Tuesday 23 March 2010

Borderline between what and what?

"Have you ever confused a dream with life?
Or stolen something when you had the cash?
Have you ever been blue?
Or thought your train moving whilst sitting still?
Maybe I was just crazy, maybe it was the 60's
or maybe I was just a girl, interrupted"
- Girl, Interrupted

I am just about through with dealing with so-called mental heath professionals. I'm thinking of writing to someone with power but I don't know anybody and no-one will listen to me because, two years at the age of twenty, some quack decided to bang a label on me that does nothing but create stigma, alienation and unfair treatment.

I am talking of course about those hideous three words that should be burned out of every single DSM handbook.

Borderline Personality Disorder.

The diagnosis (unlike, say, Schizophrenia or Major Depression) is pejorative.

It means that the patient is difficult to deal with, he's angry or demanding, asks for different treatment or doesn't react to treatment, stands up for themselves and is therefore PROJECTING. It also means that they are probably a twenty something female.

MEN ARE HARDLY EVER GIVEN THIS DIAGNOSIS.

Why not? Why is it just young girls that get this? Because it's more socially acceptable for men to act in a 'borderline way', far more acceptable for them to binge drink or drive recklessly or sleep with more than one person. Or because a lot of the 'impusive' behaviours the criteria mentions are actually quite 'normal female things' like going on spending sprees and eating binges.

Eating binges. Yes. FOOD. Despite the fact that not all that ago you were anorexic to the point of near death, it means nothing anymore. And the reasons for it are left unsaid, or else paced off as just a 'part of the puzzle.' That is complete bullshit. I saw TOP CONSULTANTS who were more than happy with my explanation for my ED, and not one little bit of it had anything to do with 'borderline traits' but rather a nice little mix of genetics and all the cliched ED bullshit you can go read in 'The Best Little Girl in The Word' or Heaven forbid 'Girls Under Pressure', where everything is always alright in the end because suddenly we see that we are GOOD AT LIFE and eat pizza and drink full fat Coke and generelly never speak of the whole sorry buisness again.
But anyway, charging onwards!

Treatment-wise things aren't any better. A lot of people give up because genrelly the prognostic implications are not that great and these 'borderlines' don't dramatically get better despite what they will claim as 'numerous efforts'. Their numerous efforst tend to only be one or two, though, although they would never admit to it. They will offer you DBT as 'the last hope' despite the fact that it is merely a sticking plaster, a cover, that makes everything look nice on the outside. Oh, you don't cut yourself anymore, how beautiful, you must be feeling bloody marvellous.

Well no, actually Dr Quack, I have a slight issue with the shit you can't be bothered to sort out, or are the years of analysis it would take just too much of an expense? Too much money to shed out on these manipulative, angry, demanding young women. The diagnosis ends up being it's own endpoint, it doesn't leave room for alternate explanations or else they just fade into the background and we're left to call them Borderlines.

Victimised. Stigmatised by the mental health profession, not by your average Joe on the street.

And finally, just one more thing, surely the first rule of any professional relationship (excluding hookers)

DO NOT EVER FUCKING SHOUT AT YOUR CLIENTS.

Sunday 14 March 2010

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind quotes

" I still thought you were going to save me. Even after that."
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

"Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating."

"Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?"

"I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to make them alive, but I'm just a fucked up girl who is looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours."

"The plane crashed. I didn't crash the plane."

"Sometimes I don't think people realize how lonely it is to be a kid."

"My God, there's people coming out of your butt."

"Look, I'm sorry if I came off a little nutso, I'm not really."

"Look man, I'm telling you right off the bat I'm high maintenance. So I'm not gonna tip-toe around your marriage or whatever it is ya got goin' on there. If you wanna be with me, you're with me."

"My embarrassing admission is I really like that you're nice, right now."

"I'm a vindictive little bitch, truth be told!"

"So, I'm eight, and I have these toys, these dolls. My favorite is this ugly girl doll who I call Clementine, and I keep yelling at her, "You can't be ugly! Be pretty!" It's weird, like if I can transform her, I would magically change, too."

Tuesday 9 March 2010

Ooh baby, baby it's a wild world. It's hard to get by just upon a smile.

"Every window on Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco."
- 'Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

I sit around at night not able to sleep, thinking of a million things I want to write untill it feels like my head will explode if I don't and then I come to do it and there's nothing there. If writing did shit I'd be cured by now, or maybe I'm just crap at it. It's not just the old self-doubt, that would be too nice, it's like I have to force believe that I am crap at it. GIVE UP. But I know I never will because although I want validation, deep down I do it for myself. I NEED it. In the way that people need air and food and water I need words to come out of me because if they don't then I don't exist. And it's bloody hard to constantly be creative that sometimes I just sit down and write a fucking torrent of what ever's going on in my head. You probably hate me for it, I know I hate myself. It triggers that whole too much debate. You're taking up too much space. I get that after an unspecified amount of time being loud and fun and all those other things, I get the too much voice and then I just go back into myself and don't go out and talk and socialise. I don't know which side is the real me, not that it would make any difference.

Maybe I should bitch about how crap everybody seems to be treating me. You go to hospital and get forty stitches but you get let out the next day. No big deal really is it? They ask if I tried to kill myself and I say do, because I didn't, and that's that. To be honest I would give anything to be outright suicidal. That's so much easier to explain, so much more likely to get taken seriously. But no, I'm a borderline, we manipulate people, when we say we want to die that really means GIVE US MORE ATTENTION. Bollocks. I don't want fucking attention, I want action, they're not the same thing. But anyway, back to the suicide thing, it's much harder to explain to people that you just don't care one way or the other. I'm alive. I'm dead. No difference. Don't especially like either option. I guess lining up fifty asprin and spending the morning taking them would be one way of accomplishing something, not that I would, but I might, but I wouldn't. The dead don't suffer and by God I need, want, deserve to suffer.

It's so easy when you don't sleep to think of every stupid thing you've ever done. All the people you've fucked over by being you. This poisonious, terrible thing that seeps through people's lives and destroys them. But they don't understand that it's only because you deserve it, you want their contempt, when you are walking down the street you are aching for some stranger to yell something at you, to hit you. You know people will end up hating you and leaving you anyway so you make it easy. I hate you but please don't leave me. I love you oh my God you're the greatest person I've ever met two weeks later they're gone and you secretly want to kill them. The angry heart,

You feel so violent all the time, in shops you want to smash displays, you want to hit people on the bus who are talking too loudly. It's not really because you hate them but just because the colours and the noise are bothering you. Red doesn't stay red, patterns change, faces come out of walls, your own thoughts come out of the mouths of the old women chatting on the bus. You cry for no reason except every reason. You're not sad but something's missing, you're just empty.

You laugh when you think back to how you used to cut yourself. Now it's useless unless you need stitches and a blood transfusion. You want the real fucking damage, not some 'release'.

The only reason you're still awake is because you're terrified of sleep. It's bad enough having nightmares of things that have happened to you, but things that haven't, or things that maybe have that you don't remember, how fucking terrifying would that be.

But none of this matters, really. Because it's just your personality. You're not mentally ill, you're just a faulty item that you've lost the receipt for. Back to the whole suicide debate then if that's the case, and this is it, forever, then why not just end it? Or why not drop the act and go out there and be completely fucking mental. Scream at the people who are talking too loudly. Smash the walls that won't keep still. Swap food for vodka and night for day.

Because for some bizarre reason you actually think you're worth something more. Do you really? Stop bullshitting yourself. You're completely unloveable. You're FAT. You're ugly.

And by the way, your poetry sucks.

Wednesday 3 March 2010

28 Days quotes

"Don't be someone else's slogan because you are poetry."
- 28 Days

"If that will make you happy, I will stop drinking. And then I would tell myself tonight I will not get wasted. And then something would happen. Or nothing would happen. And I'd get that feeling and you all know what that feeling is; when your skin is screaming and your hands are shaking and your stomach feels like it wants to jump through your throat. And you know that if anyone had a clue how wrong it felt to be sober, they wouldn't dream of asking you to stay that way. They would say oh geez, I didn't know. It's okay for you. Do that mound of cocaine. Have a drink. Have 20 drinks. Whatever you need to do to feel like a normal human being, you do it. And boy I did it. I drank and I snorted. I drank and snorted. I drank and snorted. And I did this day after day, day after day, night after night. I didn't care about the consequences because I knew they couldn't be half as bad as not using. And then one night something happened. I woke up. I woke up on a sidewalk and I had no idea where I was. I couldn't have told you what city I was in. And my head was pounding and I looked down and my shirt is covered in blood. And as I'm lying there wondering what happens next and I heard a voice. And it said man, this is not a way to live. This is a way to die."

"Tonight's lecture: How many brain cells did I kill last night?"

"Tonight's lecture: I've walked all 12 steps; Can I go home now?"

"I'll buy running shoes. We'll take up yoga or jogging. You know, we'll be organized. Pay our bills, floss our teeth. We won't set fire to the apartment anymore. I'll buy a goldfish, and we'll be like normal people."

"Tonight's lecture: Are you a blackout drunk, or don't you remember?"

"Well of coursre you don't feel fine, you're in deliverance country surrounded by a bunch of sober freaks!"

"Everybody hurts everybody it's the human condition!"

"No one adult human being is happy! People are born, they have a limited amount of time going around thinking life is dandy but then, inevitably, tragedy strikes and they realise life equals loss! The whole point of the game is to minimise the pain caused by that equation! Now some people do it by having kids, or making money, or taking up coin collecting, and others do it by getting wasted."

"Even a pain in the ass needs someone to take care of them."

[after Andrea has cut herself]
Andrea: Just so you know, I wasn't trying to off myself or anything.
Gwen: Okay.
Andrea: It's just something I do sometimes.
Gwen: Doesn't it hurt?
Andrea: Feels better.
Gwen: Than what?
Andrea: Everything else.

Gwen: [Breaking down] I'm sorry I make it impossible for you to love me.
Lily: [Consoling her] Oh, Gwen, you make it impossible for me not to love you.

"Yeah, you're an individual. The only person in the world who uses drugs and alcohol."

"Is that available stitched on a pillow somewhere?"

"Yeah, I know I drink a lot, I know I do because I'm a writer and that's what I do, I drink. I'm not like those people out there, I can control myself! I can, if - that - if I wanted to, I could, if I wanted. I can! I can!"

"Tonight's lecture: "What's wrong with celebrating sobriety by getting drunk?""

Gwen, you make it impossible to love you.

"Oh, God. I'm sorry. You sang "Lean on Me" a few times. The stupidest freaking cheesy song ever. Oh well, my mistake. You must know about leaving rehab better than anyone."

"I am having a bad day! The worst damn day of my whole damn life! If it is not too much to ask will you all just back the fuck off!"