Lows are low, Highs are high

My moods, have been in major fluxuation. I’ve noticed this pattern before. Often, actually. I’ll slowly slide down. Work myself up with anxiety, with actually sinks me further until one day I have a complete breakdown, massive anxiety attack, or temporary distortion of my reality. Bottom out. Utterly. Then the next day I’m up in a way that I haven’t felt like in ages. My mood is more optimistic, my energy is ramped up, the sun is brighter, the sky bluer… and I can ride this for a few days.

I was ready to give up my life and lifestyle, everything I’ve worked towards… two nights ago. Today I’m renewed. I’m tackling problems and projects one thing at a time. I have plans for what I can do to get the information I need. Plans to further my knowledge and increase my proficiency. I feel like I have the ability to get the work done that I need to do.  I might not know everything yet, but I have the capability to get it. And I will. It’ll just take some time. Time, time, who’s got the time? I need more of it, but not in a projected sense. More of it right on top of the time I already have now. Overlapping experience.  Time on top of time on top of I want to do so much more at once than one limited body is capable of.

With just the barest twinges of anxiety lurking around the edges of my consciousness.

Everything feels hyper focused too. The sun is brighter. Peoples voices are more focused. My thoughts are racing a little faster. It feels like information, ideas, to-dos, are bouncing off each other inside my mind vying for priority.

Everything is starting to feel a little rushed too. I have so much I want to do, that I have to spread it out over time in order to accomplish it… is an angle of anxiety. Like things can’t be collected fast enough. I can see exactly how all these things will fall together, I know what I need to do to get them, if only I could rush faster, push harder, I could have all of them already and then things would slip to place. That time seems so far away, like I can almost touch it with my fingertips but then I have to reach for something in a different direction. I just can’t get there fast enough because I know there are so many steps I have to take first and those first steps don’t flow fast enough.  Fast enough. I want things to move faster. Faster. That they don’t makes me anxious. But not debilitating anxious, motivating anxious.

I want another one of me. With a connected consciousness so that my other body and this body can both collect more information and coalesce the results inside one mind. That would be optimal. Much more efficient. Having only one body, being able to only do one thing at a time is frustrating. Frustrating. I want to be there already. Yesterday, actually.  

I feel slightly like I’m floating to project myself in so many directions.

But, upwards! Haha, and that’s better than downwards any day.

There’s just so much I want to do! I’m motivated and productive at work. Things that pull my attention away are actually disconcerting because there’s so much I want to accomplish and figure out. I want to be home; reading, writing, painting. Did I mention I started painting? I’ve never done it before in my life so last Friday I went to the craft store and bought a set of acrylics and brushes. It’s fun and freeing, playing with color and texture. There’s just so much to do at any given time. So much, so much.

It’s so lovely out as well.

This is actually something I worry about being on mood stabilizers. They stabilize from the bottom up so you don’t feel so depressed, but they also stability from the top down, dampening the good. I don’t have so much good that I want to squash that side of it. Especially since I’m starting to see someone new. I want to feel the highs that could come of it. Seem to be coming of it. I don’t want my moods to be mottled by medicine when I see an ok place.  I want to be receptive to all the good! I want to throw myself in and ride the wave of newness and excitement. I want, I want.

Lots to want. Lots to do. Lots to hope for.  

Bordering on crazy at the Con



Sith Twi’lek



This past weekend was my Sci-Fi Convention. I’m a complete and utter geek. This has been established. I am unabashedly geeky.  Saturday was kind of ridiculous. Got to the Con around 10am. Friend and I were doing our Star Wars thing. Dark Lord/Lady of the Sith. He is my Master, I’m his apprentice. Think of it like Darth Sidious and Darth Vader. Sidious is the Master. Vader is the apprentice. Anyways, we have our own personas, not some pre-fabricated existing Star Wars characters. I have no awkwardness about Friend anymore. Well, mostly. I still can’t watch him being cute with the wife. It’s just uncomfortable. But she wasn’t around for our day/night so it wasn’t a problem. My costume came out really, really well. This was supported by the fact that I could not go 5 feet without someone stopping me, or me and Friend, to take pictures. I was approached by at least 5 professional photographers, one of which wanted to do a photo shoot with me in the future. Neat. This was amusing, until it wasn’t. I just wanted to check stuff out and maybe buy some things (which I didn’t b/c the dealers floor sucked this year). Ran into a creepy club guy I knew, I wanted to smack him. Ran into a guy that I can only tolerate for about 5 minutes, but he KEPT talking, wanted to throttle him. By the time late evening rolled around I was starting to panic with the shear amount of people that wouldn’t leave me be. Friend and I hid in an auditorium during panel just to escape the hoard. After this I took off, could no longer deal with the crush of the crowd. Too much fluxuation is exhausting. I even managed to Control my dysmorphia. This I feel, is one of my biggest accomplishments this weekend. All in all though, a very successful experience.

The next day I mellowed out the costuming to something pretty and cute. Did a 50’s style rockabilly swing dress with thigh highs with a back seam. Admittedly I did this to tease Friend. It’s a fetish of his and I intentionally hit his buttons to amusing effect. Especially since he knew I had probably gotten these for him when we were actually messing around. Which I did. Watching him squirm, not be able to touch gave me a little spike of pleasure every time I caught him looking. I’m mean, maybe a little manipulative. Idk. Call it what you will. We actually had a really nice day lounging about and talking with people we knew.

Until the karmic retribution kicked in. I was sitting around the lobby with all my closer friends. By the end of the Con and break down was starting who do I see? Boring-ex. This in itself wasn’t bad. He’s completely forgettable and uninteresting to me. I ignored him. What made me a little mad was, the only reason he would have volunteered to work the Con would be to poke at me. This was the first year I hadn’t volunteered for the Con (I always volunteer because I am friends with everyone that runs it). He never even went, vehemently disliking it, until I dragged him to it last year where he still didn’t have a good time and actively complained about the volunteer director. He was working where I always did. It was obviously to bother me b/c. I fought the urge to lash out and tell him how dick he was. I was more pissed at the lady that let him volunteer, because she knew he was my ex. The stupid thing was, I didn’t really care. I just wanted to flip out. He was being a dick, intentionally poking at me, trying to bother me, which it really didn’t and I still wanted to smash his head into the ground. But hey, maybe he’s had a change of heart and loves the Con and isn’t a wacky boring stalker? What did bother me… was seeing Evil-Ex. I knew he’d probably be here, but miraculously hadn’t seen him. It was only about an hour before I was going to leave so I’d completely relaxed figuring it was safe. Nope. I haven’t seen him in over a year. Not since I moved out of our house. I don’t think it was the seeing him, so much as I was taken completely by surprise and not prepared for it. My stomach jumped into my throat and I needed to get out. (Friend) Good, relaxed, almost happy even (I’m honestly not sure I know what this feels like), (B-ex) annoyed, wrath, amusement, indifference, (E-ex) panic, nauseous, panic, anger, (myself) revulsion, anger at myself for letting him get to me, depressed… all in the span of about 15 minutes. Not together mind  you. I don’t do emotions simultaneously. I cycle, rapidly. One to another. I left, grabbed my wine, and went to Friends to not be alone. Curled up on his couch, depressed, binged at dinner, vomited immediately after, curled back up with my drink until it was time to go home and go to bed. It’s so hopeless sometimes.

What amused me was I had dreams with Boring-ex in them last night: We were at some house together. He was doing work. I was ignoring him. We kept our distance. He kept inching closer though. Doing that thing where you want to make someone aware of your presence to inspire a reaction, but not interact. I noted him there, but went about whatever. Finally I was sitting on the couch drawing and he sat right next to me. Crossed his leg which made him hit my drawing pad. I lost my shit. Screaming, completely enraged. Wrath personified: Which is exactly what I wanted to do earlier that day and repressed the urge. My subConscious said no, you needed to do this. Not just needed to. FUCKING needed to. That’s what I get for repressing my urges. They come out anyways and disrupt me when I’m resting.

Along these lines, I’m actually getting sick of my medication. I know it’s supposed to help me Control myself. In general I haven’t been having such extreme mood swings. Not that I haven’t still been cycling, and exceptionally angry, but not so explosive.  The alcohol and the bulimic crap don’t speak well for my impulsiveness though. I can’t seem to get ahold on those. Meh. I just can’t tell how much the meds help me. When I’m fine, I’m fine and maybe it’s the meds. But when I’m not, I still do the stuff I’m supposed to be fixing. I know there’s no quick fix for this. It’s going to take a long time. A lot of work. It’s hard to see so far down the road when I’m so stuck in the right now.

Edit: Just found out I’m in one of the local papers for my Sith costume! Neat. I am really proud of how it came out. Especially since I made 90% of it by hand.

Bordering on Wakefulness

I have a terrible time sleeping. Not that this should surprise any of you dear readers, as it’s something I complain about a lot. I’ve had sleep problems, probably sleep disorders, since I was very young. Though I was never treated for it (until recently) I self-diagnosed my own insomnia. All through my teenage years, into college, and periodically still, I’ve had it. Sleeping maybe 1-3 hours a night for weeks on end, then finally crashing for 14-16 hours one day only to repeat the cycle over and over. I’ve been much better than this over the last few years, though certainly not great.

When I don’t get enough sleep, I’m a mess. More of a mess than usual. General fatigue aside; I can feel my mind dragging itself down. My moods shifts, swings more than usual. Concentration is nearly impossible and I slip into daydreams trying to replace the night dreaming I don’t get enough of. My mood is very dependent on sleep. The longer the span of sleep deprivation I have the darker my moods and thoughts begin to get.

I can feel the pressure on the back of my eyes, trying to hold themselves open. My vision distorted by the fatigue I feel. Seeing things differently, especially myself, than I know appear in the real.

Time slips by slowly. The clock ticking endlessly as I wait to for my day to terminate.

My ability to distinguish between the rational and the irrational is obvious. At least it is to me. I can’t help it though. I can’t stop it. All I can do is hope that tonight I find some relief from the restlessness induced by the evening before.

My mind starts roaming and racing, creating scenarios and running away with me. Once my brain starts whirring, working itself up, it’s that much harder to ease myself in a calmer state conducive to restful sleep. I may be physically and mentally exhausted when I lay down, but as soon as I start thinking, my mental activity starts running a marathon and there is no slowing it down.

I love to dream. Dreaming is a wonderful escape for me. Wildly vivid, living a life filled with the fantastic. When I’m sleep deprived, the few hours I do manage to sleep, I seem to be more prone to nightmares. Even in these I’m fascinated by what my subconscious creates, but they only contribute to my fatigue. Causing me to waken frequently. Often in a cold sweat. Heart pounding. Which only makes it more difficult for me to fall back to slumber. Then when my alarm finally sounds I can barely pull myself out of bed. Slipping into deeper depression.

I’ve found very little research done on the correlation between sleep deprivation, insomnia and Borderline Personality Disorder. Most of what I’ve found is pretty typical of anyone that is sleep deprived. Regardless, as someone that doesn’t do it well, I can’t stress the importance of getting an adequate nights rest.

“Sleep disruptions can be a common occurrence for those with borderline personality disorder (BPD). It may be caused by everyday stress, medications, or even the hyper vigilance we’re so predispositioned to. Getting a good night sleep may be easier said than done, but recognizing a problem and discussing it with your treatment provider may help you get some needed relief.”

Since Borderline Personality Disorder is a highly affected mood disorder, anything that impacts emotional regulation is going to be a detriment to the moods in someone with BPD.  Sleep helps humans maintain optimal emotional and social functioning while we are awake by giving rest during sleep to the parts of the brain that control emotions and social interactions.The only small study I did find on BPD and sleep dep reported that “the risk of affective and impulsive personality disorder traits were exacerbated by lack of sleep”. I could have told you this with only myself as a test subject. Getting enough sleep is a serious factor with depression in general. Sleep deprivation is one cause of lower levels of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin as we all know, is the bodies natural way to encourage feelings of well being. Hence, having a deficit of sleep deprived seratonin production may contribute to greater levels of stress and depression. Sleep studies indicate that BPD is not {necessarily} related to depression but that serotonin studies do point to links with suicidal, aggressive and impulsive behaviors, stress and burnout.

“In tasks requiring judgment, increasingly risky behaviors emerge as the total sleep duration is limited to 5 hours per night. The high cost of an action is seemingly ignored as the sleep-deprived person focuses on limited benefits. These findings can be explained by the fact that metabolism in the prefrontal and parietal associational areas of the brain decrease in individuals deprived of sleep for 24 hours. These areas of the brain are important for judgment, impulse control, attention, and visual association.”

Only in the past few months (5-ish) was I finally able to get some treatment for my insomnia. This is actually one of the main things that brought me to finding my psychiatrist. I was having such a hard time sleeping. I knew how it affected me, so I went to see a regular doctor to see if he could prescribe me something for sleep. Turns out he couldn’t. That was something for a psychiatrist to do. That coupled with the fact that I was having very self-damaging thoughts he recommended I find a psychiatrist immediately (after he asked why I had come to see him instead of going straight to the psych ER).  As I’ve mentioned before, as a supplement to my current medication, I am also given Trazadone. Even this doesn’t always help. I can stay awake through it, continue to wake in the night, and feel completely exhausted when I need to get up. It does help sometimes though and something is certainly better than nothing. I have friends on Trazadone as well, and they seem to have much better results with it than I do, so I imagine I have other mitigating factors contributing to my sleep problems that most people simply don’t have.

Curling up in my big comfy bed, buried under blankets, surrounded by soft pillows, lying there waiting for unconsciousness to take me. I always look forward to trying.

“The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don’t know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened.”

~Random Quote

Mood Swings – Criteria 6 / Instability of mood

Criteria 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).

Duh. That’s really all I want to say to this one but that wouldn’t be very informative now would it. The important thing here is to understand WHY the moods of a borderline are so unstable. The problem is, it’s going to be different for everyone so I’ll just have to stick with why they’re so difficult for me.

I’m major depressive so my base set mood is mildly depressed. The best I can hope for on an average day is to just feel nothing; not happy, not sad, just a sort of blankness that doesn’t swing me in either direction. Of course it’s wonderful to feel happy. Merely talking to a friend, connecting with a loved one, will do this. This feeling rarely stays though because eventually people have to have their own lives or return to work. Resume normal everyday behavior. But to me it’s like I lose my hold, my connection to them. Having been happy while talking to them, now I slip from being happy to being left with only the thoughts in my own head and not knowing when I’ll be able to have that connection again; alone. I slip from happy, to alone, empty, spiraling down. In the space that was filled with that connection to a loved one, I’m now left with a hollow void where they’re gone and my thoughts can race and ruminate. This bleeds back to being alone, abandoned. It’s not rational, but it feels like something that was there is now gone. Being a thinking creature I can’t know for sure when it will be back. That uncertainty is maddening.

Anxiety is a big one. The smallest things seem to set me off, spike my anxiety and it feels like my world will crash in on itself. Especially if it’s something I’ve planned just so. I try to arrange things to bring about the most comfortable, stable environment for me. Calm. To feel secure in my surroundings I plan every detail to create the perfect scenerio. That house of comfort is built on a foundation of cards that even the smallest suggestion of change adds a weight, a pressure to, that can send it toppling to the ground. I have an incredibly difficult time getting through the fact that any change will not rock my foundation and will not wreak havoc on my plans because it feels like it does.

Lack of control of my environment means a lack of control of myself, my life. If I can’t even control my own life than what control can I possibly have in an ever changing world.

When a change attacks my plans it’s like an attack on my character. My plans weren’t good enough, that they had to be changed, an attack on me, my judgement when someone suggests I do something differently. They don’t want to accept my idea and therefore don’t accept me by extension. Of course this is not true, but that’s how it feels. Understanding how to make the emotional connection to the logical occurrence of this being not true is what’s difficult. For me there is a complete disconnect between what I logically know to be true and what I feel, if I feel at all.

Disappointment. I read disappointment into your reaction/suggestion because you wanted more than I thought to provide which translates to disappointment in myself because I couldn’t guess what it was that you would have wanted best. Or worse, that you don’t want what I want and I begin to fear that this one instance extends into the entire friendship, relationship, etc. What I’ve done isn’t good enough, I wasn’t good enough, it’s only a matter of time before you realize I’ll never be perfect and you’ll seek company elsewhere. Leave…  

On the other hand, if things go well, if I can do something that makes someone happy this also validates who I am. That I am someone good and worthy of being loved or cared for. If I can do something to show I care, and it’s appreciated, I can physically represent that I am an important aspect of someone’s life. Knowing this, in the moment, it’s euphoric. My simply being there isn’t enough, I must be able to SHOW it. If I can’t show it, how could they SEE it. I have a very difficult time believing that if I’m not immediately in someone’s presence that they can remember the care I hold for them (more on this later). Contrariwise, if it’s something I do isn’t appreciated I’m left with