The First Thought When Anyone Reaches Out to Me.
Being Loved and Feeling Nothing:
Spending some time in isolation has been quite illuminating. I thought all the stress of these new found methods of working would drive me mad but somehow I survived. More than that in the absence of any stability in the outside world, I decided to turn inward. I began to reflect. What I realized might have shed new light about what I need to tackle for my own mental health.
I would consider myself to be somewhat well liked. In general. As a human being. I have a healthy circle of friends, I’m well liked by acquaintances, coworkers, and my superiors. This is where having Borderline Personality Disorder is both my greatest strength and downfall. It’s the disorder that enables a deep empathy inside me which helps me often keep people on my good side, but it’s the disorder that also prevents me from feeling any love from any of these people.
Finally Feeling It:
For years I spent my life in a spiteful and bitter daze. I’d walk through life pleasing people but being frustrated at them for failing to make me feel loved, the way I could for them. This gnawing feeling of never being enough to get that feeling hardened my heart. Until I met someone. And though I still struggle to understand what it was that they did, I know it worked. For the first time in all my life I had felt genuine and real love. And that terrified me.
Despite repeated attempts to push that person away, they stuck around. Told me them leaving was off the table. Told me they loved me, and something about the way they said it convinced me. I stopped my awful campaign and I learned to turn off my paranoia, at least for them. For some time it felt great. No. It felt amazing. In those brief moments where the paranoia had stopped and I felt love, it’s hard to describe. But I had never known myself better than when I was with them. My energy spent on paranoia could be used for better and stronger things.
Losing It:
And of course it didn’t last. For all the awful manipulation and deception that I have regretfully carried out in my lifetime, my greatest mark was myself. I was reminded the hard way why that paranoia existed. The one person who made me finally feel whole, left me behind. They taught me that no matter what I would never be enough, that even the worst person in the world was worth more than I ever could be.
At times I can’t blame them. What can I offer? Resourcefulness, charm, and love but to an extent all of it is so moderated and mediated that it’s difficult to decide whether any of it really is genuine, or just tools I employ in order to keep people in my life. And so after losing the one good thing in my life, my mind went back to it’s paranoid ways, but with more harsh cruelty than ever before.
Fear:
It was in quarantine that I realized the full extent of just how I see other human beings. The past few weeks have seen a variety of people reach out to me. Friends, family, coworkers, superiors. The one thing I realized is the moment I get the call, or the message, or the email there’s a singular thought that crosses my mind for a split second every single time.
“What do they want from me?”
It’s a small thing right. It goes by so quickly in the space between being reached out, and getting the actual content. But with quarantine inspiring so many people to reach out to one another it was hard to ignore. I have learned, that I view people less as capable of caring about me, and more as entities that must be pleased or manipulated to feel a certain way. Feeling this way explains how so often I know exactly what to say or do to make a person feel a certain way. My mind has dedicated a position of its power to always analyzing what a person lacks, and then figuring out how to fill in that gap with the least effort.
And of course, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s helped me immeasurably in my professional life and even my personal life. But it means that the paranoia is always there.
The idea of being loved just for the reason that I am enough is so foreign to me, that when presented it feels like an idea so tangible that will always be out of reach. I want nothing more than to get rid of this paranoia.
Every ounce of love spent on me feels wasted, because I can’t even feel it. I’ve learned that for the most part it’s not the fault of others, and yet despite this it’s difficult to feel for people. The outbreak is strange. A part of it makes me feel so connected to everyone, because they’re experiencing the fear and paranoia that I have felt everyday of my life. And yet seeing my friends and loved ones break down, makes me want to desperately go back because I realize I’m conditioned to handle feel more than most people.
I don’t know what the future holds at all. But I know what I need to target now. I want to put all the love I receive to good use. I want to be able to love people without moderating it again. I’m so terrified that I may never feel it at all. But I want to try. I have no other choice but to give up on humanity, and I don’t want that.
