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Borderline Personality Disorder Blog. Bipolar Disorder Blog. BPD. DBT. Cleveland. A Fragment in Orange.

7.30.2009

Happy to Hurt in Sixty Seconds

Falling in, well, dare I say it? Love? Is that what's happening?

After the initial lust and infatuation comes the abrupt 180 -- finding faults, flaws, failings. Everything becomes a red flag. No no no. Not this person. Never ever forever. There is the familiar disappointment as highs drop to lows. And the realization, again, that it's easier to be alone than to be in a relationship.

This is where I typically end it. Say goodbye. Move on.

But not this time. Strangely, this guy held on. Willing to take the ride. Like a kid that clings to your leg when you try to walk away. Persistence pays off.

At some point you have to stop running away from that which scares you. Stop kicking. Stop screaming. And then? Peace. Maybe. For now.

7.28.2009

Neuroses and the Romantic Relationship

That would be a good title for a novel. Now come up with a story of your own.

7.27.2009

change, in moderation

my house is alive. mom. dad. brother. niece. the hours after they have gone to bed are now especially beautiful. in those quiet hours, when the house is asleep, i watch sad documentaries on my computer and cry big silent tears.

the family has changed. the dynamics have changed. it's nice. nice is not a very descriptive adjective, but it sums things up nicely. having family around, having this new family around, is nice. i've never appreciated my brother, for too many reasons to list here. now i see him in the role of daddy, and my perspective changes. vulnerability, truth, imagination, effort, weakness -- and now i see some other sides.

i will miss them when they go. i will miss the murmuring muffled by bedroom walls. the flush of a toilet. the slam of a cupboard. i will miss these sounds. the sounds of a house breathing, pulsing, retreating, expanding.

but i will celebrate the first night that i'm back to sleeping in the nude. i'll celebrate the 3 a.m. raid of the cookie jar. the 4 a.m. cigarette (or two). the dawn breaking beyond the fucking.

freedom is nice. family is nice. independence is nice. responsibility is nice. all in small doses.

7.22.2009

What you are is what you have been. What you'll be is what you do now.

~Buddha~

7.19.2009

I have a cold. My head is fuzz, my lungs are raging, my limbs are heavy, my mind is mud. I'm at work, not working, on a beautiful Sunday morning, sitting in the dark of my room drinking rooibos tea and listening to the sandstorm wind-roar of the air conditioning. Lull. Lulled to sleep. Almost. On the weekends I'm the only one in the department, the only one on my floor. And there are nine beds up here. SO SO hard to resist.

My parents arrived a week ago from Arizona and will be staying with me for a few months, into September or so. This is the second year of their summer-in-Cleveland thing. It's not bad. A bit of a mind fuck at times, but worth it in the grand scheme of things. The other night my dad reminded me to turn off all the lights and lock the doors before going to bed. Uh, yeah, thanks Dad. When they're staying with me it's like my house becomes theirs and I become a teenager again, existing within the confines of parental control. I've told them that they can do whatever they want with my house. Mom likes to rearrange and reorganize. Dad likes to clean and fix broken or less-than-satisfactorily-working things. Now the drinking glass cupboard has become the plates and dishes cupboard. The sharp knives drawer has become the measuring cups and spoons drawer. The cupboard door under the sink that opened with a clank/drop/whine now opens with a, well, opens normally. The guest bathroom toilet that once needed a jiggle of the handle to stop running, now stops running on its own. Good toilet! Smart toilet! I am stranger in my home. A stranger in a marvelously clean, well-functioning, well-organized efficient grown-up house.

But every plus has its minus. I felt about a hundred pounds fatter when my parents arrived. They're both stick thin, and shrinking, and equate thinness with goodness. We were immediately back to the comments about me ending up in a nursing home with congestive heart failure by the time I'm fifty. From my mom I get "Oh, you have such a pretty face, if only..." types of comments. The other day I had a breakfast of cheerios with blueberries, and a glass of orange juice. Mom walked by and said "I approve of that breakfast." Oh. Great. Glad to hear it. Dad complains that I smoke too much, and that I smoke too quickly. Too quickly??? "You inhale your cigarette like it's the last one on earth", he says. If I smoked my cigarette half-assedly he would probably complain that I was too wasteful.

So, typical family shit. Thankfully, this year I have refuge outside of my house. More on that later . . .