Who am I?

I'm a writer, but I don't write anymore.

I'm one of the people who get depressed and get a writer's block that even the strongest anti-depressants can't pull me out of.

I'm starting this blog in hopes that I'll actually stick to it and write in it regularly, but I never stick to maintaining blogs. I start a blog and write a couple posts, and then I just stop because I have no attention span.

I'm 25. I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere near the panhandle of Oklahoma. My high school graduating class had 28 in it. Today I live in Oklahoma City and am about to celebrate my third wedding anniversary with my husband.

The most important aspect, or so it seems at this point in time, of my personality is that I am suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder. You may have heard of my afflition while watching "Girl Interrupted" or "Fatal Attraction" which both had lead characters suffering from the disorder. While I've never watched "Fatal Attraction," I have seen "Girl Interrupted," and I don't think the public portrayal of the disorder shows we victims in a positive manner.

Growing up, I was never really a child. My mom always said I was a little adult because I always entertained myself and didn't really play with toys too much. Because of a traumatic relationship with a father who was verbally abusive and sometimes physically abusive, I did not learn how to be happy, and I sure didn't learn what it was like to be truly loved. My parents' marriage was beyond rocky, and my bedroom shared a thin wall with theirs. I would be waken up in the middle of the night all the time for years because I could hear them fighting. I could hear my dad yell horrible things at her and make her feel like less of a person just to make himself feel better. I always suspected that he had physically abused her at least a little over the years, but I never witnessed or overheard anything like that, but when my younger brother and I were getting beaten, I knew we weren't the only ones. I grew up believing that marriage and relationships in general were a prison. I watched my mom stay in her prison-like marriage for 22 years before she finally decided to leave with my brother and our dog in tow. (They were married for 26 years, but I was only alive for 22 of them).

"Numerous studies have shown a strong correlation between childhood abuse and development of (Borderline Personality Disorder. Many (but not all) individuals with BPD report having had a history of abuse, neglect, or separation as young children. Patients with BPD have been found to be significantly more likely to report having been verbally, emotionally, physically, and sexually abused by caretakers of either gender. They were also much more likely to report having caretakers (of both genders) deny the validity of their thoughts and feelings. They were also reported to have failed to provide needed protection, and neglected their child's physical care. Parents (of both sexes) were typically reported to have withdrawn from the child emotionally, and to have treated the child inconsistently."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder

Growing up in an abusive environment, you become an "emotional casulty" as a psychologist recently told me. I learned to manipulate and be a convincing liar early in life so I could basically trick my abusive father into laying off me for a while.

I wasn't diagnosed until just recently with Borderline. The majority of Borderlines aren't diagnosed correctly for a long time. I have been treated for depression, depression plus anxiety, depression plus insomnia, etc. since I was 16, but it wasn't until I was at a garage sale a little while back and saw the book, "I hate you, Don't leave me" that I realized I had Borderline. I bought the book for a quarter, and I honestly think it has saved my life. I read through the book through the 9 criteria of Borderline, and by God, I matched all 9 perfectly. It said that someone only had to match 5 to be diagnosed with it, and I had all 9. Luckily I have the best doctor in the world, and when I went to him and said, "I match all 9 criteria, I have Borderline" he actually listened to me. It's been a very rocky couple months since the day I said that to the doctor.

I'm now taking an anti-depressant (Lexapro), a mood stabilizer/anti-seizure med (Depakote), and sleeping medicine (Ambien) to cope with the insane disorder that I almost certainly can attribute to my abusive father. Depakote has some really nasty side effects ... I'm hungry all the time, so I'm gaining weight like crazy. I'm constantly queasy, and it gets even worse when I have dairy products, am driving, or am in the heat. CrazyMeds.com, which I'm not at all sure I can trust, even says that there were two really bizarre cases where Depakote caused a flesh-eating disorder, but I doubt the relability of those claims. It also says the med can cause breast enlargement, which I'm still eagerly awaiting. :)


So what is Borderline Personality Disorder?

People who are diagnosed with borderline personality disorder have at least five of the following symptoms. They may:

1. Make frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
2. Have a pattern of difficult relationships caused by alternating between extremes of intense admiration and hatred of others.
3. Have an unstable self-image or be unsure of his or her own identity.
4. Act impulsively in ways that are self-damaging, such as extravagant spending, frequent and unprotected sex with many partners, substance abuse, binge eating, or reckless driving.
5. Have recurring suicidal thoughts, make repeated suicide attempts, or cause self-injury through mutilation, such as cutting or burning himself or herself.
6. Have frequent emotional overreactions or intense mood swings, including feeling depressed, irritable, or anxious. These mood swings usually only last a few hours at a time; rarely, they may last than a day or two.
7. Have long-term feelings of emptiness.
8. Have inappropriate, fierce anger or problems controlling anger. The person may often display temper tantrums or get into physical fights.
9. Have temporary episodes of feeling suspicious of others without reason (paranoia) or losing a sense of reality.

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/tc/Borderline-Personality-Disorder-Symptoms

So how do I fit the critera? Well that's a long story, but I'll condense it all the best I can:

1. I freak out whenever I feel like someone is "leaving" me. In my past and current relationships I have always done anything and everything to stop a break-up. One ex-boyfriend told me that he was going through depression himself and couldn't handle sex at the time, so he wanted to stop having sex for a while, and instead of being supportive, I thought that was his way of dumping me, so I told him I'd just go get sex from somewhere else in an attempt to make him jealous and manipulate him into staying with me. (Yeah I know, sounds stupid now, but at the time I thought it was the thing to do). During a fight with my husband over a year ago, I let him think I swallowed a bunch of pills to get him to stop packing up his stuff and sit down and talk to me.

2. My relationships have been rocky to say the least. All of them alternate between extreme "love" and extreme dislike (I hesitate to say hate because I don't think I ever really hated any of the ex's no matter how much I wanted to). I have always had a pattern of breaking up with someone and getting back together with him over and over and over again. The one "major" relationship I had before meeting my husband included a series of breakups and makeups that spanned about three years. We'd be together, and we'd split up for whatever reason. We'd both hook up with random other people and really dislike each other until one day something would happen and we'd decide to give it another shot. My marriage has been like that too, and I'm really struggling to figure out how to get out of that pattern. Just this past weekend, we fought and he left again, but that only lasted a couple days. I have a strong tendenancy to push and push him away until we break and then beg him to stay whenever he does either leave or get ready to leave.

3. I have a horrible self-image. I always have, and I'm sure that stems from childhood abuse in which I was told that I wasn't worth anything. And of course, I'm in this everlasting identity crisis, as shown by the title of this post. I have no idea who I am, and I'm desparately trying my hardest to find myself.

4. Self-damaging behaviors ... hmm where do I start? I've suffered from eating disorders for a long time. Sometimes I get depressed and I eat to fill the void, as overeaters say, and then other times I starve myself. I go back and forth, torturing myself with food or a lack of food. I remember one night during my junior year of college, when I was in the middle of starving myself for months when I had gotten so bad I was so hungry that I was "starving." I decided I wanted to eat a cracker, and I took two small bites, and I felt full, so I stopped eating it. I had starved myself so bad, that two bites of a cracker made me feel full even though I hadn't eaten in at least 24 hours. Substance abuse is something I haven't done a lot of really (well not compared to others my age), but I did have a drinking problem for a while in college, and I drank and drank and drank to "drown" my problems. Reckless driving isn't the worst of my risky behaviors, but there's been many times when I have gotten behind the wheel when I shouldn't have. Even this past Sunday, in an overdose-induced craziness, I drove with my husband in the car and hit a curb when I ran off the road to the right. Risky sex is something I'm guilty of to some extent also (again not as bad as some others my age). I have had sex with a total of six men in my life, and I did sexual activities with all but one of these people on the day I met them. I was stupid and had unprotected sex too many times, and I regret everything I did before my husband came along, but I do know it could have been much worse.

5. My first suicide attempt was on April 11, 1996, when I was 12 and in the sixth grade. I tried to overdose on painkillers. I just passed out and woke up about six hours later. I also tried to drown myself several times during that summer, but I really didn't know what I was doing. There hasn't been any more attempts since I was 12, but I've thought about it so many times. I know in the end, I just can't do that to my mother. It would hurt her so bad. I spent years in my youth as a cutter. I'd cut to escape my own head. I thought I had overcome that (with the exception of thinking about it sometimes) until recently when I had a overdose-induced relapse.

6. My God, the mood swings. That's the worst thing I think for everyone around me. One minute I can seem fine, but then I can be bouncing off the walls hyper a couple minutes later, then become so anger I scream and hit walls, then get so depressed I sit down and cry, and then go back to seeming fine. I feel sorry for my friends, co-workers, family members, and most importantly my husband because no one knows how I'm going to be from day to day, minute to minute.

7. Overall my anger wasn't a big problem until the last year & a half. Sure I'd get upset and angry as a teen and in my early 20s, but normally I could stay calm. Now I hit walls, scream, kick, throw stuffed animals across the room, etc. whenever I get pissed. One of my co-workers recently told me she could almost literally see steam coming out my ears when I got angry at work.

8. I get paranoid about stupid stuff like when someone isn't really talking to me much for whatever reason. I start freaking out thinking I did something or they're hiding something and so on. I'll come up with some possible explanation for the person not talking to me and convince myself it's real (i.e. loss of reality).