Page 56 of Breathe Again

Unclear or shifting self-image. Yes. I was forever doing those quizzes that are rampant online, all about self-discovery. What’s your love language? What is your spirit animal? Enneagram? Myers-Briggs Personality type? Ideal career? Ideal vacation spot? Okay, that one I knew.

Half of the time I couldn’t answer the questions with any degree of confidence. I didn’t know if I was an introvert or just depressed and anxious. I didn’t know if I liked people or just wanted to be liked. Ididn’t think I was organized, but I got a lot done so I couldn’t be that bad. Did I procrastinate or was I just constantly interrupted by competing responsibilities?

I flitted from one hobby to the next, dabbling here and there, becoming quickly bored and discarding it before becoming proficient, so I had no talent of which to be proud. I’d had sixteen jobs between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, and at least four more before Olivia came along and I became a full-time writer.

I did not have a personal style; I wore what fit. It wasn’t for lack of care. I wasn’t one of those people who despised fashion, makeup, and vanity. I loved how the right clothes and skillful makeup could bring out a woman’s beauty. I loved looking at beautiful people, male and female. I, too, wanted to look beautiful, but I didn’t know how, and my efforts always fell short.

I cut my hair when it could no longer be tamed. I wore makeup the same way I wore it in university, the same colors, too, until Bex and Willa dragged me out to a makeup counter for a tutorial and an updated palette.

Without Bex, I would still be modeling my outfits based on my mother’s taste, and her castoffs that I wore as a teen. In recent years I wore what Bex or Willa picked out for me. I still could not shop, successfully, by myself.

I recorded these slips of evidence supporting this fragment of the diagnosis.

One thing I did know about myself is that I loved my people, and I loved them hard. Including Zale. Especially Zale. Although for him, I had to acknowledge, I could also be a nightmare. I gave all of myself, I worked myself to exhaustion to give them what they needed and wanted. At times I’d feel almost resentful. I’d start thinking maybe I might like something for myself, but I could never figure out what that might be. It remained a wisp of a thought, and out of reach.

Another thing I knew about myself was that I worried. Incessantly. I worried about my mom, if she would die and my last words to her would be angry. I worried about Bex getting home safely after girls’ night. Before Rhys came on the scene, I worried about her fibromyalgia flare-ups and her detachment from the world. I worried about Willa, her safety, her inability to trust, her being alone. I worried, to the point of despair, about Olivia’s safety whenever she was out of sight, and I worried about her future.

For Zale, my anxiety was off the charts. Every time I watched him pull out of the driveway, I pulled in deep breaths to calm the fear that I may never see him again. If I lost him, I’d lose the will to live, the ability to breathe, and the scream inside me would never be silenced.

I read about Borderlines’ fear of abandonment or being left alone. I understood that, on a primal level. Though it didn’t seem abnormal to me. Maybe other people just didn’t think of those things, or didn’t think through to the end result of those things?Anyone who loves, if they thought seriously about what it would be like to lose a loved one, would feel the same fear. Wouldn’t they?

I circled back to one point, that of the shaky sense of identity. This seemed to me to be truly tragic, to the point that it hurt.

A lot.

Unstable relationships, emotional swings, tendencies toward self-harm, and explosive rage had to be worse? Not for me. I was satisfied with the few relationships I had. I’d gotten ahold of my temper, well, until more recently. The emotional swings I could hide for the most part, ensuring they didn’t affect anyone but me, and the self-harm provided me with such a sense of relief. I reasoned to myself that at least I didn’t cut, it was almost a healthy coping mechanism.

Of all the aspects that borderline personality issues entailed, it was the unclear sense of self that disturbed me the most.

I felt lost for so long, searching for my purpose, eventually focusing my energy on loving my people, which was far from wasted, rather than trying to figure out what was important to me.

What mattered to me was an endlessly moving target and depended upon who was important to me. I spent my life desperately wanting to be good at something, trying so many different things before getting bored and moving on to something else, and never becoming good at anything.

Mostly I strived to be whatever those I kept close needed me to be. Of late though, I’d developed the beginnings of a sense of self-preservation, which was an odd word choice for one who had so little sense of self. Raising boundaries, creating space for myself to figure out who I was, independently of everyone else and what they wanted or needed me to be, was becoming a goal in and of itself.

Deciding to start creating the space was a beginning, but what would I do with nothing inside me to build on? I was a hodge-podge of castoffs from the people who moved through my life, and from the people who lived life beside me.

What did I enjoy? Even that was a difficult question.

I knew I loved the beach. Just the thought of the beach could take me there in my mind where I lifted my face to an imaginary sun, opened my ears to the sound of the seagull and the surf, raised my arms in supplication to the breeze that lifted my hair off my neck and wrapped itself around my near-naked body. I expanded my lungs with the salt of the sea air, breathing life into dust. Just the word beach evoked the seemingly conflicting feelings of freedom and belonging that I found there. I dreamed of one day living by the sea. Perhaps one day, when I’m old and alone, I’d walk into the surf and let it take me home.

That I knew, I loved the beach. I wondered if there was a label for someone who was a beach lover. I looked it up. Thalassophile. Weird word, but I liked having the label.

I am a thalassophile.

I also loved sex, craved it. I even loved my body during sex, how it responded, muscles tightening, skin quivering under his hands, nerve endings firing, senses alive, body twitching, stretching, arching, twisting, quaking, smelling, tasting, sighing, gifting me with more pleasure than I could ever conceivably explain. I think I would have liked it even if I didn’t need it. Maybe. Probably.

I am sensual.

I liked reading, especially outside, in the summer, under the shade of the wide, arching branches of a tree, or when it’s bitter, curled up on the couch with a candle and a cup of tea. Reading was an excellent escape. I knew the word for that, bibliophile.

I am a bibliophile.

I liked crafting and art, but rarely, if ever, did I enjoy the outcome of my artistic labors. I messed around with illustrating my children’s books, just to give the illustrator an idea of what was in my head while writing, but I could not in good conscience call myself an artist. Could I?

I liked writing, but it took a supreme act of will to finish what I started. It did not come easily or naturally, but it served to unload the albatross of emotional baggage. Still.

I am a writer.

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