eyes staring back at her. The cut of this child’s chin was also familiar too. Everything about this child struck her, high cheek bones, think dark bangs and uncomfortable grin. Sarah realized she was looking at her own face as a child, above the picture it said “Have You Seen Me. Age last seen 7”

She dropped the flyer to the ground in fear, how could someone be looking for her? This picture was taken years ago, she was a child, but she was thirty two now. Her heart began to beat and her breathing shallow. Sarah went to the sink and wet her face with cold water. After she dried her face with a paper towel, she bent down to retrieve the flyer.There was a little girl pictured how had similar resemblance to Sarah, but it was clearly not her. Awash with relieve Sarah sat down to finish her tea, which was no lukewarm, however this didn’t bother her. She was still upset at herself for letting her mind play tricks like that. Laying her head on the kitchen counter she began to thing that even though she wasn’t the girl on the missing flyer, the little girl she once was, had been lost so long ago. And no one knew it, or maybe no one cared.“When did I get lost?” she whispered.

There car screeched to a violent stop, sending little Sarah slamming against the back of the passenger seat of her mom’s car. Sarah had been sleeping when the car she was riding in t-boned a car driving across the intersection. At first, Sarah didn’t know what had happened, she thought her brother and sister were playing games with her. She started to whine, calling out to her mommy to make them stop being mean. She was woken quite abruptly by the sound of her sister moaning in agony. Sarah turned to her left and saw that her sister was caught in between the drivers seat and the back bench of the car. Jessica was bleeding but Sarah couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. In a panic, Sarah began to cry.

“Shut up, Sarah, can’t you see mom has been hurt.” her brother Damian yelled at her from the driver’s seat. “Stop feeling bad for yourself and go get help.”

Sarah frantically tried to get to her mom, who was seated in front of her. Her unconscious mom was slumped over and held up by the seat belt.“Mommy!” she cried out. Reaching around the seat, grabbing at her mother’s sleeve, began to shake her. “Wake up, mommy, wake up.”

“Damn it Sarah, are you that stupid, did you hear me?” Damian yelled again. Sarah froze he was yelling at her again. Normally, when he started yelling like this, she knew she could run to her mom and hide behind her for safety. But today, her mom was hanging on for dear life.

Instead of trying to get out of the car, Sarah moved back into the corner of her seat, trying to melt into the interior. Damian turned his head sharply, his whole head was covered in streams of blood, the force of his head jerk made a flap of skin flip over and it started gushing out blood. Damian really looked like the devil at that moment.

“You stupid bitch, you can’t even get help, what good are you?” he was snarling now, his upper lip drew upwards into a disfigured scowl. “When I get out of here, I am going to kill you.”
“Are you okay?” a man’s voice yelled out. “You look bad, some one has called the ambulance already, help is on the way.”

Sarah looked up to see a strange man standing by the driver’s side window. Her brother slowly took his daunting glare off of Sarah and turned his attention onto the man.

“Nah, man, I’m okay. But my mom is out, and I don’t hear my little sister back there. Can you check on them?”

The man stuck his head in the window. “I tried to open your door, but it’s stuck. Same goes for the door behind you.”

The man looked at Sarah, “I can see your sister, she looks alright.”

“Not her, the girl behind me.” Damian growled.

As the man moved over to look through the window at her older sister. Damian said under his voice, looking at Sarah, “It’s too bad you’re not dead.”

Once the ambulance, fire trucks and police were at the scene, they had set her mom, sister and her brother free from the mangled wreck of their car. The front end of the car was smooshed in half the length of where it should be. Her mom, Jessica and Sarah rode in an ambulance together. Jessica had regained consciousness and was able to limp in the waiting ambulance, but their mother was still out. Jessica held Sarah in her arms.

“It’s going to be okay, Sarah, mom will be okay.” Jessica assured her.Sarah wasn’t so sure.

Nothing about her mom seemed okay. Just then her mom started to move around and moan.

“Excuse me sir,” Jessica said to the ambulance man, “It looks like she’s waking up.”

The man who was at the time cleaning out a few cuts on Jessica’s arm, turned his attention to their mom. Sarah was relieved just seeing her mom moving around.

“Will she be okay?” she asked.

“We don’t know yet, but this is a good sign.” he replied. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”

Sarah’s mom nodded a little.

“If you can hear me, can you tell me who the President of the United States is?”

“Carter” moaned their mother.

“See she’s going to be okay.” Sarah jumped up and down.

“Shhhhh Sarah…the president is Regan.” corrected Jessica.

At the hospital, Sarah was separated from her family. A nurse took her to a bed, and examined her and deemed her to be in good condition, no broken bones, cuts, or damage.

“Is my mom okay?” she asked.“They are doing everything for her, she’s in the best hands right now. Don’t worry about mom, just get some rest, it’s been a hard day for you.” answered the nurse. She helped Sarah to lay down and laid a stiff white bed sheet across her. Just rest”

“I want my sister.” she cried.

“Oh I’m sorry honey, they just took her into x-ray. You can see her when she’s done.”

Sarah pulled the sheet tighter to her chin, she was scared.

“Didn’t you come in with a brother?” the nurse asked the Sarah. “Don’t you want to know if he is okay?”

Sarah turned the opposite direction of the nurse, and said, “No.”

Since Sarah had not suffered any major injuries, she couldn’t stay with her mom or sister, who were admitted for observation over night. The hospital was running out of beds, and had to give away Sarah’s bed to another person, who needed medical care. For a moment, Sarah stood in the hallway, amongst the bustle of a busy emergency room. She was cold. Everyone around her was busy and didn’t take notice of the misplaced girl shivering in the hallway. This was one of the first times, Sarah had an unnerving feeling of invisibleness. She sat down on the ground leaning herself against a door pain, and she began to cry. She didn’t know what room her mom and sister were, or even which way down the hallway she would start to go to look for them.

“Are you alright?” asked another nurse. “Who do you belong to?” The nurse’s face was soft and sweet, she looked to be genuinely concerned for Sarah. “What’s your name?”

Sarah proceeded to tell the nurse her name, and why she was in the emergency room. The nurse took her hand and let her to a group of desk, with more nurses sitting around them. The nurse sat her on a chair, promising to be back, went off to find out more information about Sarah’s family.It turned out that Sarah had gotten lost in the cracks, it was shift change, and that her nurse left for home without leaving word to anyone about Sarah.

This new nurse Laurie, led her to mom, who was asleep. Laurie explained that her mother was really lucky, she had suffered a concussion and a few cracked ribs, but other than that there was no critical damage, in the next bed Jessica laid there asleep too. Jessica had broken lots of bones in her right foot, a possible concussion. Her brother, Nurse Laurie said was still in suture room getting his head stitched up, she also pulled up a chair for Sara in between her mom and Jessica.

“Sarah, baby. Is that you?” her mother asked.

Jumping off the chair and running to her mom’s bedside, Sarah began to cry, she was afraid she would never hear her mom’s voice again.

“It’s okay Sarah, I am alright.

”Nurse Laurie came up behind her, “Oh we were worried about you for a moment Mrs. Dunn. I’m glad to see you talking. I know that this is probably not the right time to talk, but I need to know if you have any relatives near her that can keep Sarah for awhile, this really isn’t a place for such a beautiful girl.”

Mrs. Dunn, gave her the number of her brother who lived near them. It was late when they got a hold of the family. Nurse Laurie said that her uncle and aunt were at work, and that they couldn’t get here any time soon so they were going to send their eldest son to pick her up.


*******


A few hours later her cousin, Daemon, a odd coincidence that his name was strikingly similar to her brother’s, came and got Sarah. His car had a musty smell to it, combined with a cherry air freshener hanging off the rear view mirror. It was nighttime when they got to his car. Sarah had expected him to start his car up and head home.

But instead, he pushed his seat back as far as it went. He told her how awful it must have been to go through what Sarah went through. He knew exactly how to make her feel better. Did she want him to do it for her he asked.Confused and scared, tired beyond belief, wanted to go home, she didn’t know what to say.

Daemon didn’t wait for an answer. He leaned forward unzipped her pants and slid his hand in. She was shocked a creeping fear radiated from her body. Not knowing what to do, she froze. And when he was done, he asked her if she liked it. Sarah looked up at him emotionless.

It seemed that since Daemon had helped her to “feel better.”, it was no her turn to respond. He told her how to sit on the passenger chair and unzipped his own pants. She blocked out what was happening to her, and began to recollect the events of the day, her sister in pain, mother passed out, and brother bleeding profusely saying, “It’s too bad your not dead.” *******

The phone rang waking Sarah up, sitting on the stool, her body hunched over the counter, and on the counter was a large pool of saliva. Before Sarah could figure out that the phone was ringing, who ever was calling had hung up.Wiping her cheek, Sarah looked down at the missing flyer still laying on the counter. The little girl who looked hauntingly similar to Sarah stared up at her.“Don’t worry, I’m going to find you.” she said. “Where ever I lost you, I am going to find you.”

Emotional ER: Ending the Pain not YOU

Right now in this moment... if the pain is so intense and you can't stop it and you so badly just want to stop hurting.

IF YOU ARE FEELING SUICIDAL RIGHT NOW .... Hold on.... I want you to know that I am not a therapist or a mental health provider... but I am a survivor from that extreme emotional pain... I know what its like to be in this moment you are in right now.

I UNDERSTAND....

Hi, I‘m Jenn, we‘ve never met, to me I am just words on your computer screen, ... Whatever has brought you to this blog, I don’t know why, but what I do know is that in this very moment you and I have converged on this world wide net.. Which is good, it’s great for that matter. So for these next few moments, let’s be friends. If you can, promise yourself to stay with me, don’t do anything drastic… just read.

“You’re hurting” I know, it’s what brought you here.

The pain is so consuming, that you want nothing more than to STOP the PAIN. You’ve tried everything, nothing is working, desperate to ease the burning in your heart you’re considering suicide. I know, I’ve been there. It fucking sucks.
I wish I could squeeze myself into the computer and pop up next to you. You need someone, a hug, someone to listen to. I wish that was me. But, believe me, when I say, I am happy me met. Just hold on.

You with me? There is nothing worse than feeling hopeless, I know, baby. Life shouldn’t be like this, but there is hope. It might not be a gigantic heavenly sized hope, where the sun is shining and angels are singing.. but it’s there. And if you hold on to it- it’s just enough to get you though this one moment.
Alright, still there? Sweet, cuz this means so much to me, and you’ll see, to you too. Let’s just say, that there’s something inside you holding on, it might even be a very small voice, doubting whether our not you really want to die. I hate to say it, but…….. you are normal. Inside you there is a war going on, wanting to end the pain and wanting everything back the way it was.

I remember desperately looking for relief... and then I was still planning what I would do the next day, thinking “What am I going to cook for dinner?”... it was strange. I really didn't want to end my life... It‘s this immense pain we want to die, not you!! There’s that tiny ray of hope, that part of you that still thinks about tomorrow. It’s there…really. Kay, if you are still with me… woo hoo, I would hug you right now if I could.
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"Suicide, you chose it, it actually isn’t force on you. It’s just that once you are at this point considering death, you think you’ve run out of choices. But what it really is, is that you don’t know how to deal with your pain.

You are not a bad person, crazy, or weak because you feel suicidal. Nor does this mean you really want to die- it only means that the pain is so intense and is greater than your ability to cope with pain right now- this moment.
Pain and coping skills are different from person to person! How much one can stand pain differ as well... and that's NORMAL! Coping skills are tools we use to understand and regulate emotions and reactions from pain.
Suicide is a result of an imbalance where pain exceeds coping skills.

Surviving Suicidal Feelings is a REALITY!

1. You’ve got to find a way to decrease the pain.
2. And then increase your coping skills.

Here are five things to think about:

1. THERE IS HOPE! You need to know that people get through this-- even as badly as you feel right now. There is a good chance you are going to live. Just hold on to even one grain of sand piece of hope.

2. Give yourself some distance. Set yourself a safety contract...wait 24 hours before you do anything. Feelings and actions are two different things- you feel suicidal doesn't mean you have to do it right this minute. Put some distance between suicidal feelings and action. Even for just 24 hours... You've already read this for the past five minutes, just by reading this blog. Keep going!!! Realize that while you feel suicidal, you are NOT acting on it. THAT’S HUGE!!! That is the core of that tiny little ray of hope... if you read this far I am encouraged and I hope you ae too.

3. Suicide is not a pain reliever. Relief is a feeling too, you have to be alive to feel it. You will not feel the relief you do desperately seek if you are DEAD.

4. Others have feelings too, and they will react badly to your suicidal feeling, either because they are too scared or angry, without even knowing it they may actually increase your pain, instead of helping decrease it. You have to understand that their adverse reactions are about their fears and not about you.
But there are people out there who can be with you in this horrible time, they will not judge you, argue with you or send you to a hospital, or try to talk to you out of feeling the way you feel. They will simply care for you. Find one- NOW--use these next 24 hours and reach out to someone tell them what's going on with you. ITS OKAY TO ASK FOR HELP! Try:

Send an anonymous e-mail to The Samaritans Call 1-800-SUICIDE in the U.S. Teenagers, call Covenant House NineLine, 1-800-999-9999 Look in the front of your phone book for a crisis line Call a psychotherapist Carefully choose a friend or a minister or rabbi, someone who is likely to listen.

You don't have to do this ALONE! It is a coping skill to talk about how you got to where you are, it releases alot of the pressure. Just by talking you are regaining some of your balance.

5. Suicidal feeling are traumatic. After they subside- continue to take care of yourself. Therapy is a good idea. There are many places that you can go to for help.

Guess what...it's been a few minutes and your still here. I am really happy.
Since you got this far- you DESERVE a REWARD.

Rewarding yourself is a COPING SKILL!

You are well on your way to gaining more and more coping skills- if you keep on going, one day your coping skil wll outnumber the sources of your pain.

Alright my friend, while this blog has might have given you a small measure of relief, the best coping skill I can give you is to find someone to talk to. Someone who wants to listen, woa another coping skill... hopefully it wont be the last either.

NOW, I'd Like you to call someone.

If all else fails: there is no weakness in going to the hospital for help, actually, I refused to go but went anyways... I will never forget the help I got from them.
YOU are LOVED...you just have to FIND it IN YOU- FIRST!!!!

Surviving Suffering

The truth of the matter is we all suffer. I know it sucks. Suffering means (out of several meanings) TO ENDURE PAIN. It's so much easier when our pain and suffering are physical, a cut, broken bone, burn, fever, and any other ailments. First of all, most of the physical wounds that we receive, we know what the cause was. I was running and I fell and skinned my knee. Emotional pain is so much more different and broad in its causes.

Several months ago, I could not handle the pain any more, I swallowed sixty vicodin, to somehow find relief. There were so many factors that led up to this one horrible moment.

-Seeing my husband kiss my best friend

-Catching him in lies

-An emotionally abusive marriage

-My own adultery from ten years ago

-Feeling weak

-Controlled by uncontrolled anger

I could go on and on with this list. Each of these aspects, alone, cause me so much mental anguish. It took me months to finally emotionally stabalize myself in order to further my recovery progress.

A few months ago- I learned a very important idea-

Suffering is not a unique characteristic to me. I don't mean I am alone in the process of suffering- (I hated when someone would try to compare their pain and suffering with mine- to somehow prove that I wasn't alone) I knew that there were people who were in similar situations as mine: BPD diagnosis,
Divorce...blah blah blah... and then to top it off people would say "see how bad i had it and I am still here" So many times I wanted to bonk them in the head when they said that. I felt totally unique in my pain and suffering.

It wasn't until one day- I once again was exposed to a painful situation that my sixteen year old daughter was experiencing at the same time. Our beloved dog had died of accidental poisoning, my daughter is a DOG LOVER. I remember sitting in the vet's office and looking around at a steel table and wondering to myself...how many times a day do people lose their dogs to an accident. And I was sure that other people around the world that had just lost a dog were in the same emotional suffering as me. It kinda disturbed me to think- I wasn't unique- neither was my pain, nor my dog.

I constantly try to be unique in this world- I love to dress my own style, I love to listen to non-mainstream music, I love British Comedies. I thought to myself- I don't want to be the same as everyone else experiencing pain.

It was then that I realized my uniqueness didn't come from suffering itself but how I dealt with suffering that made me different. It's funny how I can offer advice but not take my own. One day my cousin called me and said back to me a word of advice I always say to others.

It's not the shit in our lives that define who we are.

But

It's the way we deal with the shit is how we are measued.

Once one understands that suffering does not seperate us from animals but the problem-solving mentality we posses is also what makes us human.

I am unique because I survived... I am ALIVE... and the path that I took to this place I am in NOW is ALL MY OWN.

Emotional Urgent Care

Have you ever felt like things were such a mess you didn't know where to start? I know at times when my house is a mess, I feel so overwhelmed that I don't know where to start. I get so discouraged, I feel like giving up on cleaning. I say to myself what's the sense, it's just going to get messy any ways. There have been times I do just that and ignore the mess, I go so far to ignore it that I will leave the house, just so I don't see it. The problem with that is that I have to come back to it. The mess can get so bad that I begin to hate myself, I start to think that I am a horrible mother, that I am useless. I also begin to blame my four kids, thinking it's their fault, and getting upset at them. The house gets so bad that I stop inviting friends over, I get no enjoyment in the house, instead of being a place of comfort and relaxation, the house becomes a place of shame.
Eventually, I get so tired of the mess, I force myself to clean it up. It takes alot of mental effort to pshyc myself up for it: i put on my cleaning shoes, play my favorite cleaning cd, at this point I am so revved up to clean, but then I look around and I don't have a clue where to start. Usually, it takes a few minutes of picking up clutter before i get into the groove. Sometimes, I get so upset at myself, I will literally throw in the towel, and go out shopping to make me feel better. But if I can get past that first few moments of the mess, I will get a game plan in my head and then I can't stop cleaning.

I am telling this story because, I remember a time in the beginning of my recovery where I had no idea where to start. There was so many issues I had messed up on. All of those feelings I described about in how I felt cleaning would surface when I tried to do a little mental house cleaning.

The first year that I was extremely depressed, I remember not knowing where to start, I tried going on the internet to find the answers, I tried talking to my sister about my feelings, I bought self-help books, but nothing seemed to work. I just spiraling down faster and faster, I remember that there were times when I was working that I would close the door to my office, crawl under my desk and cry.

I have been in intense therapy for the last nine months, my med intake included celexa, prozac, and seriquil. It took alot of hard work and humility to get to where I am at now. There is so much I have learned, that I want people who are hurting to understand that there is hope- but its a process.

First thing is first- If you are intense emotional pain, it may seem that recovery or hope is impossible. That's okay, it's understandable.... but right at this moment... you need to tackle more important issues before you can get down to the nitty gritty of recovery.

Emotional URGENT CARE!

If you are suffering...right at this moment... you've got to take care of those immediate symptoms. Think of it this way- have you ever had a tooth ache and the dentist told you, that you had an infection, that before the dentist could take care of the cavity he had to prescribe you a anti-biotic. That's the same thing with emotional suffering- sometimes before you can ease the pain- that emotional infection in your heart and mind needs to be taken care of.

Emotional URGENT CARE!

* Step away from the situation- even if it is in your mind, you need to find something else to center on, even if for five minutes (my sister tells me that all the time, "What can you do for the next five minutes that you can't think of the pain?) You have to DELIBERATELY not think about the conflict or the pain.
This is a good time to practice mindfulnes and meditation.

Take Care of Yourself

Soothe yourself

I used to do a little bit of tai chi along to my favorite UP LIFTING music. Sometimes I got so into just focusing on the movements and music that the five minutes would carry on into thirty minutes.

I spent alot of money on distraction... when drawing and painting could occupy more than a hour of my time, I bought tons of drawing stuff. And then my mother taught me to crochet... I must of crocheted three scarfs for each of my kids. I learned more about tai chi from the internet, and I downloaded all the steps to the salsa, merengue, tango, and I had my daughter be my dance partner in my living room.

The most important thing you need to remember is everything you are doing is helping you STABILIZE your Emotional Suffering.

*You have to take care of yourself!

When the emotional pain was so bad, I couldn't sleep or eat, even taking a shower was a ordeal. Unconsiously, I wanted my physical being to be just as messed up as my emotional being. At one point I went over one hundred hours of no eating and at the same time I only slept three to four hours a night.
My sister always told me to take care of myself- FIRST. But I didn't understand what that meant. I thought it meant go shopping, buy myself something, do something, anything, for me. Yet, it didn't make me feel better. After shopping, I still felt awful.

The first time I saw my therapist Dominic, she asked me how much sleep I got, when was the last time I ate, things like that. And when I told her, she had this look of shock on her face. She told me to take a few days off from work to get some rest and to eat, she said I needed it. I thought she was crazy, if I could just get the outside circumstances straightened out, then I could sleep and eat.
A week later, I was admitted into Sierra Vista Hospital, under a 51/50. I had swallowed sixty vicodins. There in the hospital, I slept and ate (I had too, there was a mean nurse, who would look at our plates, to make sure we ate everything). Four days later, I felt a little better, physically atleast.
It is important that during this time you take care of yourself- EAT, SLEEP! You have to have a healthy physically body to tackle the inner pain.

Now, I notice that I get angry faster when I haven't eaten, and I feel emotionally drained when I haven't slept enough. There have been times that I was spiraling into that crazy abyss and there were no outward reasons to justify it, I would ask myself if I ate or slept... if the answer was No to either one, I would grab a bite to eat or take a power nap, before I did anything or made any decisions.

YOU NEED THAT ENERGY TO DO GREAT THINGS FOR YOURSELF!

* Soothe Yourself

Just this one moment- in the beginning of my recovery, I bought a bag of Dove Dark Chocolates, and when I felt extreme emotions, I would pop my favorite candy in my mouth to soothe myself, not a reward, but a reminder that there is enjoyment- even in that one piece of candy. You don't have to prolong that moment...just long enough...sometimes at the side of my bed there would be a huge pile of red foil- the remnants of the candy- and I would be impressed how many moments I enjoyed.

Before I hated to be alone. After my husband left me, I was living in my worst fear. I missed his arms comforting me. I needed a hug, my sister lives one hundred miles away- and at the time I wasnt accepting comfort from friends.
In order to soothe myself and when I needed a hug, I had my favorite chenille blanket (a christmas gift from my daughter), I sprayed my favorite perfume all over it, and when there was no one to hug me, I would climb into my bed, wrap my blanket around me and give myself a hug. And in those dark hours, I hugged myself alot. I got through so much by myself- ALONE! I did it!

I wrote myself love letters, I told myself what I appreciated about me, what I loved about me, and admired in me. I would hide them around the house to look for when I need one. I even mailed myself one too.

If these are the only three basic things you can do for yourself in this urgent time of need- everyday the only goals set. You will be surprised how many days you can get through.

Am I Cured?

SAMSHA (the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration/Center for Mental Health Services) (http://www.samhsa.gov/) defines recovery as:
Mental health recovery is a journey of healing and transformation enabling a person with a mental health problem to live a meaningful life in a community of his or her choice while striving to achieve his or her full potential.

This is the story of my journey to Recovery...the road hasn't always been easy- but it was worth the effort. ~Jenn


The following is the DSM IV criteria to diagnose Borderline Personality Disorder "The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", published by the American Psychiatric Association.

1. frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5.

2. a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.

3. identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.

4. impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5.

5. recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior

6. affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).

7. chronic feelings of emptiness

8. inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)

9. transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms
On this road to recovery I am in, I have come to realize the importance of reflecting on the past to gauge how far I have progressed, and what more I need to do to get to full recovery.

1. frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
Past: I remember when I hated to be alone, I felt that I just didn't exist. There was safety in numbers. I couldn't stand conflict, yet inevitably, conflict ensued, and my outrageous behaviors hurt those closest and dearest to me- my lashing out behaviors and the rage that came with it would subside and then I would be left with guilt and remorse, shame and the urge to self-harm. I hated it when Ron left for work and the kids were in school, I wandered around the house aimlessly, surfed the internet to feel as if I were doing something. During the end of my marriage, I kept trying to be the first to walk out of the marriage (even though I really didn't want to end the marriage), I thought that if I left first, I hoped that Ron would chase after me. He did for awhile- but then he grew tired of it, it was too much for him. I see now that my attempt to avoid abandonment was to control the situation so that Ron would bring me back. One day, he just stopped saving me, I don't blame him for walking away at the time- he did all he could do. When I was faced with real abandonment, I couldn't handle it, the pain was to intense. It was then I tried everything I could to kill myself, standing in rivers and bridges, learning how to make a noose, locking myself in a car on the hottest day of the year to induce heat stroke, cutting myself, sitting in my car with the engine running in the garage with the door closed, and finally six overdoses of medications.

Present: I have learned to be okay with myself in moments where everyone in the house is gone. I actually look forward to it. I love to be alone, and with others, but I don't feel empty when I am alone. Ron and I are almost done with the divorce. I remember the first time at my therapist office, I told her I couldn't imagine walking up the steps to the courthouse- I was so afraid I would just die the moment I took that first step in the courtroom. Now, I love to go to the courthouse- I am a huge people watcher, and there are tons of people in different stages of their lives, and I love to watch them. I found myself- my true self and I am exactly who I am with company as I am alone. I have developed coping skills that I can do when I am left- be it temporary or permanent. Honestly, I can't imagine myself with any man right now. I like me.

2. a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.

Past: Ahhh, this was a hard one for me to learn. Recently, I learned my lesson, I was beginning to form new friendships- I remember talking to my sister and "idealizing" them- they were the greatest since sliced bread. I placed them on pedestal- they were "perfect", I spent all my time with them, and then when the slightest amount of conflict arose- I delve them into the deepest parts of hell- my actions changed, the tone in my voice changed, and all I could see was their faults. All I could do was think negative thoughts, that drove my ill behaviors. My warped perception gave me the permission to do so.

Present: I haven't yet ventured out to make new friends- but that's not because I am afraid to- I am not avoiding it or escaping environments promote friendships, I just don't feel like it- I know I have a lot of life skills to develop- it's not that I don't have friends- it's the quality of the friendship that matters to me now, not the quantity.

3. identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.

Past: I used to think I knew who I was, I was a wife, a mom, a daughter, a friend, and a Christian. But when my role as a wife was taken away- all of a sudden, the rest of my list of who I was didn't matter. I was willing to take my life away- despite the beautiful children God gave me. I used to believe that I had to make myself unique for anyone to love me: be the best cook, the life of the party, funky sock collection, jazz listen Billy Holiday loving, quirky, silly, complex, altruistic, and whatever else eclectic behaviors, thoughts, words that set me apart. It was the only way that people would love me. I had to do everything to deserve love- and if I didn't I was a bad person. And when Ron stopped loving me, I just wasn't unique enough- I was stupid, worthless, and couldn't be seductive enough to be loved. I had no clue who I was. I once told my doctor, Dr. A, once that when I looked at my hands they looked like little girl hands- for years my hands had bothered me- he told me that was because I still saw myself as a child and had a poor sense of self.

Present: I can't express how much I love myself, my body, my looks, and the stuff that makes me who I am. I have developed real values, beliefs, purposes, and meanings, it those that make me unique- not what I do or say- but what's behind those actions- the principles- and they are all UNIQUELY mine. I developed them just for me- and now when I look at my hands- well they are always painted now, I see the hands of a woman- a survivor. I don't feel uncomfortable around people- trying to decipher how I should act, what I should say, what I should wear, etcetera. I do all of that just because I know who I am.

4. impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating).

Past: hmmm….at least two areas… reckless driving…nope… I was thirty when I got my first speeding ticket. Sex- hmmm, other that to say, I am an adulterer, I did things that made no sense- my actions were hurtful to me and to Ron, that was along time ago. Substance abuse- I am an ex- meth addict- for years, I was hooked- I have been clean for five years. Wooo hoooo.

Present: I am always checking and double checking if I am being impulsive- I ask myself do these behaviors meet my values, purpose, meanings in my life? If I can't answer the question, I will just sit with the urge to act out… I analyze the why's ,the when's, and if's…And if I the answer to the question is "no", I have learned to accept the situation just for what it is, this is the time I get to problem solve and find a solution that balances my behaviors with my heart and mind.

5. recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior

Past: I did them all- all I wanted to do was to end the pain, I wanted to live but the pain was to intense. See #1 for descriptions of my suicidal behaviors.
Present: I am way to important to myself to even be thinking of doing that again. I have purpose and meaning to my life- and part of that is my kids. To prove my point, I have gone through some pretty shitty stuff lately, like having to move my kids from our home and back to my mother and father's dysfunctional home. I didn't die. I have heard news of Ron and Vangie sightings all over California and Sacramento- I don't want to die. I am physically alone- no man- I don't want to die. I have plans for life- graduate from college, get a job as a writer, get published, heck I want to meet Oprah. Can't do any of this if I am dead.

6. affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).

Past: Affect: meaning to move emotionally. OMG, was I moving emotionally unstable- I was so immersed in the intense pain that I drove to Stockton, then to El Dorado, the Vallejo, all to find a place to die. There were times where my moods would go from happy happy joy joy to the world was coming to an end. Loving Ron to hating him. The moods would last for a day or so, but the long term effect were damaging to my marriage. I was always anxiously scanning for potential threat to my world- Vangie being the biggest threat at the time.

Present: I like to call my moods "baselines" very clinical, I know, but that's the best description for moods. I strive for a balanced mood- acknowledging both the negative moods and positive one's- I work hard at being aware of whether I am in one mood or another. I try not to avoid negative moods- but understand the basis behind the mood- and see I can accept it or let it go- normally this will alleviate much of the stress and pressure of anxiety and depression.

7. chronic feelings of emptiness

Past: I used to call this a feeling of "impending sense of doom" or "boredom" and boredom meant I was a nobody because I wasn't doing anything. When the impending doom grew like warm tea filling my stomach- I always had to find a meaning to it- and the majority of the time there was none- thus the feeling of empty- there should be a reason I felt that way but it's not there- there is some thing wrong with me was my train of thought then.

Present: I still get these feelings, they are far and few in between. The cool thing about who I am now is that when these feelings arise in me now, I can be mindful of them, look for any logic behind them- if there isn't any logical reason to feel doom or boredom- well than- I will soothe myself- acknowledge the fear, let go of the doom and it's fear, and move on- each time I get over one- I just prove to myself how strong and resilient I am, and I didn't need anyone to help me out of the funk. Also, when I get these feelings, I check to see when was the last time I ate, how much sleep did I get, and what's my breathing like? The most immediate action I can do at a moment of fear and doom is to take a slow deep breath, a few of them sometimes- I breathe in so deep that Esa will hear my breath and think there is something wrong, and she'll ask me "What's wrong mom?" I always reply to her the same thing "Same thing as always Pinky, trying to take over the world." That's our password that she knows I am taking care of business and she need not worry.

9. transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

Past: As I mentioned before, my belief that Vangie was a threat to my marriage., consumed me after she moved out of my house. I was so terribly paranoid that she had turned Ron against me, turned me into an inept wife and mother- pointing out my flaws and weakness to him- this effing scared the shi-taki mushrooms out of me, I kept scrutinizing every aspect of Ron's behaviors to see if there was even a slightest change to his affections and behaviors to me. There were times that I drove around UC Davis Medical Center looking for his car and hers, while Ron was working an emergency shift. I remember almost hitting cars because the tears were so thick when I couldn't find his car. I used to dig through his receipts to see where he was shopping. One time, I remember finding the receipt for my Christmas present a journal and seeing he bought it at a bookstore in Elk Grove, even though he told me he went shopping in the Arden area… I found every reason to dig through his stuff… finding her driver's license and I.D. in his wallet… that did it for me- when I confronted him he said he had forgot to give them back to her- but what he didn't know was I had been looking in his wallet once a month since she left- it wasn't there before- I was even paranoid because he had her ID and no pictures of me in his wallet. Come to think of it- as I write this- I still feel past feelings of paranoia surfacing… what a trip- this is where my PTSD comes into play.

Present: I have come to accept that Ron and Vangie are to say the least "friends" , and there's nothing I can do about it. There's nothing I want to do about it. What I learned from those events and from them was those physical reactions my body does when I am paranoid. I am able to look at how I felt before..and still do..when I think about the past… I am able to recognize them ie smoldering skin, rapid breathing, butterflies the size of elephants doing the cha-cha, my lungs wanting to escape the safety of my ribs, and deal with them accordingly- how the balance with my purpose, value, beliefs and meanings in my life.


So there you have it all nine DSM criteria on diagnosing BPD my past and present and my correlations to them. Am I cured, there is no cure. Am I fully recovered, …yup and nope all at once- more yup than nope... have I come along way- HECK YES! Is there room for change- ALWAYS. Is there a possibility of stumbling-yup- can I give up if I do- Not by the hair of your chinny chin chin! So my dears this is what my recovery looks like. And I like it…

Chaos vs. Consequence

I was asked an interesting question today.

"With all the chaos that has happened in your life recently: your dog dying; your church booting you out; having to pack up a home broken by divorce, is this chaos Borderline?" asked my sister Christine

Hmmmmmmnnnnn- Interesting question.

My research into human nature through Dialetical Behavior Therapy has given me an insight to this question.

The way I look at it- CHAOS is a part of life, negative or positive. Here at Hanks Street monday mornings are chaotic, no one can find their shoes, backpacks (and if you're my son, Mark- homework is not done), depending on who you are- it can be negative or positive. For me without the extra jump I get from my breakfast blend foldgers coffee... it can be negative... but then maybe I percive it as negative.

The Borderline Person, sees it differently, it's not the chaos that frightens them- its a feared consequence. It's in that fear that BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) trys to escape or avoid.

I have to admit, that after extensive research on BPD, and that I have that diagnosis. I've been trying to fight that life sentence... however- as I see it now, it's not something I can't overcome, and well I am a RECOVERING BPD... and that is an amazing awesome characteristic for me to possess... RECOVERY!!

Okay, I am digressing.......

DBT has taught me alot about myself, and well the skills I am learning are exactly what I have been missing in my life.

A Borderline- is afraid of consequences (abandoment, primarly). Outwardly, people see a Borderline the first thing one sees is chaos... underneath what they don't see is managed chaos... the borderline jugles events, people, environment, and emotions... in which dictate their thoughts... and then their behaviors... all the while this poor borderline has not felt any real emotions- because they've been told that their emotions are wrong... which makes a BPD hurt even more... the one thing the BPD craves the most is VALIDATION not ATTENTION...being invalidated for emotions tells the BPD their feelings do not exsist...therefore they do not exsist either..its a strange exsistance...
So in order to AVOID the pain of "invisibility" (consequence) the BPD will scan environments for potential threats to their sanity... they will do anything to avoid feeling PAIN... But once the PAIN is there (which is unavoidable) well the BPD spirals into unhealthy behaivors... which then cause guilt and shame... then more PAIN... the PAIN becomes so intense and unending the BPD will do anything to stop it and the BPD will act out immediately, suicide attempts, fight and flight, this can be draining to the non-BPD in the BPD's life... many call it "walking on eggshells" so the chaos of the emotional BPD creates the exact consequence the BPD is trying to AVOID.... ABANDONMENT! Just like my ex-husband... he couldn't stand it anymore... so he left.

As a recovering BPD... I've learned that I cannot avoid CHAOS... and that my avoidance of Consequence creates the consequence... I've learned to accept a chaotic life.. dog dying, leaving a church, packing up 15 years of memories, and whatever else that will come along, BUT instead of avoiding consequences... well replace that behaivor with being MINDFUL of myself... emotions, environment, and so on... and chose my behaivors so that it's a consequence I would want an not to avoid... like HAPPINESS, JOY, and well BALANCE!

Recovery/ Growth: Personal Experience Hard Process

In the last nine months that I have been on this journey of self-awareness, I find myself in so many new predicaments, and some old ones resurfacing because I hadn't learned my lesson yet, all of it well worth the trouble. Each lesson I've learned has produced happiness and its share of pain, all of which I would never want to change.
I wish that I could take credit for all my happiness and then blame everyone else for my pain, but that wouldn't be fair. (to my Ate C who knows me so well, this is not an attempt to beat myself up again) I am sure of this- I have so much to be happy for and I have so many more lessons to learn from to avoid the pain.
Lesson One: No one is worth giving my life up for.
Lesson Two: I don't have to settle for anything less than I deserve.
Lesson Three: I will not give others the power to control my feelings and thoughts.
Lesson Four: There is life after divorce.
Lesson Five: I am not defined by my emotions.
Lesson Six: I don't have to explain myself to anyone.
Lesson Seven: I don't have to be understood or accepted by everyone.
Lesson Eight: The best arguement strategy: Opposite Action
Lesson Nine: Not everyone can be trusted with my feelings
Lesson Ten: I have some serious trust issues - I just trust too much.
Lesson Eleven: I am proud of myself for my actions, not what others say or think about me.
Lesson Twelve: Those that know me deeply, know there's more to me than my outer appearance.
Lesson Thirteen: I think too much.
Lesson Fourteen: I am okay with me, even if I think too much.
Lesson Fifteen: Trust that inner voice that screams "Danger Will Robinson, DANGER."
Lesson Sixteen: Stop unhealthy habits in me or those people that want to influence me before they get out of hand.
Lesson Seventeen: I want to be transparent, God is in me!
Lesson Eighteen: I set the tone in relationships. I chose what I want in friendships and relations.
Lesson Nineteen: Endurance, Faith, LOVE, Strength.

Healthy Validation

Healthy: Absence of disease, weakness or malfunction; implies appearance and behavior indicating soundness and balance.

Validation: means having such force as to compel serious attention and usually acceptance stresses an immediate and crucial effect striking at the heart of a matter

Having a healthy validation from any outside source requires formulating and accepting your own healthy validity. What is a healthy validation? After careful research of the words (which you know I am famous for doing so), I have come to this theory: A healthy validation means to inwardly inventory those characteristics that strike the heart of any matter and accepting or rearranging them; in such away that dysfunctional appearances are decreased and inner balance is increased. (yes Ate very esoteric)

My big sister reminds me when I've lost contact with myself to take self inventory, based on facts. For instance, I am a single mommy of four, is a fact; I am alive, another fact; I am God's creation; I am strong and weak; this too shall pass; fact, fact, fact. And then I have to sort out all these crazy feelings and decided whether they are helpful to my facts or destructive. "I am angry" FEELING "Why can't I be happy?" FEELING/Fiction "

Urge Surfing

urgeFunction: noun1 : the act or process of urging2 : a force or impulse that urges; especially : a continuing impulse toward an activity or goal

As part of my recovery process, I've learned a great deal about myself. Tonight, I feel like exploring my urges. I will not go into detail about my urges, other than to say they used to be my main motivation to action. A very unhealthy way to act by the way. So many of my painful memories stem from acting on urges, or being controlled by out of control urges. And then days or even moments later when that urge subsided, I would be left with regret and shame.

Granted, sometimes those urges acted out would actually fall upon some truth, which would then justify my behaivor. But, just like a broken watch, I can be right at least twice a day but wrong the rest of it.

In my therapy, I've learned that urges come and go much like waves, up then down. If I could just fight that urge to the peak of it then eventually the urge would gradually decrease.

It was wonderful in the beginning to control my urges. I felt so much relief to know that I wasn't controlled by my sudden urges to act out. Just like anything else in the world this too shall pass.

I have been urge surfing for sometime now. And I am starting to wonder if I am to afraid to act out at all, especially in those unknown circumstances. I've been extremely good at acting on urge and impulse. But now I wonder when do I react or act and when do I not? Sometimes I begin to feel as if I have become some unemotional robot, who like Spock has no longer the capacity to be spontaneous. When did that happen? Was I burned too many times by my own self sabatoge that I am to scared to move out of this new comfort zone I am in.

Thanks to all those who know how hard i am fighting to control myself and not let others control me.

Lub,
Jenn

The Moment: The Importance of Mindfulness

So many of us look for that one moment, that special zingy moment that will last a lifetime we seek for the defining moment of our life. We even ask for it. Do we really know what a moment is? Can we describe what it looks like, feels like, taste like, and sounds like? Is there a set criteria regarding moments? How can one find the moment if no one knows what it looks like?

The Latin entomology says it is: momentum movement, particle sufficient to turn the scales, moment, from movEre to move.

Webster defines it as:
1 a : a minute portion or point of time : INSTANT
2 a : present time (at the moment she is working on a novel)
b : a time of excellence or conspicuousness (he has his moments)
3 a : importance in influence or effect (a matter of great moment)
When reflecting on all these definitions my favorite is the Latin version; Momentum movement, aren't we always moving; the turn of the scales, it is our choice to decide the moment's impact and importance to our lives. Moments are also measurements, portions of time we spend from our life. It is also NOW and a time we define ourselves or temperaments. And most importantly a moment can effect a lifetime.

Generally, moments are small; so small that we overlook some of the most poignant moments that happen to us. We get so caught up remembering past moments and planning future ones that we miss beautiful ones opening up right in front of our eyes. Painful emotions from the past moments overwhelm us and we end up shutting down our hearts and stopping any emotions into any present ones. Happy moments from days gone by become measuring sticks to future moments we limit our own present happiness. We worry about the future moments, lost in thought looking so far into the unreachable horizon and in the middle of that worry moments have passed us by.

I remember there was a time that I did not enjoy the present. I took that time as an opportunity to worry and to wallow. Physically I was in the moment yet my mind wandered off to fantasy lands. I missed so much. The memories I wanted to cherish for life all seem like vapor. They became vague memories that lost their vibrancy. It's because I didn't take the time to enjoy the moment. My mind was somewhere else. I didn't take much effort in remembering the smells, the way things felt, and to really look at minor yet beautiful details.

Once I realized that I had missed so many moments. I began to worry and fret, blaming myself for missing so much. In fact I was doing it again, missing precious moments. This time I stopped myself and slowed down. I soaked up the moment, enjoying little stuff, like how the wind felt cool against my skin, smelling barbeque in the air, watching my son inspecting a line of ants.
And right in front of me this beautiful world unfolded. The grass was greener and pricklier, the air crisper as it passed through my nostrils, and things like that I began to appreciate. Past moments I took and placed in an imaginary photo album in my head and promised to visit once and a while but not to stay in, the future became a possibility of exciting sensory adventures.

Now as I wake up in the morning, I take a moment to feel the bed sheets on my skin and enjoy them for a few seconds. When I brush my teeth, I let the tingly feeling of the toothpaste dance across my tongue before I rinse and spit. As I go about my day, I take time to feel the distance of each step; I reach out to touch flowers and pull them to my nose and breathe. It take as many moments as I can get with my kids to giggle, to love, to cry, to be with them, (let's get this straight, I am not tasting them, hehehehe) to enjoy the small moments, the sticky and sweet messy moments of my kids lives.

I know you might be imagining me as some snail, sauntering around like a lazy butterfly, but that's not true. When you see me you will see the normal Tasmanian Devil zipping through the day, but what you don't see is my mind taking small mental notes of every moment, instead of the mind that jumps back and forth from the past to the future and only staying a moment in the present to make sure my plans haven't failed.

So remember you can find joy in the middle of small moments. Instead of one defining moment in life look for moments that are defined by your life. Add them up and you will have filled your whole life with joy

Feeling Her Way Out the Darkness: Part Three

“Borderline Personality Disorder” the words kept whispered in Sarah’s brain, triggering a burning sensation that spread across her chest , overflowing into the pit of her stomach. From there it dug a pit that reached into her soul, leaving behind gaping hole in her heart, as if something was eating away at her. Sarah filled with anxiety, knew that there was hungry monster inside her devouring at her insides. She wanted to run away, whatever it was, it was too scary for Sarah to fight. Her powerlessness followed by depression, sank her deep in worthless disparity. She literally felt like she was being pulled apart by two massive forces: anxiety and depression. Desperate to end the madness, the only way Sarah knew how to be rid of these feelings was to cut it away, like a gangrene infected limb- the problem was as a whole she was dead tissue- she had to kill herself.

Even after her one trip to the mental hospital, being held there for four days and had been taking her medication regularly, Sarah still wanted to die, the pain of abandonment was so great it paralyzed her. What confused Sarah even more was that she really didn’t want to die, she just wanted to end the pain. That’s when she knew something was wrong.

The first doctor she had seen for her ailing soul, diagnosed her “Borderline Personality Disorder.” Sarah was relieved to know there was a name for what was happening to her, but she thought ‘Why that name?’, it sounded terrifying. Annoyed by the doctor did not described in depth what “Borderline” meant, she began to research it on her own, those results weren’t any better. However, there was no denying that these symptoms fit Sarah to a tee. For months she stared at several websites, reading and re-reading the symptoms, she never wanted to forget them for fear she might do them again.

• instability in mood, thinking, behavior, self-image
• easily depressed
• cannot bear to be alone/constant demand of attention
• quick to take offense
• makes unreasonable demands
• engages in provocative behavior
• chronically angry
• claim they are “bored”, “life is empty”, or they “do
not know who they are”
• suicide threats
• self-destructive, impulsive behavior

“That’s me, but its not me,” whispered Sarah to her computer. She could look back at her life and saw instances of each of the listed symptoms, especially when she was angry or scared. But she could also see areas in her life where that same list was absent. Granted these last few years, she had been trying to come to terms with the so-called “innocent mistakes” of Scott and the other woman, from what now she knew was irrational and violent, she had every reason to be angry regardless of what Scott told her.

A year and a half ago, her whole world turned upside down, of course she had an instable mood, behavior, and self image. Before that night, she was safe and secure, happy and content, what they had done was a real threat to all that she held dear. Her very existence was in danger of being lost to another woman.
She loved both of them dearly: Scott since they were children, and “her”, well she loved her like a little sister. She was torn between being angry at them and loving them. The not knowing what to do with them, herself, and the raging feelings inside her, caused her extreme depression.

Since she was a little girl, Sarah knew that she couldn’t bear to be alone, it meant that she would start feeling empty, vulnerable, scared. “Impending sense of doom” she called it. As she grew older, she learned to deal with the feeling, it was slowly disappearing, only to show up once or twice a month, but that was before her world came crashing down. She had become so insecure that when Scott was away, it literally hurt her, her whole body on fire with ice, was the only way she could describe it. And when he ignored her at home, he added insult to injury. She felt invisible- impulsively she would do anything to get his attention, so that she could feel “real” again.

As she thought about this, she shook her head, “I wasn’t like this all the time.”
There was a time when Sarah was thick skinned and it took a lot for something to offend her, but this last year had taken a toll on her. She felt like a walking wound unprotected by a bandage, she was raw from all the emotions and events. It seemed even the tiniest budge to these raw emotional sores, triggered bigger and bigger inflammations to her anger.

She was so emotionally damaged that she subconsciously devised ways to protect and defend herself. If Scott came home late and he didn’t call her, she flew into a dangerous rage, it didn’t matter to her if he was thirty minutes late or two hours. She dug through his pockets looking at every receipt- some were innocent purchases and some were not. The suspicious ones Scott got the third degree. In which Sarah driven by terror and anger flew off the handle rather quickly.

Provocative behavior, Sarah knew that she suffered from this since she was a teen. She always thought it was the warped emotional conditioning of being a survivor of sexual abuse as a little girl. The only thing she knew she could give out was sex. Ergo, she thought, was why she got pregnant at fifteen.
But she could see the pattern in relations with men after she got married. Every time she felt horrible, she had an affair, it was as if she needed to stabilize the feeling of worthlessness by sleeping around, thus matching how she felt on the inside to what she was doing on the outside. These affairs with other men, she felt nothing for them, nothing for herself either. She was finally understanding the “why” to what she did. For other’s cutting their bodies helped alleviate the inner turmoil, but for her it was to treat herself like dirt. Sarah wished she had been a cutter instead- that way she wouldn’t have ruined her marriage and the lives of her children.

“Butterflies the size of elephants doing the cha-cha” in her stomach is what empty meant to her. It was if energy was building inside her, and she had no way to release it. And since she had no way to get rid of it, she always thought it was that she didn’t have anything to channel it out- this meant she was empty or bored. Many times in order to counter act this feeling she would leave the house with everyone, Scott and the kids in tow, wondering around shopping stores. She’d buy anything to curb that energy flow- settle her down with a new “toy” she had bought. But the feeling never lasted.

Suicide threats and self destructive behavior went hand in hand for Sarah. They were all drastic extreme attempts at stopping the madness in her mind and soul. Self destructive behavior always went first- sex, drugs, starting fights with Scott, running away from him in hopes he would rescue her. It was when Scott left her, that the suicide threats and attempts were used. Her suicide attempts were a result of feeling like she lost Scott to “the other”.

Recognizing all of these symptoms and patterns, gave her a comforting knowledge, knowing that there was help for her. But it also did not help to fix her marriage. She now knew what she was doing, and could pin point what happened right before a trigger that would result in wild episodes. Regret filled her to a point that she wanted to learn new ways to deal with life. To never hurt those she loved again.

She begged Scott to give it another try, she was in therapy and in a group designed specifically to teach “BPD’s” new coping skills to deal with their symptoms. But Scott had moved on, the look in his eyes had changed, stone cold. The thought of Scott’s stoic face brought a shiver down Sarah’s spine. She wanted to throw up, but fought the urge- knowing that this was part of her disorder. She went to bed. Landing face down in the pillows, her right knew pulled up by her bent elbow. Her left arm cradling her forehead, she cried herself to sleep.

“I wasn’t always that bad. And I’m never going to be like that again.”
Through the darkness a loud screaming voice pierced the air. It sent shivers down Sarah’s spine, the hair on her arms stood up, and her mouth went dry. It was so dark that she couldn’t see her hand in front of her. Trying to squint her eyes to see anything visible around her, another blood curdling scream filled the empty spaces between her and the person who was in obvious pain.
A small orange light dotted the horizon ahead of her, and Sarah began to follow it. A few minutes later, Sarah was standing her dining room, pictures of coffee and chocolate decorated the walls. A faint ticking noise could be heard from the ceiling fan over the dining table, the fan was set on high, the wind blew her hair wildly around her face. A string of hair flew into her eyes, it stung and made them water. She closed her eyes and rubbed them vigorously to ease the pain. When she opened them up, she saw herself laying on the table.

They looked at each other, the other her laid anguishing in pain. The withering body’s eyes called out to her, crying out for help with no words. Sarah couldn’t understand what was going on, why was she in so much pain? The woman on the table pointed at her body, it was then that Sarah saw that the body was flailed open. It was moist and red, steam was rising from it, reddish outlines revealed organs and tissue. Sarah looked back to the woman horrified. She had this sinking feeling that who ever had done this to her was still around. She wanted to run away, but she couldn’t leave herself laying there defenseless.

Something stirred across the room, who ever it was, was coming back. Sarah took cover in the dark shadows in the corner of the room. It took every bit of courage she could muster to control her rapid breathing. If Sarah couldn’t runaway she want to make sure that what ever was coming into the room wouldn’t find her. Her heart beat so loud that she was afraid it would give her hiding spot away. Placing both hands across her chest in the spot above her heart, she hoped that this would muffle its sound. In fact she was so scared at first, that she shut her eyes not wanting to see who it was coming in.
The woman screamed again, filling the room with an electric energy that made Sarah’s skin tingle. It was followed by the sound of an animal eating. They were wet, crunching, slobbering, stretching noises. The smell of bile wafted over to Sarah, her stomach began to churn. With her back against the wall in the corner of her dining room, Sarah slid to the ground burying her head into her knees, covering up her ears. She still hadn’t opened her eyes.

It started to sound as if more than one animal was eating, every noise multiplied and soon you couldn’t even hear the clicking sound of the ceiling fan. After a few minutes, Sarah’s heart began to calm down, and curiosity had replaced her fear. Still closing her eyes, Sara felt the wall behind her, using it to help her stand up. Once she was up, Sarah slowly opened up her eyes- she couldn’t tell who they were because they all had their faces shoved into the woman’s body and were eating away at it, like lions upon their prey.

There were four of them surrounding the half eaten body. One of the predator’s raised it’s head, in between it’s teeth was a piece of tough tissue, it was trying to tear it away from the body. As it struggled with the woman’s flesh, it’s head turned upwards to the light. She was startled at the face she saw- it was her, again.

Sarah gasped at the sight, she realized that these four were her, they were all from different stages of her life, but they were unmistakably her. One, looked to be her age, but she was so thin and emaciated that she wasn’t sure, until Sarah caught a glimpse of her eyes, which were filled with anger and hate. Another, was naked, except for fish net stockings, and yet another looked to be in her teen years, was wearing a wedding dress, the front of the dress was stained with massive amounts of blood, it looked more red than white. And the last was a very small girl, no older than six, took small bites at the woman’s fingertips.
Sarah bent over, her stomach heaving, revolting from what she had just seen. Trying to process what she had witness was impossible. Why were they eating themselves?” she thought, fighting back the urge to cry.

Looking back at the bloody sight, Sarah noticed that the woman, herself, had stopped crying, it was calm. The woman looked at her, and with the hand she had left, reached inside her, grabbing a piece of lung, brought it to her mouth and started to eat it.

Sarah started screaming, her scream sounded worse and in more agony than the first screams in the room. She pulled her hands to her mouth and tried to stop herself, she didn’t want to be caught by the cannibalizing copies of her.
But it was too late, all four of them stopped eating, plus the woman who was the meal, looked up at her. Their faces were covered in blood, red in some places and brownish in others where the blood had dried, it was all over the front of them, faces, chins, necks, down their arms and dripping in puddles of blood around the table.

Each of them, reached into the open body, pulled out some of her entrails and began to walk over to Sarah. Who was still screaming and crying backed up into the corner of her dining room. The sound of the clicking ceiling fan resumed again. They walked to her like zombies holding out handfuls of flesh, as if they were giving her an offering.

“You can’t make me eat me!” Sara sobbed, covering her mouth with her hands.
“You can’t”

“Why not?” asked the little girl.

The little girl dropped what was in her hands, returned to the body, who was still munching on a piece of lung, reached back in and pulled out the heart. Bringing it over to Sarah, she said…

“We saved the best part for you”

Sarah fell out of her bed, struggling away from the bloody heart.

“What is wrong with me?” Sarah laid on the floor, entangled in her bed sheets. A taste of blood spread through Sarah’s mouth. Her heart stopped- was that a dream or was it real she thought.

Reaching up to her lip, Sarah found that she must of bumped the nightstand on the way down to the ground. This still was no consolation to Sarah, “Why were they or she, eating her. She spit the blood accumulating in her mouth and the carpet. The sight of the blood sickened her, and so she went to the bathroom and threw up.

All the while, thinking, “I am not going to eat me, I’m not.”

Feeling Her Way Out The Darkness Part Two

There were sirens and police, Scott stood there demanding for the keys to the car. It was stupid of her to call him to say goodbye, she thought. What she really wanted was to show him how horrible she felt, he stopped listening to her pleas and she had no idea how to get him to see her and her pain. Swallowing a whole bottle of vicodin was her only answer.

They shoved big plastic tubes down her throat and nose, whatever they poured into her made her stomach convulse, no matter how hard she tried to fight it she had to throw up. It was humiliating lying there, looking at Scott sit in the chair, watching the doctor's without feeling.

"So what did you take?" a plump nurse asked Sarah.

"Huh?" Sarah looked at her. She was lost in her thoughts.

"You overdosed tonight, what did you take?"

"Vicodin"

"How much?"

Sarah felt like she was in the Spanish inquisition. "The whole bottle."

"Whyd'ja do it" The nurse checked her pulse, looked up at a monitor behind Sarah's bed.

"My husband left me." scratching her forehead hoping she was in a dream.

"Oh hunny no man is worth your life."

Closing her eyes Sarah thought, I don't deserve to live.

The pillow was hard and the bed sheets she was in didn't feel like home. They were thin and felt grainy, Sarah rolled over in her bed realizing that she wasn't in her. Since Sarah arrived at the hospital the day before, her room mate never spoke to her, not even when Sarah introduced herself.

"Good morning" she got up, streatching to mask her shock of realizing where she was at.

A nurse walked in, "Good you're awake. You need to get ready and go to the louge for group check in. Nadyia, this means you too."

"I vant to goh hum now" Nadyia whinned in her bed.

"You and this whole hospital. But they still gots to go to group check in."

Sarah smiled at the nurse, shuffled across the floor to the bathroom. Just feet from her open bedroom door stood a strange man staring at her. He wore a black shirt with a tuxedo silk screen on it, white shorts and black socks. His hair was deshelved and he had a odd grin on his face. He waved at her. Sarah waved back.

In the bathroom, she tried to close the door, but it would not shut. Everytime, she had closed it shut, it slowly creaked back open. After a few tries, Sarah opened the door, the nurse was gone, but the strange man still stood there watching her. She really had to pee, but she was afraid that he come closer to the door and watch her.

There was a white towel hanging off of small bar, she grabbed it and threw it to the ground, shoving it under the crack of the door, and ensuring that it was completely closed before she sat down to pee. Her elbow on her knees and her head propped up on her wrist, she wished to be home just like her room mate.
The day was filled with endless classes on coping with feelings and thoughts. In between them they had breaks to eat meals, and for the privy smoke breaks. They didn't allow Sarah a smoke break until she talked to her doctor and earned the red wristband. Her nicotine levels were dangerously low, but she had no choice.

It was night time and Sarah stood impatiently in line for her sleeping medication. It was too hard to go to sleep on her own. She kept envisioning her children waving at her through a small window at the door of her ward at visiting hours. The look on Angie's face troubled her the most. The only way to escape those big hurt eyes was to medicate.

In bed, under stiff covers and on a hard pillow, Sarah said her prayers, but before she could say "Amen," the room began to spin, the details of the room began to bend and then bleed into each other like watercolors in too much water. Not very long after, Sarah was fast asleep.

In her dream that night, she had traveled back into her past.

Scott looked much younger. His picture hung on a wall in his parent house. Sarah didn't want to be there, but her parents dragged her along to attend a baptism party. Luckily, she was able to bring a friend along, Marie.

On the couch Marie and Sarah, sat balancing huge paper plates of food on their laps as they talked to each other. Sarah knew no one else there. And as typical teenagers, the two of them talked quietly amongst themselves, staring at all the people, commenting on his or her outfits and hair do or hair don't.

Just then, a group of older boys walked into the room. At first Sarah was too shy to look over at them, but on the insistence of Marie, she stole a glance. One of the boys, who was of average height, thick brown hair, and was dressed somewhat like Don Johnson in a sports jacket with sleeves folded to his elbows, a white t-shirt and stone washed jeans. He reached over grabbing a small baby from his mother's hands. Lifting him up over his head.

"Hey little brother, like the party, it's all for you."

"Becareful Scott , he just ate." his mom warned him.

"It's okay, ma."

Just then the little baby giggled, gurgled and threw up on Scott's blazer.
Everyone was laughing at him, including Sarah and Marie. It must of been the sound a female giggles that caught Scott's attention. He looked right at Sarah. And just like any classic romance story, their eyes connected. Time stopped. Sarah broke the connection first, turning away bashfully. Scott who realized what his baby brother had done to him in front of guest and these girls, handed the baby back to his mom.

"It told you so," his mom giggled.

"That's okay, I'll get you back when your bigger." he patted his brother on the head.

"Come on Scott, we gotta go, we're going to be late." one of his friends said as he handed him a towel.

Scott still looking at the girls, wiped away the mess, he smiled at them. "All-right, let me just change."

When Scott left the room, Sarah leaned over to Marie and whispered into her ear. "He's the kinda guy I'd like to marry."

She got her wish and two years later she married him while her belly swelled to carry his baby. She was fifteen.

"This ring I give you."Scott said,"Is a symbol of my love, it has no ending and no beginning, just like my love for you."

Standing there, looking into Scott's eyes, his face began to age, to what he looked like present day.

"I'm sorry, Sarah, I can't do it, I'm tired of fighting, of being mad, I just want some peace. I just don't love you any more. I filed for divorce."

She was screaming as she woke up, drenched in sweat. Her heart trying to escape her body with every beat. Her breath was fast and shallow.

"Vat now, you silly girl, shut up an go beck to bed." Nadyia scolded her.

Sarah curled up in a ball, and tried to go back to bed. "I just don't love you any more." she heard over and over again. "Divorce" thumped in her brain. Sarah clutching her shirt were her heart was breaking, finally fell asleep somewhere in between silent sobs.

Some people say that if you die in your dream, you will also die a physical death. Sarah didn't belive that, she found that she was more dead awake, than when she was asleep. During the day, she wandered around her house feeling lost, empty, worthless. Life had lost it's luster to her.

Half the time she was awake, she would call her sister, talking at length about her pain and the betrayal that bore it. Conversations were also filled with the topic de jour, mental self-help tricks that Sarah could do, to the magnificent and the mundane. Jessica was a great help in getting her through one day, one moment at the time. Other times, Jessica would talk her through paticularly rough moments, coaching her out of the depression trap, encouraging her to keep moving forward, questioning Sarah's every dysfunctional thought, or teaching her how to breath during an anxiety attack.

If Sarah wasn't on the phone, she was out filling her time with the few friends that were still around. Most of them were people she knew through her work. One person in paticular, Nick, whom she had know for a few years, who had also met Scott a few times, Sarah had grown close too. Often times, she would swing by his house just to talk. Nick was a likeable guy, intelligent, and a very good conversationalist. She enjoyed listening to his colorful past. It was a good break from her current dismal present and an even more depressing future. They could talk for hours, often about work or theories on life.

And then there was Drew, also a co-worker, Sarah had known longer than Nick, but their time together consisted of smoke breaks and lunch time. Prior to Scott leaving her, Sarah knew little about Drew. After Sarah's breakdown, Drew was like another older sister to her. During their frequent smoke breaks, Drew listened to Sarah lament over her life. What Sarah apprieciated about her was that Drew asked lots of questions. Which expanded Sarah's perspective on life.
Melanie had been a long time close friend of both Sarah and Scott. Once a week she stopped by to check on Sarah, they'd sit for hours smoking and chit chatting. They didn't work with each other, their lives were dramatically different, yet together it made for a interesting contrast. They got together and they were able to unload without the threat of drama.

It was when Sarah was alone, when the heart beat of her existance dropped to non-existant. She felt invisible. It was scary and unnerving. She had experienced this all her life -the fear of being alone. It helped to know that Scott would always come home and make her feel real again. Now that Scott was gone, she lost her connection to the world and to herself.

Alone on her bed, Sarah willed herself to sleep by imaging a new life or the best parts of her old one. She was living in a false future and a rocky past, but never in the present. If she did it right, she could fall asleep to thoughts of beautiful life- where she was important, where the love of her life (who remained faceless) would rescue her, in those carefully selected dreams, her every flaw was erased. It was like floating on a raft, napping in the sun, as the waves rocked her to sleep. On many occassions she was able to sleep peacefully, but it was the waking up part she hated the most. If she happened to wake up during a good dream, she laid there shutting her eyes, forcing herself to recall the details of the dream and try as she might to continue where ever she was in the dream, sometimes reality would break into her thoughts, and making it hard to go back to the fantasy again.

She would rather gamble away her life, laying in bed, where the odd's of falling into a good dream was worth the bet. She was willing to consider the posibility of having a nightmare, which easily matched her current situations. She lost more times losing miserable than winning the prize of a good dream.

Sarah wondered if her bed, the pillows and comforter could interpret the dreams since they frequented her more than anyone else did. The bed had to know who Sarah really was. Considering that what little Sarah knew about herself was gone, trusting in her mattress to tell her what the dreams meant, actually made sense to her. But all the bed ever did was entice her back into a frozen stasis, stagnant in progress, but pregnant with escape. For months she spent it curled up in the fetal position crying had been her one most constant companion during the worst time of her life.

The crazy complexities of life was absorbed into her soft bed.

Dreams: a kaleidoscope of images fragmented, haphazardly put back together by our brain in an unconscious state, weaved together by bits and pieces of fantasy. For the fortunate few who don't think they dream, they are blessed with not having to interpret what they envisioned in their sleep. The unlucky masses spend endless amount of time taking apart and putting back together their dreams to find meaning to them, it is maddening to come to grips with images that don't make sense. Sarah wondered which would be better sleeping in utter darkness, unaware of what the mind does, or floating uncontrollably through a Technicolor world, a puppet who's strings were pulled by a mad puppeteer- the sleeping mind.

The medicine her psychiatrist had prescribed her was meant to help her go to sleep, it's side effect was the inability to wake up in the morning. It was counteracted by another pill in the morning , this was meant to help her get an edge on her rampant feelings. Both medicines also were known to give strange and vivid dreams.

One morning, Sarah woke up with an image of a huge black widow spider in her coffee. She kept trying to drink the coffee and avoid the floating arachnid. Every time she tilted the coffee cup, draining a bit more coffee, the spider floated on the far ends of the cup staring at her, it's legs were moving wildly to try to stay afloat. In her dream, Sarah knew it wasn't good for her to keep drinking the coffee, but there was something forcing her to lift the cup to her mouth, she struggled with an unknown force, a invisible hand holding her hand to the cup and another hand at the back of her head that was twisting her head to face the cup. Sarah could still hear the ticking of the spider's legs against the cup while she drank in the morning.. As repulsed as she was, if Sara didn't drink her coffee in the morning the rest of the day she would be plagued with migraines that incapacitated her.

Another dream, was of her sitting in a clear box watching her younger self getting in bed with a man that wasn't her husband. Sarah screamed from her box, clawing at it, trying to get the younger her to hear her. She was yelling for her run away as fast as she could, warning her that this was going to ruin her life and that of her four children. She banged and shook the box, but it was no use, finally she curled into a ball and cried while she heard the lustful sounds fill the box. She pushed her hands against her ears, trying to block out the sounds, but it was so loud it vibrated her body. When the noises subsided, she lifted her head looking out of the box, there was small child sitting at the edge of the bed staring right at Sarah. The child looked around nine years old, had no clothes on, her hair messed up and greasy. Then the little girl showed Sarah her bloody wrist, above it the words "whore," "slut," "worthless." carved into her arm. The little girl whispered to Sarah, "Help me."

The dreams bothered her all day long, it was a constant reminder of how bad her life was. The only way Sarah knew how to get rid of this feeling was to go back to bed and try to make herself - a better dream. Every nightmare she had to balance with a good dream. She consumed her time doing this.

The meds drove Sarah crazy, she wanted nothing more than to get better, she doubted she was, her dreams were signs that she wasn't. Her doctor told her it would get better over time. So every night she took the tiny little pill and prayed she would sleep in darkness. Since Scott had left, her three boys, Noah, Jordan, and Ben had taken over the empty spot in her bed. Most of the nights Sarah had about three inches room to sleep. Every night as they settled down to bed, Sarah read to them bedtime stories and then they all prayed.

"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, Thy love guard me through the night and wake me up with the morning light. Amen."

They took turns saying that, Noah, who was the oldest of the three boys, loved to pray, he would have a long list of people to bless. Ben, the baby, prayed like this..."Thank you Lord, for the target, airplanes, for the God, bless my daddy, mommy, the dog, Angie, pizza, Thomas the train. Amen."

Since Scott and Sarah separated, Jordan refused to pray. When Sarah would ask him for a reason. "Mom, I asked God that Daddy would stop this divorce. And God is not listening. I don't want to pray."

It broke her heart to hear that. "Jordan, sometimes God answers in 'maybe's, no's, and yes, even a wait a while. God hears you."

"Then God doesn't care." Jordan rolled over, closing his eyes and pretended to sleep."

"God cares, as a matter of fact God loves you." she whispered in his ear.

"Mom" Jordan paused. She could hear his breath slow down. "I'm tired"

She kissed him on the back of the head. Snuggled up behind him and listened to
his breath. Ben on the other side of her, squeezed in behind her, threw his leg over her waist and fell asleep too. Noah had made a place for himself at the bottom of the bed. He had fallen asleep relatively quick. He was getting so big that she had to bend her knees, so that she wouldn't push him off the bed. Sarah was boxed in, she whispered a prayer thanking God for her babies, and asked God to help her raise these boys.

Ten minutes later, Sarah twisted herself out of bed, trying not to wake her slumbering boys. She watched them sleep, their chest raising up and down in a slow even manner. Noah was heavy to move over so that he slept in the right position in bed, untangleing the covers around the boys legs, she pulled the covers over her boys and crept out of the room.

Angie's room was next to her's. Her door was ajar, the lights turned down, and the tv casted flickering shadows around the room. Angie was asleep when Sarah came in. Just like her boys, she tucked her in, kissed Angie on the head.

"Love you Mom" Angie said when Sarah reached the door.

"I love you more, Angie, more than you know. Good night."

Once she had the kids in bed, Sarah went into the kitchen. Taking out the medication from a high cabinet, she held her nighttime meds in her hand. The pill was very tiny and pink. Rolling it around in her had, she grabbed a glass and filled it with ice water. The pill went down smoothly. She looked at the time, it was 10pm. She should start putting her boys to bed earlier, she thought, and then decided to work on that at a later time. It took thirty minutes for the medication to put her to sleep. She had just enough time to go into the garage and grab a smoke.

There was a small wooden stool by the garage door that led into the house. Sarah had been sitting in that spot, smoking her cigarettes, since the first day she saw Scott and her best friend kissing. She felt comforted sitting in that spot, misery loves company and this was were she met misery on a regular basis.
The door creaked shut, she sat down, grabbing the pack that waited for her like a loyal puppy. The first inhale, no longer contained the sweet release as it used to, but she was still compelled to smoke as often as she could, to her it was just a way to pass the time that seemed to creep.

The little wooden stool was near a wall, and Sarah leaned back and surveyed the empty garage. This was where Scott parked his beloved car. It was also a spot where the two of them constantly fought. She closed her eyes, there she saw the wrench she threw at his car as he drove away. It hit his hood and bounced away. Her heart twinged as she recalled the screaming and yelling that took place here. Sarah wondered if the negative energy that was created here had absorbed into the walls. She shuddered to think about it. Her cigarette was done, throwing it onto the ground. She hunched over and started to cry softly.

A few minutes later the meds were working. Her eyes felt heavy, her body felt as if it were moving through pea soup. Blinking to keep herself awake, she got up and went to her room.

By now the boys had spread themselves over the entire bed. So Sarah took a pillow and a blanket and laid down on the ground and went to sleep. It wasn't long until her dreams began to play.

She was half asleep next to Scott. In an effort to stay close to him there was no space between them. Hoping that he would kiss her and pull her closely to him, she waited. Sarah could tell by the rapidness of his breath that he was awake. She wondered why he wasnt affectionate to her anymore. It was all her fault she thought, she just wasnt good enough for him.

Scott moved her arm over and gently pushed her away, just enough to get out of bed. Her heart sank, this proved he didn't care anymore. Instead of waking up, she pretended to stay asleep, like a possum, she wanted to know what he was going to do next. Scott grabbed his keys very quietly and tried to sneak out of bed. Her mind was going a mile a minute- was he going outside to call "her"?, was he going to leave on a short trip to see "her"?, the scenarios got worse and worse.

"Where are you going?" she barked.

Scott turned around, to her his looked as if he was caught guilty of something. His eyes shifted side to side."I was going to wash the car." he answered.
Sarah rolled over to check the time it was seven in the morning. Most saturday mornings Scott slept in, why would he want to wash his car? Immediately Sarah became angry. She knew in her heart of hearts he no longer loved her, she was afraid it was true. She got up have dazed still from just waking up, she hadn't had her coffee and she need time to understand what was happening. She got out of bed and went straight to the garage, she needed a smoke she thought.
In the garage on her stool she sat. Still lighting her cigarette, Scott came in. He was apologizing for getting up early. Something about him didn't seem right, but she wasn't sure if it was just her grogginess. Her skin was smoldering. She didn't want to talk at the moment, she wanted to process her thoughts. What was she going to do?

"Please leave me alone. Scott." she said.

Scott looked at her with a look of resolve, turned around and went back inside.
Alone in the garage, she began to sort out her feelings. A week ago, Sarah was grabbing something in his car. While in the car, she began to feel paranoid, and started to do a little snooping. For weeks now, Scott had been late home from work, distant, and very, very unaffectionate to her- she had to know why. Even though Scott said that he no longer talked to Sarah's ex-best friend, whom Scott worked in the same department as her. There had been a few instances where they were caught together under what Scott said latter was innocent circumstances. In the car, she found his old cell phone tucked away in the pocket of the driver's seat. Upon opening it, she found it was still on, but that he had set it on lock, so she couldn't see who he was calling or was calling him. Yet, on the screen the little picture that indicated how strong the signal strength was for the phone showed full. Sarah knew only phones connected to the providers system could display that. Why would Scott need another phone? He had just bought the newest phone on the market a few weeks earlier. Why didn't he tell her about the phone? But when she confronted him about the phone Scott told her that he used the phone as an extra phone in case his new phone ran out of battery. He told her that she was crazy, but wouldn't show her the phone.
So that morning while sitting in the garage, still fuming from his sneaky way he tried to leave the room. She didn't want to fight anymore. She had started to believe she was going crazy. After the cigarette, she went inside.
Scott was sitting in front of his computer. His face was angry, he looked at her when she walked in the room. Sarah thought for a moment. She wanted to apologize, but she needed to explain to him what had upset her.

"Scott, I was just shocked this morning, I thought you were sneaking out somewhere, I was scared."

"You know what Sar, I don't want to talk about it. It was stupid of you to over react. I was just going out to wash the car." Scott's voice was even and emotionless. He had turned his attention to the computer.

"Stupid? I wanted you to hold me, I wanted you to love me. For years every Saturday morning we held each other, if not more. But lately you don't even reach out to me, ever. When you get home, you don't even look for me you just go to your room. The other day you were two hours late from work, you didn't even call us, we waited for you to eat dinner. This morning you didn't even kiss me on the head- you always used to do that. You don't any more." she screamed.

"I don't know what you are talking about. You are paranoid, I can't take this, I can't take your madness. I don't want to talk about it." Scott didn't even take his eyes of the monitor.

Because of that Sarah felt like she had disappeared. She hated when he didn't look at her, when he didn't care about her feelings. She didn't care about what happened that morning, she just wanted to be heard, understood. She couldn't understand why she wasn't allowed to feel, why he didn't stop to listen to her feelings. She was always told she was stupid, her feelings were always wrong. If they were wrong, why did it hurt so much? She wanted him to look at her, to stop what he was doing, and look at her. And when he wouldn't look at her, she took matters into her own hands, grabbing his face, she tried to get him to look at her. They started to physically fight.

"Look at me!" she screamed. "Look at ME!"

Sarah tried to wake up, she knew she was dreaming, she struggled to get out of the dream, but the medication held her captive.

"Mom, wake up." Angie was shaking her vigorously. "Mom you're having a nightmare. Mom I see you."

Feeling Her Way Out The Darkness Part One

"How do you find your way in the dark?" the last screen words spoken by Marilyn Monroe. Sarah felt that Marilyn some how peered into her soul and had stolen from her the question that has plagued her for years. It seemed all her life she was trying to find her way out of the dark. It was a scary existence to live in darkness. Even when she thought she had some how found her way into the light, and had began to feel like she was alive, thinking the shroud that had covered her face finally lifted, something would happen, and she would find herself back again sitting miserably in the darkness. Sarah unconsciously learned to live in the vast empty space without light. She married, had children and made a home in the dark. For years she thought that she was happy.

The alarm clock rang loudly at seven o'clock, someone from under the covers, pushed a hand through the piles of blankets and pillows turning off the buzzing annoyance, then the hand sunk back into the folds from which it came. This had been Sarah's ritual for a week now, she only got out of her bed to go to the bathroom, which surprised her because she had little to eat and drink since she her body fell upon the mattress. Her soul ached inside her body, it felt like a large piece of coal was smoldering her chest and abdomen. The only way she knew how to get rid of the dreadful feeling was to sleep. Yet she longed for a sleep that she would never have to awaken from, she knew that this would ensure that she would never feel again. She never wanted to feel love, hurt, anger, and most of all loss.

If she wasn't sleeping, she was smoking, stick after stick that turned into packs then in cartons. Since she was alone, she didn't even feel the need to leave her room to smoke in the garage, not even bothering with an ashtray, she dropped her used cigarettes into any cup laying around her.

Her only companions were her thoughts, feelings, and memories. And they all had one common theme- REGRET. Even in her sleep, they consumed her, over and over again, in her mind she saw her husband walking out the door. In slow motion and from the corner of her eye, she saw him pause at the door, looking down and turning away. That was the last time the two were ever in the house together again. When she heard his car drive away, Sarah got up from her seat and ran down the hallway of her house past her kids rooms and straight into her bed. She could still smell his scent on his pillow, curling up into a ball on his side she let out the a primal cry, piercing the eerie silence in the house. And that has were she has been since then.

But today's visions were different, as she laid cocooned in her bedding, Sarah begged and pleaded with God to bring her back to the good old days. To send her back to before all the pain. Her begging turned into what sounded like chanting.

"Take me back, God, Take me back." she muttered under her breath, "It hurts too much, It hurts too much," she alternated, and every so often through her quiet sobbing "pleeeaaaaaazzzzeeee God."

"Sarah, baby, I missed you." her husband, Scott whispered in her ear, grabbing her from behind, kissing her neck.

Sarah was cooking dinner, and always made it a point to ignore the sound of the garage door, signifying Scott was home from work. She would pretend that she was so busy, she didn't know he had entered the house. From the creaking of the door that lead in from the garage, Sarah knew that his embrace was not to far away. She held her breath in anticipation- this was her favorite kiss from him, right when he got home.

"How was your day?" Sarah twisted her body around in his arms to face him while kissing him and hugging him back.

"'Mmmmmm, what's for dinner?"

"Your favorite," she answered. She knew everything she cooked for him was his favorite. Sarah spent her whole married life becoming the best cook for her husband.

"Great lets eat in bed," Scott answered still kissing her neck, then grabbing her hand to lead her to their bedroom.

"Scott, the kids, they are awake," pushing him away.

Just then their boys came running down the hallway, yelling "Daddy!" Scott bent down and hugged his three boys.

"Hey boys, how was your day?" he asked them.They proceeded to clamor on about what they had done all day. Angie their eldest daughter soon followed.

"Hey Dad." kissing and hugging him.

Scott turned to his family saying "I love coming home to you guys!"

The alarm clock rang again, it was seven am again, Sarah woke up thinking that the world was put back together, the way that it should be. She sat straight up, stretching , planning her day, take kids to school, work, pick up kids, dinner, and Scott was home. She screamed out to Angie to wake up for school. There was no answer. Sarah screamed from her room, "Angie wake up, time for school." After a few moments, Sarah got up to wrangle Angie out of bed. When she got to her daughter's room, it was empty. The bed looked like it hadn't been slept in, Sarah panic, ran down the hallway to her boys room, which she found to be just as Angie's empty.

It was at that moment when the fantasy that Sarah had woken up to started to melt away. Instead of the beautiful house she and Scott bought after years and years of living in apartments, she was standing in the middle of a rotting building, where the stench of week old garbage hung heavy in the air. She remember the fights, the screaming, the insults, and Scott looking down to the ground before he left. She remembered sending her kids to parents house because she couldn't manage to get out of bed to take care of them.
She remembered she was alone.

A sick nauseating feeling welled up in her insides, she ran to the bathroom throwing up nothing into toilet. The only thing leaving her body was more tears. Crawling out of the bathroom, Sarah found her way back to her bed, where she knew she could escape reality again. But before she would went back to sleep she grabbed her cigarettes and lit one stick up. Laying there she watched the tip of her cigarette burn cherry red, a thin line of smoke trailed upwards to the ceiling, curled a few times and disappeared.

It takes Sara seven and a half minutes to smoke a cigarette, for seven of those minutes she thought about her dream. She tried to remember Scott's kiss on her neck, his arms around her waist, most of all what it felt like not to hurt so much. What was it like to be pain free? How did her stomach feel without the anxieties?" What did her heart feel like before it was ripped out? She wondered if she could ever feel like that again, happy.

It was no use, she would never be there again. Nor could she escape the huge vacuum in her soul -- that is when she was awake. So she dropped another cigarette butt into a cup on her night stand, sunk back into the blankets, and fought to go back to sleep, it was only seven forty-five am.

The phone rang, early in the morning, Sarah threw a pillow over her head, she didn't feel like talking. All she wanted to do today was stay in that unconscious bliss. But the person on the phone had other plans, and it rang and rang and rang. Sarah let the answering machine answer it, but no one left a message. Again the phone continued to ring, throwing the pillow across the bed, she groggily sat up and felt around the sheets for her loud and annoying bed partner. The phone was by her feet, hurriedly she grabbed the phone, she answered.
"Hello," Sarah's voice was harsh and raspy, half asleep, she was still shocked by the own sound of her voice, she wondered when the last time she heard the sound of her voice.

"Sar, it's me, are you awake?" Her sister's voice sounded concerned.

"Um, yeah, I guess I am," Sarah fell backwards on the bed, into her soft pillow.

"I was just about to get up. How are you, Jessica?"

"Yeah, right," Jessica replied, "When was the last time you brushed your teeth?"

Cupping her mouth with her hand she blew her breath into it and attempted to smell it. "It's not that bad." She lied

"How are you today?"

"Shitty, how are you?"

Jessica ignored that statement. "So what are you plans today?"

"Just trying to get through it, without wanting to swallow any pills or slice my wrist. Sounds pretty productive to me." Rolling over to lay on her belly, her pillow tucked under her chest and chin.

"Well before you do that, maybe you should eat something, take a shower, brush your teeth. I maybe a hundred miles away, but I can smell you from here."

Smiling, Sarah answered, "You're gonna have to make me."

"You know if I didn't just have a baby, I would be right there, dragging your stanky ass out of bed and throwing you into the shower myself, you know what I might even just put a garden hose to you and the bad. That way I can get you out of the bed and you get clean at the same time." Jessica paused, "You know I want to be there for you right now, I love you Sar."

"Yeah, I know. I love you too," replied Sarah. "I wish you were here right now too."

"Okay, so your going to get out of bed, eat, take care of yourself, right?

"It hurts too much right now," Sarah started to breakdown again, sobs were dutifully getting in line in her chest, there were so many sobs waiting for release that Sarah couldn't stand the pressure.

"Am I that bad of a person? Am I that ugly both on the inside and outside, that Scott doesn't love me anymore?" Sarah fought through the tears, her voice sounded frantic.

"Scott's an fucking asshole," Jessica's voice was angry on the other line. "Need I remind you that he wasn't perfect, either. It wasn't just you, baby, he never loved you. Not the way that you deserved to be love."

There was only whimpering on the other end of the line.

"Sar! Are you there, can you hear me?" Jessica worriedly called across the phone.
" I fucked up."

"No you didn't."

"I fucked up, so miserably, Jessica, I can't fix it. I can't fix it" she managed to blurt out in between sobs.

"So you fucked up, who doesn't, you know what you did. Besides he's bringing up issues that you did ten years ago. Who's fucked up really, you or this so-called man, who uses your mistakes from a decade ago, to cover up the shit he's doing to you know. And now, he left you with four kids. You've begged him to go to marriage counseling, he says it's too late. He's just lazy and doesn't want to own up to his own shit." Jessica had worked herself up into anger. Yet, her voice did not change decibels or in tone.

"I fucked up and I can't fix it." was all Sarah could muster up.

"Did he not kiss your best friend in your own home, while you were sick in bed? Wasn't your kids sleeping in their rooms right down the hall from them?"

"Uh-huh."

"He said it was a mistake, but then don't forget the countless text messaging they did to each other in front of you. Or his email professing his love for her? Did you cause that?"

"No, but I blew up, I went crazy, I couldn't trust him, her, or even myself. What I did was worse, Jess, I slept around on him."

"How long ago was that?"

"It was fourteen years ago."

"You were how old?"

"Eighteen."

"And how old were you when you two married, and had Angie?" Jessica asked.

"Fifteen."

"You were a baby, and if I remember, you guys were constantly fighting, he controlled you, you were nothing but a financial obligation to him. He showed his love by what? Giving you a roof over your head, food, and all kinds of stuff. But was he ever loving to you? Did he treat you like you were a cherished person? No you were an item to him."

"It doesn't matter, what I did, was wrong…. I can't fix it Jess, I can't fix it." her voice trailed into inaudible sounds.

"You're right. What you did was wrong, but did you confess it to him? Did he forgive you. Did you stop what you were doing, so for twelve years you were faithful?"

"Yeah."

"So he strung you along for twelve years, you had two more babies, and then he axed you? Huh, sounds to me, like he has the problem not you." Jess stated.

"No, when I saw the kiss, the text messages, the email, and so much more. I went ballistic, I was a walking time bomb, I was scary. I lost it-- he didn't deserve my madness, my insane behavior. I can't fix it….." wailed Sarah.

"Was he honest to you? You don't even have to answer that, I know he wasn't. The reality that you were living in, was not the same warped fantasy that he created and wanted you to swallow. Every time you found out something new about them, he lied, he told you that you were crazy and paranoid. But what you saw and what he was trying to force feed you didn't match did it? Again, NO it didn't. You are not a stupid person, yet he treated you like it. Of course I'd go crazy too. Suppose you were walking around in the daylight and he kept telling you it was night. For awhile you'd argue about it, but then he kept telling you that you were wrong, you were crazy. He'd tell you, it was indeed night. Any person would crack under those circumstances, and it took you a year of arguing about his relationship with her before you ultimately lost it."

" Still, I fucked up."

"I know, baby, but today is not yesterday, today you're fucking up because you are laying around in your bed, in clothes you haven't changed in, like, forever, and mom has your kids." Jessica encouraged her.

"You haven't given up on you. Even though you keep trying, there's something deep down in your heart that won't let you. Do me a favor, at least brush your teeth."

"Kay," Sarah softly spoke.

"Sarah, I love you."

The phone beeped when she hit the end button, Sarah threw the phone across the room. She knew what her sister had said was right. But she would do anything, give anything to put her life back into order, even if she had to believe that day was night.

Burrowing her head into her pillows, the air was warm when she exhaled into the pillows. Because she hated breathing in warm air, she finally sat up, turned around and gasped for clean, new, cool air. She looked up at the ceiling and yelled, "Fine Jess, I am up."

She had lost so much weight, not eating or drinking, that Sarah didn't recognize her own face anymore. Her cheekbones protruded out and her cheek sunk in to her face. Worst yet, her once full lips, looked swollen and disgustingly red. She tried not to look at her face while she brushed her teeth. However, when she spit out the toothpaste it was brown from the residue of the cigarettes. This disgusted Sarah even more.

The house was a mess, there were toys, clothes, food, and trash everywhere. Which was the reason her mom took the kids over to her house. Having to jump or push stuff out of the way just to get to the kitchen, which was in worse shape than the rest of the house. Dishes piled high up to the ceiling. Containers of take out food had started to mold, and a whole army of roaches had taken up camp in her once beloved and gourmet kitchen.

After making her coffee, and deciding on not to decide what she was going to do for the day, she went back to bed, with her coffee cup and a fresh pack of cigarettes. Nothing on the tv interested her anymore. Many of her favorite shows were about married couples and it hurt too much to watch them. She no longer wanted to watch the Cooking channel, because since Scott left, there was no reason to cook extravagant meals anymore. Her only choices were the history channel, animal shows, talk shows about infidelity. She finally choose to watch ghost stories, it helped that fear of the supernatural helped her to ignore her fear of her reality.

When the show came to an end, Sarah feeling a little better, since this fear subsided her hurts, she went to find the phone she had hurled across the room and dialed her daughter's cell phone number.

"Mommy?" Angie answered. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah baby, I was feeling a little better, so I thought I'd call you, and see how
you and your brothers are doing." Sarah tried to sound happy.

"We are okay, here, but I miss your cooking. Can I come home now? I can take care of you. I miss you mom." Angie was holding back her tears, trying to sound like she was doing fine, even though she wasn't.

"I know hun, I miss you too, but I still don't feel good. It's best you stay there, that way Grandma can take care of you guys." Sarah told Angie.

"But mom, I am worried about you. I love you." cried Angie.

"I love you too. I'm doing okay here, I have my medicine and water next too me, I even ate a cup of noodle before I called you." She lied.

"Mom"

"Yeah, hun."

"Dad came over to talk to me." whispered Angie.

"What, when, what did he say to you?" Sarah was shocked.

"I tried to convince him not to divorce you, but Dad said he couldn't do it anymore. He said maybe if God willing you two might get back together someday, but he couldn't now."

"Ang, you don't have to talk to your dad about us. Just take care of you and your brothers right now, help Grandma,"

"He said that too, but he doesn't get that I am trying to help me and my brothers, our family is all we've known."

It was too much for Sarah to bear, she herself had said these same things to Scott, he didn't want to fix things, he wanted to be somewhere else. Sarah began to feel like she was falling again. She had to get off the phone. She told her daughter that she loved them very much, but that mommy was starting to feel yucky again.

Even with the coffee in her system, Sarah closed her eyes and went back to sleep. It was eleven o'clock in the afternoon. She had done everything her sister said to do, besides eat.

In her dreams, she kept seeing Scott and her friend kiss, over and over again, then the image would fade into Sarah, screaming and yelling, throwing things around the house. The face of her lovers from the past faded in and out. Her mind spun as the images of their last fight- Scott walking out.

She woke up startled by her own body twitching from her nightmare. She was sweaty and her mass of hair bundled itself into one big knot on the back of her head. Looking around her room, she saw that it had gotten very dark. Sitting there in the dark, she could almost feel Scott walking down the hallway. But it was too dark to tell. She yelled out to him, but there was no answer. And once the grogginess of her sleep fades, she remembered again that she was alone, but this time she was in the dark.

She laid back down on the bed, and whispered, "Marilyn, how did you find your way out of the dark?" She looked at the alarm clock which now shed a dim green light on the nightstand, there illuminated by the light sat her bottles of medicine. She knew how Marilyn found her way out.