I haven't been back to the Cellar for a few years, mainly due to my collapse. I am right at the edge of my precipice, and thought I would look and see if there was a Cellar thread for this. And of course, there is.
I read through the whole thread, most of it from 7 years ago. I recognised quite a few names, which surprised me. After I finished I did a quick check on two names that stuck with me, Shawnee123 and Sundae. Shawnee hasn't posted since 2012 - anyone know anything? - but I was so relieved to see Sundae was still posting. (Remember me, Sundae? Satan's Claw?)
So here's why I'm at my precipice.
I am 53. I am an agnostic. I have no children. My parents are both long dead, one by suicide, one from a gruesome form of cancer which had her die in the most excruciating pain. The doctors and nurses had compulsory weekly counselling.
They were both immigrants, my mother from Japan, my father from Germany. Both immigrated alone, so I never grew up with any other family in Australia. I have met my relatives in both countries, and had been close to some for a while, but the contact dwindled - primarily from their side - over the years, and we have let it go.
My partner immigrated from Holland. We had lived in his country for 6 years. He has a large family, but they do not particularly like me - surely I forced him to leave there? - and none have ever visited in the 10 years we have lived here.
I have always had a difficult personality, although I have been working hard at it since my teenage years, trying to be more acceptable without selling my soul together with my ethics.
My parents, like many immigrants, remained stuck in the time warp of their own country in the 50s. I was raised very harshly, with frequent beatings. I never felt loved, never felt safe. My parents didn't just have a strict attitude to child raising - they had different attitudes to it, while I lived in a third world of Australian families and their (generally quite different) social rules. They also didn't like each other.
At school I did exceptionally well, but due to being fat, plain, and unsporty, being good academically was a very bad thing. Also, Australia in the 1960s still an unpleasant place for Japanese and Germans (understandably in some ways) and as the child of both I copped racism on a daily basis. I was one of two children in my school who was not of Ango-Irish ancestry.
High school took that up a notch. My life consisted of emotional, verbal and physical abuse at home and at school. I developed a classic case of
BPD, although it was not diagnosed until 2005.
I'll fast track this to a few decades later. My emotional instability fecked up my life despite all efforts to alter my behaviour. My friendships, relationships, workplaces, groups I went to - all were affected sooner or later by my behaviour, although each and every time some people would say, "it's not your fault, you did nothing wrong."
It seemed like I had been cursed at birth to always have conflict, loss and abandonment in my life. Not just in my imagination - I have witnesses to all events. But what were the chances that these things always happened to me simply by random chance? Things that just rarely seemed to happen to anyone else. (And that IS being objective.) I was the only common factor. It had to be me.
I was diagnosed with a inherited mood disorder, and was put on medication. The psychiatrist made it clear that this would not fix my life. It would stop the cycles of extreme depression (about twice a year in my 30s, and lasting about a fortnight) but I would still need to attend to the psychological trauma and patterns.
I began a 12 month course of
DBT. It was hard work, with 6 hours weekly of group therapy, and one session of individual therapy, additional to seeing my psychiatrist. I finished it not long after we had bought a farm in the country. A new person for a new life.
For about 4 years it worked pretty well. I did not feel as emotionally affected by events, and was able to maintain some reasonable social relationships with people. But I had not let them get close yet.
When I did, that’s when it all went wrong again. My best friend for 3 years stopped speaking to me because I tried – very gently, supportively and non-judgementally – to tell her about how I had thought of a way she could have her dog untethered. I had only recently learned that her Blue Heeler (an Australian working dog) had been on a one metre chain all the time for the last 7 years. I had always been there in the evenings and thought it was just chained up for the night. The same sort of thing happened with two other “close” friends.
And then something awful happened in my marriage, and I nearly died. That was the moment that my husband, “thought I was actually going to lose you” and decided we could go to marriage counselling after all. I won’t go into more of that except to say from the point on I lost interest in life, and it hasn’t really come back since. He has been as good as his word, and has seen a counsellor to understand and change his ways, to a relationship counsellor, and has been the best husband I could ask for. I trust him again now, after almost three years of not trusting him at all. But I can’t feel any connection to him. There is a big wall between us that my emotions have thrown up, and I cannot find a way to lower it. I have tried tricking it with drugs. No go. Our therapists have made suggestions but just keep saying “it needs more time”.
The awful things with other people have continued to happen, despite the fact that I have kept it to minimal contact.
My best friend for the last three has been my neighbour, Trish. We are like chalk and cheese. She likes reality TV, glossy mags, buying the latest fashion, couldn’t give a damn about the environment, and gave her 2 year old daughter a hot pink Barbie flat screen TV and DVD player. Not me at all. But we were really close. We lives about 1km from us and saw each other every other day, and phoned the other days. Last December she demanded I throw out Derek, a 19 yr old American guy who was staying with us as a HelpXer. His motorcycle was broken and he had been waiting on parts for two months (we helped him track the parts, so we know it is true.) We invited Derek to stay on for Christmas. Mid December he did something wrong – naively and without ill iintent – but he corrected it, and did not do it again. Trish demanded I throw him out because of it. It did not actually affect her in any way, and could not at any time in the future, but she was outraged all the same. I said I could and would not do it. She insisted, saying otherwise I was turning Christmas to shit. She said I had to understand this was her moral universe. I said I understood that but this was my ethical universe.
She has not spoken to me since. She will not look at me, she will not meet me to discuss it. My husband went to speak to her about it on the weekend, and she is adamant. Curiously, but as usual, even though my husband agreed with me, and was co-responsible for Derek staying, she has no issue with him.
This has been my life as far as I remember it. Taking the blame for things that just everyone else knows was not my fault.
I’m not putting all this very well, as I am slightly enhanced at the moment. I can barely cope with life without it at the moment. But for the last week I have been thinking: nothing I have done has changed the path of my life. I have lived in several different countries and cultures. I have tried to alter my behaviour to be more acceptable. I have tried being myself (bad). I have seen various therapists. Taken courses. Read a shit load about it. It seems to make no difference at all, and to be honest, if this is how much life is likely to be for the next 20-30 years, then what is the bloody point of it?
We are going to Myanmar / Burma in early February, my first real holiday away from the farm in 8 years. I worked for human rights in Burma for years. It has been a dream for just as long to go there. I’m not really that excited about it, but I am counting on the culture shock to get me out of my frame of mind, at least for the few weeks we are there.
I have promised my husband not to “put any lights out” until we return from Myanmar. But I feel very calm when I think of doing it. It is a comfort to me, to think I can do it. I know how. There are two options. When I think of not doing it I started to feel hysteria rising.
What the fuck am I writing this to you for? I cannot talk to anyone here about it anymore. Even my psychiatrist and psychologist seem to have run out of things to say or suggest, other than to encourage and support my decision to defer it to when we return from Burma.
I respect so many of the people on the Cellar for their intelligence, their maturity, their objectivity and their sensibility. If any of you have been in this sort of situation – no cancer, no kids, financially stable if not rich, a supportive husband despite the lack of connection – then please tell me what made you decide not to. I only thought of asking it here today and I hope you will forgive my long rant if you have come this far.