As Parents Age…

There’s a moment in our lives, for all of us, when we realise that our parents have grown old, and after a lifetime of looking to them, now they are looking to us.  A lifetime of you being their ‘child’, now in some ways, that is reversed.  The only way you avoid this is if you completely cut off all contact with them some time before. Otherwise it’s a stage of our lives that is impossible to ignore. It is a time that can have enormous effect on both our mental health and theirs.  Everything has changed.  Now you realise that you’re finally ‘grown up’.

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Every (Wo)man Can Be an Island

Forgive the kitschiness of my title.

I am aware that, technically, there’s no such thing as a person who is an island. Even the most disconnected person has a sliver of contact with the outside world. One has to buy food and so forth.

If you pay attention to my blog, though, you’ll notice I haven’t been around much. For months, posting only sporadically. I have been isolating, you see.

I have spent as much time as possible holing up with myself. Oftentimes I feel irritable when people are around me; I just want them to leave me alone.

Lines and Colours

In my mind, I am normal. This is because I live with me twenty-four seven (OK, not always twenty-four seven because some of those hours I am asleep).

I have BPD. In the past, I never realised that I feel emotions more easily, more deeply, and for longer than others do. I thought the intensity of my emotions was normal. Turns out, it’s not. I read somewhere that in non-BPD people an emotion typically fires for 12 seconds. In BPD’ers it can last up to 20 percent longer. BPD’ers emotions also repeatedly re-fire, or re-live, or recur, however you want to say it, so emotional reactions occur for even longer. I do. I go over and over and over the emotions, pinging from one to another like a steel ball in a pinball machine.

Hair Cuts and Detachment

I know I have depression. I know I am introverted. I know I have generalized anxiety with a good dose of SAD. I know these well at certain times. One of those times is when I get my hair cut. Here is an account of my latest visit to “Aldos”.

Helping to Break Stigma

When I received the job offer a few weeks ago I thought it over for a few days before excitedly accepting. My new manager arranged that she would send me some paperwork to fill out, and the next week we would meet so I could have a look around one of the branch practices I would be working in.

When I’d quit my previous job a few weeks ago I never expected to land on my feet. My parents were terrified that I had no long term prospects and I was just going to be a temp nurse.

The Not So Great Pretender

I had ideas for my first Canvas post. I wanted to tell you something good and inspiring. A grand entrance of sorts into this forum. But … I don’t have anything like that to give at the moment.

I could pretend and write here as though I am someone brave. I could write like I am a great conqueror of my own mind and offer you all of my solutions.

But right now … right here … why should I pretend? Lately, if I am tired of anything, I am tired of pretending!

On This Day

Birthdays are often triggering affairs for me, and, from what I’ve read on others’ blogs, I’m not alone.

My life is littered with many unfortunate birthdays. When I was a child, I had the obligatory sorts of parties. There were play places. A skating rink, even though I could barely skate (and I can’t skate now), so I hugged the wall.

These were awkward affairs. None of the people there were really my friends–just classmates.

Disorder and Love: What We Do and Don’t Know

“Just because somebody doesn’t love you the way you want them to, doesn’t mean they don’t love you with everything they got” –Author Unknown

Mental health disorders have a way of putting blinders on a person.  I have to say, there are a lot of things in this world that I miss.  Whether it’s because I’m wrapped up in my own head, or I have one of the different shades of the multiple pairs of glasses I don on, I know that my own perceptions are often distorted.  In short, I miss things.  Sometimes, I miss very important things.