The Mask…
As a child I use to write poems, stories, and journal entries about “the mask.” The mask was a display of who I showed the world I was, instead of the pain that was within. You can understand the pain I was in by my poems as a child/teenager more so than you could from the journal or stories I wrote. The mask was a large part of my poems and what I was supposed to display to others.
As a child, the baby of the family, I had to apologize for others wrong doings. Normally, the baby is the spoiled one, but I had quite the opposite experience. My 10 year older brother and 3 year older sister were extremely stubborn and my mother would often say, “be the bigger person” or “you know they won’t apologize.” Good in a sense but when you always have to apologize for everything you start to believe that something is wrong with you. That all things you do are wrong or bad.
I think in many ways, all children have this experience, but unfortunate for me being of the trauma I had endured during those years it assisted in my mental health disorder of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Pulling out my Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-V) a simple definition “is a pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity (p.645). Seems pretty normal and could really be characterized by almost any person, especially this day in age.
This is where further investigation comes in, the DSM-V goes into characteristics marked from 1-9 on p.663. If you have 5 or more of these characteristics you can meet the category of BPD. Why is this important? Well, 1) is frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. If you have read any of my previous posts you will see this is very much a contributing attribute throughout my life. My father to my previous best friend. I avoid the possibility of being abandoned by people by keeping people at arms distance. When you have been abandoned continuously throughout your life you create barriers (walls) to prevent that kind of hurt again.
Problem with this method is you deny yourself the possibility of a true and meaningful relationship. As you have potentially read in my previous writings I went through emotions in the past week about my previous best friend. I was at emotional mind (if you have never done DBT or CBT I highly suggest it), reacting to the circumstances that laid before me. I am currently working through the logical mind by going through the DSM-V and understanding these issues from BPD to eventually come to the middle of wise mind (look it up; its a balance of logic and emotion).
We normally go from one extreme to another so finding a balance is important. It may take people like myself a longer time to come to the middle of wise mind but the more we attempt the easier it will be until eventually it is our immediate response. Now I would say I had mastered this, especially at the beginning of the loss of my friendship with my best friend.
He was in a extremely new (3 days) relationship and he had come to me to tell me that the girl and him had spoken and she understands our friendship. This is where the rollercoaster started, very easy and well paced. The following day he informs me that they spoke until 6am about our friendship. I knew that this was a clue to the dismantling of our friendship. In 4 days time he had already contemplated my worth to be in his life. As I mentioned in previous writings this is the first thing I tell anyone in a new relationship because if they have an issue with my best friend being an ex they need to tell me immediately.
However, two relationships said it was fine when it in fact was not fine. One had wanted to replace him as my go to, which is understanding but he thought in 2 months he could build something that took my best friend and I (at the time) nearly 2 years to build. At this time I did not have a diagnosis. I could not explain why trust was difficult for me nor how impossible it was to replace a fixture that helped me during a sexual assault and me needing to find the courage to remove myself from a toxic family.
Another previous relationship, still to this day (literally texted me today about this), has told me he didn’t trust my best friend and felt he used me. He recently started talking with me and I made sure he was well-informed a relationship was out of the question. Of course, he stated that’s not a problem and insisted on telling me about his issues with my former best friend. To me that sounds like he has not let go of the past and still hopes something will flourish and I plan on sticking with that gut instinct.
Back to my best friend, another two days later he said in 2 sentences he needed to distance himself from me. I was hurt, extremely hurt. I analyzed this as two possible reasons for such a short amount of information as he either couldn’t careless about me or it hurt too much to say anymore. Now I am replaying this as I have stated I have abandonment issues so I am attempting to make sense of it to learn and grow as it is a necessity to open myself up to others in the future.
A couple of days went by and he came over saying that she broke up with him. I am certain she has massive trust issues herself but I fear her trust issues would go beyond anything I would ever do to anyone. As I keep my distance, at arms length, with my true emotions. I believe she is the type to need control over an individual which is extremely unhealthy.
They get back together the same day and it is goodbye to our friendship. This happens, I believe, two more times. The last time was him stating he would be there for me if I needed him since I was in the hospital for stomach issues. When I reached out to him the next day, because I was having suicidal thoughts, he stated he was with her. In other words he couldn’t talk because this person who just invaded his life was literally more important than my actual life. Granted he didn’t know my reasoning for calling, although he knows I only call multiple times in an extreme state.
Point is, abandonment. 2) A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. What does this mean? Well, you have been seeing it before your eyes through my journal entries. Even in the pervious statement of “either couldn’t careless about me or it hurt too much to say anymore.” The first being the devaluation, the second the idealization.
Two extremes of a spectrum. The devaluation is the protection of myself. Its easy to say that someone that does love you, but loves you in their love language (The 5 Love Languages is a great book that I highly recommend for those with relationship issues) doesn’t love you at all. This is a coping mechanism. Easier to think they don’t love you than to know they love you but need to do what is best for them. Kind of like what I had to do with my family. Although their toxicity of love is extreme.
This goes back to many of my friendships and other relationships. Again, this is also something many people do to make themselves feel better, its when a collection of 5 or more attributes fit an individual that diagnoses BPD. 3) Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
This one is difficult because many people define themselves through their age/sex/live/talents etc. The self-image can be self-worth or self-esteem, your value in the world and to yourself. A sense of self is the ability to lose yourself and forget who you are altogether often changing from different extremes. This one I am more familiar with because it relates more to my everyday issues. My recent thoughts of suicide stemmed from having abdominal issues since January and not being able to self-sustain myself with financials due to not being able to work. I went to the hospital and refused to leave until they figure it out. I have been told I have pelvic inflammatory disease, UTI’s, Yeast infection, IBS, GERD, and from that recent visit chronic pelvic pain.
At my wits end, feeling it will never be figured out/diagnosed and I would be in consistent pain I didn’t want to live anymore. 7 months of financial woes, being told each doctor visit was going to be $89 to $120 per visit which I couldn’t afford to continue to see the doctors, and still not having a diagnosis. I didn’t want to live like that and I feared going home because of what my, at the time, only choice was. I wanted to call my best friend more than anything but knew he couldn’t be there for me. That caused me greater pain.
I was going to commit myself because I didn’t know what else to do so I called the non-emergency number to find out where I should go. Afterwards, I took 5-15 minutes (time flies by in that state) to call my long time friends wife. She talked to me and said she will be over after work. I’m not heartless I could never have someone that I know find me in death, it would have to be an emergency response person. I couldn’t think of causing someone that cares about me the trauma of seeing me dead.
I called my physicians office next, thinking I need to be put back on anti-depressants stat. Even though they take time (3 weeks) at least the action would give me hope of feeling better later down the road. Now, this is a new physician since my last doctor has twice stopped refilling my anti-depressants and I didn’t want to have to deal with that again so I changed doctors. I had only seen them once and the Family Nurse Practitioner on duty must have overheard the ladies at the desk and immediately picked up the phone. She truly was wonderful and was my last phone call before feeling well enough to go home without too many worries of self-harm. She even said they will do payment options of me because my health was more important which even right now makes me want to cry, never mind it actually is making me cry. My life mattered to my friends wife and this FNP. The non-emergency people are a different story (I called hours later to inform them of the unprofessionalism of the caller and luckily I didn’t have the pills in hand because her response I would have done it right then and there).
Point is, my self-image is stemmed from having a kid. I was going for my doctorate up until January because I wanted to have a kid and be able to home-school so I could be a at-home professor. I bought my house to have a kid grow up in a home. I did these things for this imaginary child I want to bring in this world. Having pains, not being diagnosed, lead that self-image to plummet to what it is today. I don’t know if I will ever get to have a kid so what was it all for? That number 3 identity disturbance, that’s a big one.
Continued…