“1. frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Did you know that when you push someone so far off a ledge, their heart stops beating for minutes at a time because they’re scared you’re gonna push them all the way off? Did you know that when you decide you’re not going to push them all the way off that ledge, they’re not going to want to stay with you any longer; they’re not going to want to stick around to see if the next time, you will push too far? I push people so far away from me, arms length isn’t in my vocabulary. This is bodies of water worth away; the Pacific Ocean has nothing on me— I’ll push people so far, they won’t be able to see my face but when they finally decide they need to leave, I will swim the length of the ocean to pull them back to me. Did you know that it doesn’t matter if you swim oceans worth of water to make it back to the person you don’t want to lose because you almost killed them when you teased them, holding them off that ledge; do you realize that they aren’t going to want to stay, no matter how much you wheeze from the trek to and from where you left them? 2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. Touch me on the shoulder and push my hair behind my ear and whisper to me that you love me and tell me I’m beautiful and that you need me and need me and need me and I will never stop loving every inch of you UNTIL one morning you wake up and you leave too early or you forget to say goodbye or you just exist as you are but don’t remind me that I’m okay and I decide that you’ve begun to hate me and in turn I hate you right back UNTIL I remember that I love you and if you leave me I will never be able to breathe again and I love you and I love you and I love you and it feels like you’re ignoring me and I just want you to love me UNTIL I realize I have to leave you before you leave me; and you, inevitably, will leave me so I decide you no longer mean a thing. 3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self. Laugh and I’ll laugh with you, cry and I’ll cry too. Say something cute and I will say it again later when you’re not there and tell me your favorite color and it will be my favorite color too. Not only will it be my favorite color but I’ll paint it on my apartment walls and I’ll buy a whole new wardrobe with nothing but clothes that color and tell me that you love high heels and I’ll buy 60 pairs and when you dye your hair, suddenly I’ll do my hair the same way. Laugh and I’ll laugh too, cry and I’ll cry too. Hate someone and I’ll hate that person with you and love a celebrity and I’ll love her too and I’ll paste her posters all over my apartment walls and I’ll watch all her movies and listen to all her music and you’re gonna think we are just / so, so alike / when really, you make a move and I mimick you; you make a move and I say JINX in my head as if we moved at the same time and you’ll owe me a soda even though really I owe you a personality but I don’t have the capacity to afford one. 4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging. When I drive to therapy I am running late because I am always running late and I drive my car too close to the side where the parked cars sleep for the night and I hit a side mirror with my own and drive away so fast I drive through a stop sign right next to a preschool and at therapy she asks me why I am being so reckless and impulsive and I say, “What are you talking about?” because I can’t understand that my behavior is at all impulsive and reckless. I don’t eat all day because I want control until night comes and I eat and I eat and I eat and I eat and the toilet bowl calls out to me and I vomit until the veins in my eyes streak red lines in their white and I look like the monster that I feel I am. 5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self- mutilating behavior. In a moment of absolute and utter hopelessness I think to myself, “If I kill myself she will feel so fucking bad,” and I swallow bottles of pills because I think I want to die and I also want the people who did me wrong to feel the same ache that I have in my chest because of what they did to my heart. I am angry with my friend and she thinks that I will cope the same as any normal person and I go home / after our / fight / and / I take a blade / to the soft flesh of my wrists /// and slice ////// until the bathtub fills with red and /// I think to myself, “that will fucking show her.” //// (I don’t tell her what I did. I want her to know but the pain calms the anger; the blood is enough.) 6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood I sit in my apartment with Friends playing on the TV and I laugh along with the annoying laugh track and then I drop an empty cup on the carpet and I scream out with rage as if the cup was filled with acid and it burned through the carpet and hard floor even though the fucking cup was fucking empty. 7. Chronic feelings of emptiness Do I even have a heart beating in my chest? How can I be alive when I’m nothing more than an empty shell? 8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger As a teenager, doctors were desperate to explain away my emotions; they would say that I was just an angry girl and that sometimes kids are angry and when I punched holes in the walls and sliced open my skin out of pure rage it was okay because I was just The Angry Girl and it simply didn’t matter what was causing that severe emotional response. 9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms. These are not my hands. You can’t help me heal when I don’t actually exist. I swear you can’t see me when I’m like this. Can you see me? I can’t feel my limbs. I’m scared. Please, look at me so I can know that I exist.”
andulkaphoto
titsay
stormborns
germansingergirl
2087
yousharknotpass
