Suspended in a compromise.

We sent our gods away, many years gone by, because in our arrogance we felt no need for them any longer. We devoted our lives to a myriad of different sciences, to furthering what breakthroughs we've had to make us technological titans in medicine, machine, weapon, virus and creation. But with no gods, we had no compass. Now, me, I don't believe in gods, and that means I'm just a child of our world, raised with no reason to fear anything but my fellow man and what weapons that are wielded.

I believe we create our own gods and devils. How can I believe anything else? I feel a deep connection with the world around me and the people I encounter, moved to tears by things that other people don't even flinch at, marveling at the world around me. But I don't believe that there is a god in the way the religions I'm acquainted with paint. Just as I don't believe their picture of a devil. I believe in good an evil, I believe in cruelty and kindness, coldness and empathy. I believe we create our own gods and heavens, and our fears fashion us hells and devils. The angels and demons are the people we meet.

A friend, a kind person who is selfless, how is that not an angel of some sort? Human predators who torture and abuse others are as close to demons as anything I can imagine.

Maybe I'm putting too much thought into this. I've been told you can't analyze beliefs, you just basically close your eyes and pick a direction. But I don't believe that for a second, actually. I feel like you have to find something that calls to the core of your very being.

A Christmas or two ago a friend of mine gave me a tarot deck called the Faerie's Oracle and with it I have felt a connecting to an otherness that I only felt as a child, a deep sense of rightness.

After I was home this last time my mom informed me my Uncle Michael (passed away in '89) used to do tarot as well as had the same knack for it I seem to.

How can I not feel connected to this man who I met only in the first months of my life, too young to even remember his face? I don't believe there is a god linking us, I believe that somehow in the vast universe he shared some of his stardust with me, passing on a part of himself in the moment he first held me.

My mother tells me how very much he would have loved me, how we would have been inseparable, two odd little birds flocking together. Maybe the universe wanted to leave my mother a part of him, and since I was so young, so unformed I was receptive to what stardust he had to offer.

This is very, very tangential and I don't plan to revise or edit, as this is a place for me to just write and think and allow everything to flow out of me into a place where I can look back on it. Where I can experience my own thoughts again.

I'm a bit worked up because I had posted the first paragraph of this entry on facebook (I'd written it awhile ago and when I rediscovered it today it hit a note that I didn't want to ignore) and someone got very defensive about God as he believes him to be, and it just made me angry.

Why is his version any more credible or fulfilling than the one I choose to believe? Believe what you will, but do not force feed it to me. If you'd like to debate theoretically or something, I'm game, if you'd like to share your beliefs with me when I invite that sort of topic, by all means...But I do dislike this invasion into something that is, in essence, my space and the brash attitude he took.

I need to go eat something. I think my blood sugar is dropping and I'm just working myself up more.

And if you can find it in your heart to love me, I will always be greatful

The one thing I can't get over is the capacity for love that my fellow humans have. I realize that not everyone is going to understand, or be willing to accept me and all my faults and flaws and issues. And I'm okay with that. But for those of you who do...Those of you who read this and you feel your hearts swell a little bit with pride, respect, admiration or love....That means the world to me.

The constant terror and heartache that I live in, it's enough to drive a saint to suicide, but the love I get returned to me is so wonderful.

Today is the 4th of July and I've been thinking about a number of things, including, but not limited to, the people I've been blessed, and cursed, with.

On the one side, I have wonderful people who can look at me, broken pieces and all, and find something beautiful and worth loving. The ones who see all the twisted parts, the shattered bits, the darkness and complications and they're so tender and forgiving with me. They just allow me to be who I am and they don't expect anything from me. Nothing except what I have to offer. And that simple acceptance is the most amazing gift.

On the other hand, I've been cursed with those who judge, condemn and expect me to just 'make it go away', 'make it stop' or to even just 'turn it off' as if any of those options are available to me. Trust you me, if I could, for even an hour, be something other then what I am, to be able to make the Borderline go away, I would. No questions asked. Because I would love to experience life without all the stings attached, without all the fall backs, and tricks and traps.

So to those of you who allow me the freedom of just being me, no strings attached...Thank you. You're the reason I'm doing this, to allow you to come inside my mind, my soul, my life and see the world through my eyes.

Without you, I would no be.

Because without you, I would have no reason to be.

Lost in the Looking Glass

(If I had a world of my own everything will be nonsense)
(Nothing will be what it is because everything will be what it isn't)

I invite you to a world where there is no such thing as time
And every creature lends themself to change your state of mind
And the girl that chased the rabbit drank the wine and took the pill
Has locked herself in limbo to see how it truly feels
To stand outside your virtue
No one can ever hurt you
Or so they say

Her name is Alice (Alice)
She crawls into the window
Through shapes and shadows
Alice (Alice)
And even though she is dreaming, she knows

Sometimes the curiosity can kill the soul but leave the pain
And every ounce of innocence is left inside the brain
And through the looking glass we see she's faithfully returned
But now off with her head I fear is everyones concern
You see theres no real ending
Its only the beginning
Come out and play

Her name is Alice (Alice)
She crawls into the window
Through shapes and shadows
Alice (Alice)
And even though shes dreaming
Shes unlocked the meaning for you
This kingdom could rid us her freedom and innocence
Has brought this whole thing down

Her name is Alice (Alice)
She crawls into the window
Through shapes and shadows
Alice (Alice)
And even though she is dreaming
Shes unlocked the meaning

Shes unlocked the meaning for you

(And contrary wise what it is it wouldn't be)
(And what it wouldn't be it would)
(You see)

-Her Name is Alice, by Shinedown.


Really read these lyrics. Just take a minute, re-read them, listen to the song if you can, and THINK on these lyrics.

Think about that world, where time means nothing, and it flows in strange ways, slipping through your fingers and dragging all at the same time. A world where everything, everyone seems to have been created just to complicate and confuse you. To feel like you're trapped in limbo, the pain that lingers.

When the chorus come on, and it talks about Alice crawling through shapes and shadows, I totally understand. Because that is a wonderfully poetic description of how it feels to shift from Ana to Ana to Ana to Ana. Even though I am me, I don't know who ME is and I shift and change.

I'm also horribly acquainted with the pain of a ruined soul, where it feels as though all that remains is the pain, that you've suffered a soul-death. And there isn't any end on the horizon, no hope of a better day, just the fear of an end, or sometimes, even the hope of an end.

Either way it's not a good place to be.


There are actually a lot of comparisons between Borderline Personality Disorder and Tinker Bell, and even Alice when she's lost in Wonderland, or the Looking Glass World.

Lemme explain.


Tinker Bell: In the original story she's so tiny that she's incapable of being more then one emotion. When she's good, she's wonderful. When she's bad, she's horrible. Because she can only be one, she is ALL of that single emotion at a time. I live like that too. When I'm forgiving, I could forgive the entire world of their faults. When I'm angry, I could destroy an entire country.

Alice: When Alice is lost in Wonderland, she doesn't know who she is anymore. And through a series of strange, confusing, and often distressing events she goes through a process of elimination to figure out who she isn't, eventually waking up and just being her.

Well, life as a Borderliner is living that process of elimination, sometimes we win the game and know who we are before we die, sometimes we don't.

Can you imagine? I mean sure, you see girls idolizing both Alice and Tinkerbell, but the characters they see are such a watered down version that we forget the original characters.

They were darker, more raw then the way Disney portrays them.

That's me. I am dark and raw and uncompleted. I am a creature of oddity, and emotion. It's a wild, untamed existence.

Often you'll see me make the comparisons in the future, so I figured I'd take a minute and explain it.

Interlude: A moment of current crazy

What the ever living hell was I thinking, getting out of therapy?

I mean, before I moved out here I should have had Sarah find me a new shrink and just jumped from one doc to the next. Because me without therapy is turning out to be far more difficult then I could have possibly anticipated.

Don't get me wrong, I'm heartily impressed by the fact I haven't gone off the deep end since my therapy was terminated, but I've been on the edge more times then I care to recount.

Here's the thing: Therapy isn't just about getting you better, it's about keeping you better. It's all about keeping your skills sharp. So even if I was only going once a month, it has a safe feeling about it.

I've made good use of my close friends and my mom though. Calling all the time, ranting, raving, demanding to know if I'm behaving at all like a rational human being or not.

Words are insufficient...

I pass my days in solitude so very often, I go hours without uttering a word. And all that time where I'm on my own, where I am left to my own devices...It's the breeding ground for panic and despair. It's where anxiety grows and blossoms.

My mind is allowed to run wild, and come up with everything and anything it wants to.

Days have been spent pouring over my every minute failing, every mistake and wrong choice. Picking apart my entire life, personality, and psyche only to reach the same damn conclusion (which I'm told it utterly incorrect) of how horrible a human being I am.

Now, this isn't logical. I'm 100% aware of that. (I have this bizarre mix of using logic when it supports my absurd and wild self accusations, and coming up with things that are totally out of the realm of rationality when logic fails that...quirk.)

But then again neither is blaming someone for leaving when they have no intention of doing so...well, until I throw my crazy at them so hard they don't have much of a choice. In their shoes, if my boyfriend/girlfriend/friend/whomever-it-is-I'm-referring-to started pelting me with hail sized crazy, I'd probably need some distance too.

Look, I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that I'm so ready for someone to be there to smack me when I get out of line again. Hell, my mom's 2,000 miles away so she can only do so much to kick my ass into line. Sometimes what I need is a good old fashioned smack upside the back of the head to remind me to pull my head out of crazy-land and return to harbor in good ol' real-world.

I'm sure some people are highly offended about how I talk about Borderline Personality Disorder, and some people may take this as permission to joke and tease and play around with it.

Let me be crystal clear here: This is my life. This is my every moment of existence. Humor is how I survive when my own mind is trying to kill me. I have every right to address MY life, MY understanding, MY case of BPD with disdainful amusement and detached affection because I learned that if I don't embrace my own insanity, I'm doomed. I don't mind when my boyfriend addresses it the same way because, now, it's his life too. We share this morbid humor together because otherwise this would destroy us. We're foxhole buddies, so to speak.

But unless you have permission from someone, unless it is your own life, unless you have suffered through the deepest, darkest pits of hell along side that person, don't you ever dare make light of it. It is far from funny. Common decency demands that you make no jokes about homicide, war, genocide or any other form of destruction, so extend that decency to us. We are ravaged in the unseen corners of our minds by demons and monsters, violence and terror beyond imagination. Would you mock a prisoner of war, make light of torture, tease a survivor? If you would, then you don't deserve to call yourself human and I pity your pathetic existence. If this seems harsh, understand that I have been mocked, told I am weak, teased, and had 'light hearted, affectionate jokes' made by people who've never held me while I wept, stood by my side while I contemplated suicide, and stubbornly refused to leave my side while I suffered.

So, please, respect the realm of mental health issues, and please understand that this is how I make it through each day. And refrain of 'making light' of someone's brokenness, unless you've been given permission, or unless you're that steadfast companion.