A Flow of Consciousness

I'm stuck in the past with my 13 year old self screaming at me: "Why won't you listen? Why won't you help me?"

If only I could hold her and tell her that everything will be okay. But I'm not sure how much truth that statement holds.

I look around and there isn't much on MBT therapy as a treatment for BPD, mostly on DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) being the successful treatment. This concerns me.

I read the information about DBT and it sits more comfortably than the idea of MBT. It feels right. It is in my gut.

Always trust your gut.

I want to be well now please.

That blissful moment when everything is beautiful. Things are good. You smile. Everything will be okay. And it lasts no more than a minute. Then you remember what you are and you come crashing right down to the ground.

I was reading another blog and it was about being a chameleon. I am a chameleon; moulding to the people around me. Always. Never being my true self because I don't have a true self.

Talked to my sister today about our parents (as we do most times when we speak) and how dysfunctional and basically fucked up they are. She came to the conclusion that neither of them have any self worth. I agreed and added, "I don't either. Just empty." And she replied, "But we must do. We must have something at our centre. We must have some self worth otherwise we wouldn't have got up from all the crap in our childhood and made sure we were something in life. We have self worth."

It really struck me. We came from such a disgusting place, all four of us, yet we are living in the world. We are all trying to be something other than our parents. It would've been easy to continue on the same path as out parents had, but we chose not to. I don't know what spurred us on, whether it was the terrifying idea of ending up like our parents or through sheer determination to finally mean something to the world... but we all  crawled out of the hole that they buried us in and said: "No. Fuck you. I will not succumb to this."

Yea sure, we all have our mental health problems... we're all "screwed up" in that sense. But we are dealing. My younger sister has three kids under the age of five and the amount of respect I have for her is unreal and I know she will find her path in life. My older sister is a very successful teacher and is climbing up the career ladder and I think it's only a matter of time when she decides to seek help for what I think is a mental disorder. My younger brother has surpassed any idea I had of him...

My brother. The little boy I wanted to protect from the world. I wanted to take away all of his pain but he didn't want my help. He didn't know how to accept help. He grew up being bullied by our dad. The mental abuse was disgusting, I am surprised he is still alive. We were not surprised when he started tormenting our mum after my dad was "removed" from our house; it was the only way he knew how to treat my mum after witnessing our dad do it. My dad had stripped him of a person. He was so lost. Everything he had learned was from our dad. Those traits were not healthy in the slightest. He was a shadow of a person. He wasn't living, just there. Dead. High. Recluse. Drunk. Violent. Abuser. A nobody and through no fault of his own.

And yet, I saw him yesterday after a year or so and the change in him... the change in his eyes. He wasn't dead anymore. He has a job, is looking for places to live so he can come out of the hostel, has friends and girlfriends, sociable, well-looked after... I was so proud of him but it was the confidence that choked me up. He believed in himself. He is turning his life around.

So yea, my mother sits there saying that she can't support us and that she is a bad mother, brushing off all responsibility for bringing us into the world. Abandoning all of us. No love, just guilt. Invalidating all of us and considering that our dad disowned us a long time ago... to know that our mother doesn't want to be our mother anymore...

We were all victims: me, my brother, my sisters, our mum and even our dad. But the difference between us and our parents is that we chose to stop being victims and become survivors instead.

The Bernard Bert