the borderline

i start to type, and then there seems there is nothing to say. i lean my head back and ask myself "what are you avoiding here? what don't you want to see?" and then with little else going for me, i type that. and i wait....

there is convergence here, a grand cavern of sorts in the very center of a tunnel system, and many of the tunnels have dried up, but here in this place i find there is still water running. the liquid flows over the lip where the tube drops off, and all the tubes contents join together here, in one swirling mass, going down and down some center channel to i know not where.

*********

it seems to me now that when i was younger i had a host of symptomology common to borderline personality disorder. i don't know if i was full blown or not, but i was close, and undiagnosed, and in the end i have rather self-healed. the kind of of pain, frustration, confusion and wreckage i suffered because of living on a borderline, and also the kinds of horror i inflicted on other people... it is hard at this point to turn around and stare at clearly. i can see now how much i have wanted to distance myself from that girl, from the person who felt those dangerous levels of hysteria and trauma, from the girl who was blinded to others in that way.

but i am still on a borderline. i am standing at the edge of an abyss, as deep and wide and infinite as any i have ever contemplated before. and i am not going to deny that girl in me. she was as me as i am me, and weather i am me at all is really the question that remains.

my inclination as the fingers move across the keys is to stop, to fall into the emotional state offered up by this conjunction, but i know there is no satisfaction there. there is no satisfaction anywhere, and that is the miasma i am working from.

having borderline personality disorder may turn out rather complicated in western psychotherapy, and the healing prospects may look dim, but from where i sit now it appears very simple. going back as far as i can remember i was terrified of the black hole at my center, absolutely aware of the emptiness there, the void that was sucking me in, and i spent my life stealing energy, manipulating people to give me energy, creating a vividly epic and mythic life to manifest energy, shoring up the intensity and charisma of my character, being good at everything i tried to do so i could be the center of attention, lying and acting out.... all in an effort to prove to myself that i existed, to feel for moments at a time when the layers of character and attention from others was just right that i had actual substance. i used to say to people "it's like when no one is looking, i don't exist"....

there is a very particular flavor of emotional hysteria that i associate with my symptoms, and over the years since i stopped acting out in that way in the outside world, i have had recurring dreams a few times a year where that feeling is still full blown. in the dreams, i am in a tremendous amount of pain, i am quite literally hysterical, bawling and wailing, and trying very hard to get someone to notice me. in the dreams, whomever is around is always aware that i am in the room, but they are never paying me any mind at all. they may glance over, but they go right back to doing what they were doing. in real life, i guess that no matter how much someone did actually look, or engage with me, i still felt the same way. the pain and hysteria would come up, catch hold of me like a poltergeist, and then it would create some situation that would feed attention into me in order to shore me up somehow. i just cannot find words to describe how awful and alone and unnoticed i felt in those moments. i was, rather literally, possessed.

i have always been a creature who relied on intuition. i would all throughout my life always have the "right answer" to things, or know what was needed next... but i never really "did the math" and knew how things arrived from point a to point b. so in retrospect now, i can see i always knew there was no self, that i did not actually exist. i was always fighting being sucked backwards into the void. i intuited there was no self there, even though i never had the mental or intellectual understanding that i have gained now from my exposure to teachers and mystics pointing to the truth.

starting about 13 years ago, and more seriously 9 years ago, i began an active, seemingly successful campaign to end my living with the borderline symptoms. i began to meditate, became mindful, became contemplative, surrounded myself with books and people that supported that life... and also built up an entire identity (whom i affectionately call wisdom girl) around being the opposite of that broken, borderline girl that left such a tender place in my memory. i became identified with being strong enough to face personal challenges, being brave enough to admit when i was wrong or small, being humble enough to know i wasn't perfect, being wise enough to choose with more heart and soul.... altogether, the other side of the pendulum from the creature i had been before. and it worked.

and then, almost two years ago now, when my brain began to blow up, when i began to see through the illusory world, and started to investigate the idea that none of the identities are true, and that i don't even exist as a separate being, so much began to finally make sense to me. and structures and identities began to fall away like dust. my entire life structure fell away, and easily, but in a subtle way it still fed wisdom girl, still fed the identity of the girl who was "doing" those things. the one who chose it.

i am being stripped now of even her, even that wisdom girl identity, and coming face to face with the absolute lack of personal will.... there is so much awareness of lack of control here that i am finding myself surprised and every so often overwhelmed by this thing. if wisdom girl was a plug of sorts, stopping the hysteria monster from going out and attacking the world, what happens when she is fully removed? what is left when she falls away?

i am still a borderline. i am still a person with a borderline personality. i just don't see it as a disorder. i am on the edge of the abyss of no self, the abyss of that which is true being revealed but only in the total surrender to the fall to my death. and i am finding this terrain here fascinating.

so today, another synchronous day, where i look over my shoulder and find that the god i chased for so long is now chasing me, i have moments of pain and terror, right along with the most serious gratitude i have ever experienced in my life. i know being exposed to this, having this unveiled, is exactly as it should be. and i am glad that i am feeling the fear now, finally feeling a kind of terror that i have been expecting for months.

surrendering control, letting go of my illusion of will over any of this, is a fact. it's not even something i can choose to do. it is being done, to me and through me. and somehow i can find a continuity at the edge of having always known that this was what was true, underneath it all.

i feel the endings, the edges, the borderlines, and i am grateful.