So many thoughts….[br][br]I’m deeply disappointed with myself. I’m recovering from myself, I guess you could even say. Saturday, my fiancé George and my mother had an altercation, I guess you’d call it. They have never really got on, I’m sad to say. It’s been vicious, at times, and the worst of it is I can fully understand exactly what each of them dislikes or finds difficult about each other…so it turns into this endless case of me being trapped in the middle, trying to strike that all-important balance between them, trying not to take sides but also reprimanding one of them when they seriously cross the line. They seem to take turns crossing that line. And really…I rarely feel like either of them stops to think of what it might be doing to me, emotionally. Being honest, I’ve heard George express more concern about that than my mother, over the last five years, but I won’t say more than that. [br][br]On this occasion, it was clearly George’s turn to push the limits, though, and I was absolutely livid, to say the least. Then it led to us fighting at home, and a whole host of other issues coming out. It was messy. That’s not really the point, though. The point is that by Sunday morning I’d been pushed to my limits, as well. I’d seriously had enough of it all. It felt like I’d been banging my head against a sharp, jagged cliff-side and at last I’d reached the point where I was ready just to climb to the top and jump off. [br][br]So, being emotionally…’intense’ as I am…I completely lost it. And really, considering all the crap with George and my mom, I’m not in the least sorry for losing it with George. What I AM sorry for is our toddler having to witness it, and me being past that point where I can just call a time out and hide away by myself for a while to calm the hell down so I don’t do something I’ll regret. It had already gone way past that. So I couldn’t stop shouting. I mean…I know some people might say, ‘That’s stupid, of course you can stop shouting if you really try.’ No no no no no, I couldn’t, not by that point. BPD…it does that to you. I just could not stop. There were these other versions of myself inside my head screaming, ‘STOP IT!!!’ and then there was some alter floating outside my body, so to speak, and watching it all with this expression of horror, begging me to stop, and yet my whole physical aspect just couldn’t calm down. [br][br]I finally reached the point where I just imploded. I hid away in the computer room, staring numbly at the screen, hardly moving, reading things but taking nothing in. George came in and tried to talk to me but I just couldn’t turn around and look at him or speak. He kept trying, and finally I pointed out that not once had anyone stopped to consider how any of this affected me. All I heard was how each of them was so hurt by the other. What about me? I hadn’t even done anything, I wasn’t even part of it, why was I made to suffer so much and listen to each of them insult the other, and why was I expected to act like it didn’t break my heart?? Well, George is a wonderful man, in spite of his human flaws, and he understood and we were able to move forward from that point. [br][br]But clearly I still was overwrought, and when he went out for a little while and I was left alone to watch our son, everything he did made me so angry. He was playing with some box I was organising things in, and I kept telling him to stop but he wouldn’t listen, and George has pointed out to me so many times that the reason Percy listens to him and not me is because George doesn’t lose it and shout at him repeatedly ‘STOP STOP STOP STOP!’ Percy has more respect for George’s rules. It hurts to admit it, but I understand and I know it’s true. But I just CAN’T CALM DOWN sometimes. So finally I snapped and slammed the box lid down, and I admit I could have hurt Percy’s hand, but thankfully I didn’t. I just terrified him, obviously. He immediately burst into tears and looked so frightened and confused by me. And I broke the box. The hinge snapped, and it’s only plastic so there’s no way to repair it. And the worst of it is that my first inclination was to shout at Percy, ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ !!! I didn’t, though. I had enough presence of mind to stop and think, ‘You can’t blame him for something that was SO YOUR OWN FAULT.’ I stopped and tried to steady my breathing, I apologised, etc. Then I was back to shouting at him for other things. I mean…to be fair, he WAS being naughty. But to be fair, so was I. [br][br]What shocked my system…what I just can’t get over yet…is how we came downstairs together and he was looking at me very warily, and then he said to me, ‘Mummy’s shouting…mummy’s shouting…mummy’s a scary dinosaur, mummy goes ROAR!’ and looked absolutely serious about it. I just couldn’t believe it. I’m so used to him being unable to interact properly, I guess I (quite wrongly) just didn’t think enough of the consequences of my emotions. Now here he is, able to express his feelings to me, and for the first time ever suddenly referring to himself in first person so that he was able to tell me he was scared as well, not just that I was scary. And THEN, to compound it all, when George came home I told him what had happened and told him in an effort to make Percy know that my behaviour was very wrong and I absolutely not for a moment thought I should have acted the way I did, I sat myself down on his naughty step and put myself in time out for two minutes and apologised to him profusely…and then, as I was explaining this to George, I just fell apart, I was crying, and what does Percy do?? Looks at me curiously, says, ‘Mummy’s crying,’ and then starts offering to bring me all his toys, goes upstairs to his bedroom and actually brings them all down to me, stuffed animals for me to cuddle, the first being his beloved rabbit, and then finally comes over to give me this big hug, as if I weren’t a total failure of a mother after all.[br][br]
Today I ordered a workbook for dialectic behavioural therapy. In my defence, I’ve been on the bloody waiting list for this therapy for my BPD for seven months now and I keep being told, ‘It’ll happen in a couple months,’ and then there’s some excuse. I’m TRYING. I keep trying to get help, I tried when I was pregnant as well but that never came through either. What am I meant to do?? So I’m going to try it myself at home. I just can’t be this person anymore. I mean…things were going so well, for like two or three months, and then everything just broke. And what hurts even more is that I DIDN’T START IT THIS TIME!!! It was George and my mom! And yet it still wound up with me in a state. I should have just told them both to screw off when the whole scenario first began and gone off on my own and let them sort it out. God…things just aren’t fair sometimes.

 

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