Another e-mail…

Trigger Warning: effects of abuse, emotional abuse, abusive BPD mother

My flight is not soon enough. It really isn’t.

Why do I do this to myself?

I know I need to stop reading the e-mails. They’re abusive and nasty and triggering.

I set a filter to they wouldn’t go to my inbox, but I kept glancing at the folder they were being sent to instead. I noticed a new message and I read it.

I knew she was splitting me black, but there it was in writing. Splitting, gaslighting, playing victim.

And is seriously disturbs me that she’s using BPD related terminology, supposedly because she’s been reading. It makes me paranoid that she’d reading stuff on the support forums I post on, because some of the terms I’ve only seen on there.

Why did I read it?

I’m stressed out as it is. I’m freaking out over packing, and shipping, and moving, and money. 2 checked bags isn’t nearly as much room as I thought it would be. My carry-on suitcase feels too small. There’s so much stuff and I need to decide what to keep, and what to get rid of, and what to ship out. There’s so much I need to do and I feel like I don’t have enough time to do it.

And I’m scared. I’m scared of moving. I’m scared of making my best friend hate me. I’m scared of failing. I’m scared of things going wrong. I’m scared of how hard things will be. I’m scared of not being good enough.

I wish I could stay somewhere else until I leave.

Awesome. I’m feeling dissociative. I’m just going to end this here because I can’t focus on writing anymore.

Painted Black

Dad came back home today. BPDm gave him a ride back, and she hung around for a bit. I stayed shut in my room.

I was sitting here on my computer when I started to hear mom YELLING. And she had that TONE in her voice. She kept yelling to my dad that she was leaving.

Stupidly I step out of my room to see what’s going on. She looks over at me and is all, “Have a nice life.” With this ugly look.

My throat closes up and I feel like I can’t breathe. I duck back into my room and try not to feel awful.

I can tell, she’s splitting me black. But I think she’s splitting my dad too. Dunno what’s up with them.

Just a few more weeks. I just need to hang on for a few more weeks.

Triggery e-mail form bpdm

Trigger Warning: bpd headwrecking, belittling and invalidation

I got another e-mail from BPDm. Yeah, I know I should block her e-mails. I’m really pretty sure this is ramping up to another rage/extinction burst. I noticed a pattern in the timing of her cycling. Anyway, there was something in particular that kind of pissed me off.

I know I did bad things to you.  I understand the spitting thing.  But don’t you think

that what you are doing now with me is you are splitting me black? because you are so angry with me.  I read somewhere that you as the non bdp person need to go through the grieving proccess, but you cannot allow yourself to get stuck in the anger phase for too long.  You can’t play the victim roll forever you need to move from victim to survivor.  You need to think of yourselfas “(Defy) HAS ptsd and Panic Disorder” and not as “(Defy) IS ptsd and panic disorder”   (Defy) does not equal ptsd. (Defy)=(Defy) has ptsd.  I hope you understand this.  How you see yourself determines if you are still being the victim or moving on to becoming a survivor.

My first reaction was fuck you.

I’m not PLAYING the victim role. That’s YOUR favorite thing to do.

And I’m not a god damned victim. Not once have I ever said I’m a victim. I’m a survivor god damnit. Do I get triggered sometimes? Yes. But being triggered is not PLAYING VICTIM. I can’t fucking control it when I’m triggered, all I can do is use my coping skills and what I’ve learned in therapy in order to get through it. But it doesn’t make me a victim.

I AM moving on. I AM healing. It’s not that god damned easy, I can’t be “fixed” over night. I technically have Complex PTSD, from 22 YEARS of emotional abuse, and headwrecking and crazymaking. I’ve only been in therapy for 1 god damn year. I can’t stand how people act like I should be “fixed” by now.

Not that it matters when it comes to my mom. Every step I take towards healing, is a step away from her, and she is never going to be capable of understanding. To her, me setting boundaries and not putting up with her crazy anymore, means I’m “angry” at her and “hate” her and blahblah. To her and my dad, the fact that I continue to maintain very Low Contact with mom means I’m “not getting better”. They want me to go back to quietly letting her control my life, while at the same time have to take care of her and manage her emotions and talk her down from suicide at least 2-3x a month if not more. I’m not the god damned parent here. I’m her DAUGHTER, HER CHILD, I should never have had to be the one taking care of her. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.

Also, mom? I’m not god damned angry all the time. I’m not sitting here seething about how much I hate you all the time. FYI, I don’t think about you all the god damned time. When you e-mail me and trigger me, yeah, sure. But the rest of the time? I have better things to do, things that make me happy.

A Moment of Clarity?

Trigger Warning: bpd mom’s rage, splitting, attack and harassment- can be triggering if you have a person with BPD in your life.

The past two weeks have been… exhausting.

BPDm started raging- full on extinction burst. She started out harassing me via e-mail. At first she started sending me this extremely controlling business toned messages, saying things like, “I require you respond” and etc. I ignored them. Then she e-mailed me to inform me she cut me off- I had a debit card for my dad’s account, I never took advantage of it, I used it to pay for therapy because he agreed to help me pay for therapy last year. I still did not respond.

Then she sent me an e-mail with my baby picture attached, and was pulling the “I GAVE BIRTH TO YOU! I AM YOUR MOTHER NO MATTER WHAT” card. Which I rolled my eyes at and chose to ignore. It annoys me when people pull this crap. Giving birth does not make you a saint or give you a free pass to abuse your children.

A few hours later, she e-mailed me again. She changed tactics and was trying to guilt-trip me. She was playing victim, invalidating me, etc. Oh and she again said something along the lines of, “I understand no contact, but…” No. Clearly, you STILL do not understand what No Contact means.

Cut to a few more hours later, she e-mails me to threaten to sue my therapist for malpractice. I admit, this got me really angry and scared, and was the first time I was tempted to respond, but I didn’t. Thankfully, I had therapy that day and I was able to see my T and she reassured me that she wasn’t worried or intimated by my mom’s threats. Also, that realistically there’s nothing BPDm could have done. I’m an adult, and now lawyer is going to listen to my mom about suing her adult daughter’s therapist just because the therapist is helping the daughter learn to set boundaries.

That night, she regressed back to acting like the waif- she began calling me at 12:30 in the morning. Since she was using a landline, it was taking a second for my call blocking app to recognize the number, so my phone would ring once, then go to voice mail. She called me something like 60+ times in the middle of the night. Around 4:30 in the morning she left me three voice mails where she was having a break down over the phone.

And then I didn’t hear from her for 5 days. No e-mails, no phone calls.

I spent 3 of those days having anxiety attacks constantly. It was almost impossible for me to be at home, because I didn’t feel safe. I was scared that she was going to show up at our house and try to corner me, or threaten suicide, or a few other drastic things. However, she didn’t.

I had therapy this past Tuesday, and I was still working through everything that had happened. I was exhausted from all the headwrecking. I was still feeling extremely hypervigilant, and my anxiety levels were still high. On top of that I’d started having nightmares again. I worked through a lot of it with my T.

Then I get another e-mail form BPDm. The first paragraph sounded almost like a sincere apology- though I also felt like she was saying what she thought I wanted to here. Whether or not it was sincere, the rest of the e-mail clearly showed she’s still very Borderline. In a subtle, yet still very controlling way, she suggesting I go ahead and move like I’ve been wanting to do. She offered me money to do it, claiming there’d be no strings attached. She also went on about how she’d been looking at apartments in the area I want to move to, even linking me to several ads. (Yeah. Creepy and controlling.) She was still basically telling me what to do.

The whole thing was confusing and conflicting. In the end I decided to wait and see. I’d make my next move based on how she reacts. Honestly, I was expecting that when I didn’t respond, she would ramp up into another another rage and more harassment.

Then, today, she sent me a large sum of money via paypal.

I was completely in shock.

I’d contemplated playing her game so that I could get the money and get out of here. Of course, I was going to make damn sure I did what I had to in order to protect myself. A lot of people in my support group suggested taking the money and running. If it’s really a “gift” and there’s no strings attached, I have every right to do so.

I’m still unsure what to do.

I’m just trying to keep in mind, while my mom may be having a moment of clarity and self-awareness, and she might even be beginning to get some help possibly. She’s still BPD, and they go in cycles… and eventually she’ll swing back into the crazy abusive borderline mode.

The title of my first post should be more creative than this…

So this is my first post. Obviously. I’ve been nervous about posting anything on here. Even though the internet is anonymous.

I came up with this blog name out of the blue in the car a few weeks ago, and it was so fitting. It combined my personal motto/theme song with my disorder.

Defying Gravity comes from the Broadway musical Wicked. I’ve been a huge fan of this musical since I was 18, but in the last year it’s come to mean so much more to me. So, so much more.

It all started with this line:

Too long I’ve been afraid of losing love I guess I’ve lost.

Well, if that’s love it comes at much too high a cost.

So, here’s why.

A year ago I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as well as a panic disorder.

The past year I’ve been going through my ‘breakthrough crisis’ as it’s sometimes called- realizing and coming to terms with the fact that I was abused as a child.

My abuse was emotional and psychological- with a couple of few and far between moments of what would be considered physical abuse (this is something I don’t think I’ve quite faced yet… as I have a hard time saying this even in writing)

I was raised by my mother; she has Borderline Personality Disorder, with some narcissistic traits. Her mother, my grandmother, was also a huge presence in my life and I believe she has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, however she is undiagnosed.

My father wasn’t around much- my parents “legally divorced” when I was young, but they are for the most part practically still married, they do not act at all like a couple who has been divorced nearly 20 years. My father is a functioning alcoholic, and for all I know may have other issues. He is also still completely enmeshed with my mother, and very enabling. He has no boundaries with her.

Before I began seeing a therapist, I thought my father was to blame for most of my issues. Because he left when I was little, and I didn’t see him alone, and he’s an alcoholic.

While I have issues with him, sure, through therapy I began to see just how badly my mom’s behaviors and illness effected me. She’s the reason I have PTSD, not my dad.

Part of the reason I blamed (and at times, hated) my father was because my mom often split him black.

People with BPD see the world in black and white, all or nothing. Things are either “all good” or “all bad”. People with BPD think in extremes. It is difficult for them to hold opposing thoughts about themselves or others. When someone is seen as “all good” it’s referred to as being split or painted white. When someone is seen as “all bad” it’s referred to as being split or painted black. Obviously this comes from the cliche of white representing light/good/heaven etc, and black representing darkness/evil/hell etc.

An example, when my mom was trying to get back together with my dad she would often defend him, and go on about what a good father/person he is, and point out all the positive aspects of him. Then when things inevitably went wrong, she’d immediately call him awful names, that he’s a drunk, a terrible father who doesn’t even care about his children or her, that he’s a cruel evil man.

She just cannot grasp the concept that my dad in some ways is a good person, but he has his flaws too.

So, yes, when she split him black, these are the kinds of things she’d tell me. Over and over. She basically brainwashed me against my dad. Thus, I thought my dad leaving was to blame for my anxiety.

I never realized the role my mom played until I began therapy, and she was diagnosed with BPD.

I suppose I’ll leave the rest of this story for my next post.