Her – A Stream of Consciousness

I’m back to being in bed lacking any desire to eat, move, or do anything that resembles living. Even in this state, I am proud of two things, that I still desire to go to work, and that when my mom starts overreacting to my state, I don’t get angry at her, but rather accept that she overreacts because she cares, and she really doesn’t understand.

I don’t think anyone can fully understand, unless you’re in it. It doesn’t make sense, it’s completely irrational but yet it makes all the sense in the world.

I canceled my therapy sessions, and ignored all of her calls and texts, and only called back after she expressed being worried. But I explained to her like I explained to my friends:

I don’t want to live without my attachment figure. I don’t want to be happy without her. I don’t want to succeed if she’s not by my side. I have no desire to think or function without her. I have spent my whole life living in search of this perfect love, and I don’t know how to do anything else, and i’m afraid that I will fail at everything else I try.

The author of this post describes what I feel but lacked the words to say. She puts words to the feelings of attachment and enmeshment that have made up my whole life.

God Exists in the Reminders

Lately it has been increasingly harder for me to get out of bed.

I have been eating my feelings away with cheesecake, chocolate cake, cookies, chips, pints of ice cream, and the list goes on.

My body started reacting by becoming increasingly sluggish, and just so drained and tired. Basically, the bad aftermath began to outweigh the good feelings experienced while overeating that I decided to stop.

Along with that, I have been trying to make a commitment to myself to return to exercising. Exercising is something I unfortunately associate with my attachment figure. Therefore, I have been so weighed down at the thought of exercising because of all the mental baggage associated with it.

I have been missing her more and more and more. Yesterday I had a nightmare that I went on her social media page and ended up breaking down crying. The resulting body shakes woke me up, and I was relieved to know it was only a dream. I was also very proud at my commitment to ignoring the parts of me that wants to do things like see her or hear her, when I know it really is a trap in disguise to derail me. I’m just not ready and i’m not going to cause myself unnecessary pain.

However, exercising brings up thoughts of her more and more. I was supposed to get out of the bed 3 hours ago, but the hollowness inside has been making that hard. I laid here repeating to God over and over that “I can’t, I just can’t”

I went on instagram and the first thing on my feed was this:

“I can do it, just keep putting one foot in front of the other”

God believes in me, so i’m just going to get up. But before I did, I just wanted to share with everyone here to not neglect the reminders that God gives you. He is in those reminders, He is with you. Why rob yourself of the presence of Love by chocking things up to coincidence. You will find Him when you look for Him with all your heart.

Gaining Better Focus

I debated about whether I wanted to share my journal entry today. There is a therapeutic release in journaling, which is why I journal so often. However, when it comes to my blog, I have to think about why would I want to share this in a public space. Immediately, I began to feel that when I blog I am taking ownership of myself, and in a way forced to become more conscious of myself by way of knowing that I am in a sense exposed to the people who will stumble across my post. This provides it’s own growth value because I can look back and see a more orderly representation of my growth and this reminds me why I titled my blog “Evolving Perceptions.”

Today during church the Pastor ended by saying this year it won’t be so much about rebuking the devil, as it will be about using wisdom to discern his schemes, because last year it was not about a question of willpower but a question of focus.

As I analyze the past relationship with my most recent attachment figure, I ask myself why was it so hard for me to see her as human. Why did I feel like I either needed to demonize or idolize her in order for me to better understand myself.

I can now see that it was an interplay between both my thought process and her somewhat grandiose personality.

The logic for me flows like this:

God gives me gift of person-> Person begins withdrawing from me-> SInce person was sent by God, all of their actions in my life must be orchestrated by God-> God is withdrawing person from me-> I did something wrong to lose gift -> Work harder to find what you are doing wrong and fix it so God brings person back

She unknowingly reinforced my thought process every time she said, “God is making me leave.” “God says we are purposeless” “God is ending the season” “God says us being apart is better for both me and you.” Most things she did in my life, if not all really, she backed up by saying she prayed over it and it was God influenced.

So I lost focus. I made her heart synonymous with Gods heart. I made her synonymous with God. Everything she did or did not do became a reflection of what God did or did not do. It made me feel I was in this losing battle against God. Therefore, when she tried to leave, God was leaving me.

But now as I gain more wisdom and insight and I look back over last year, what was more reflective of the truth is that, she wanted to help me love myself, but she realized that the way I needed her to be was something she could never be. And because she can be quite extra at times, she also believed that she felt responsible, as a vessel of Christ, to make things work. But that level of responsibility over an adult, coupled with the trials of her life became too much, and in an effort to rebalance herself she had to give up on me because I was too much. In the latter part of our relationship it wasn’t about me, it was about her, everything she did was for her, even if she doesn’t want to acknowledge that she needed to understandably be selfish, I am at a place where I can acknowledge that with understanding and acceptance. It wasn’t God doing this that and the third, it was her making a human decision to preserve herself.

I lost this focus in the relationship and turned her into a God because I needed to feel loved by God. It’s never about discerning if she was God led or devil led, but discerning whether in all things am I moving in a God led or devil led direction. It’s about me not her.

Sometimes all of this begs the questions for me if she ever actually loved me, or if I was just a misguided assignment. My therapist tries to say that it is impossible for her to have been as invested as she was in me and not to have loved me. I think for now, for my peace, I just answer my question with it doesn’t matter now.

However, with this new wisdom, I am able to look back through saved texts that I simply moved out of sight (she invested a lot of time in writing them that I didn’t want to delete them) and I find new compassion when reading them. I see true sincerity from the heart of a human that I was never able to fully see before as I tried interpreting her words through a God lens. I see GREAT care that sometimes when reading them I want to berate myself for being unable to see them before. Even as I read the texts where she began acknowledging that she was overwhelmed, I want to cry because I see her tiredness that could only stem from someone who cares and that truly feels like they are doing the best they can and still I get no better. I remember when I first read them, I read them with so much anger and hurt, because I felt like it was too late for her to claim being overwhelmed when she promised she would never give up, I wanted more and more. Now I see that for the circumstances of how we were in each others life and the fact that she had no relation to me she gave me a lot, and she tried.

Little Orphan Annie

This post exemplifies one of the reasons why she has easily become one of my favorite bloggers.

I can only hope that one day I am able to see my worth and validation in the One that formed me. I pray for the day that I stop viewing myself as the orphan, and instead allow myself to relax in a love that I have spent most of my life searching for.

BeautyBeyondBones

As many of you know, I’m an actor.

And one of my favorite roles I ever played was Annie.

Yes, yes, your red-headed, optimistic orphan was portrayed by Yours Truly. A couple of times.

But I mean, come on. You can’t not love that show. It’s like the original Hallmark movie: set in NYC during Christmas, cheesy dialogue (Leapin’ Lizards!), and of course, a feel-good ending.

It’s got Hallmark written all over it.

Now, I could dissect the lyrics of “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow.” I mean, let’s be real: that’d be a pretty appropriate topic for a recovery/hope-spewing blog.

But, you all are smart people and I’m not here to waste your time. I respect you too much.

I’m here to talk about…Daddy Warbucks.

Yep: your bald headed, capitalism-loving, millionaire softie.

Now. Quick recap, in case you live under a rock and have never seen the…

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Guard Your Heart

About two weeks ago I felt pushed to delve into and write about what it means to guard your heart. However, I couldn’t because there are just some aspects of my heart that were better left ignored, in my opinion, until there was an appropriate time, namely after the biggest exam in my life to date, passes.

I can’t help the unintentional triggers that cause me pain. I feel like I don’t have a choice in the instances where in the melting pot that is America, I inevitably pass people that speak her language, or eat her favorite cultural dessert.

I can’t help those, so I took the necessary steps to avoid intentional triggers. I removed everything of hers off my phone, from pictures to texts, and her presence off of my favorite social media sites.

In all of this though, my relationship with God suffered. I blame God for the ongoing state of pain I always find myself in. In my mind I saw the potential for the downfall of this relationship and when I tried to run away, I thought that it was Him teaching me how to stay and learn to love and accept love.

So naturally for me, as i’m sure many people like me with BPD, can relate to. What resulted was the inevitable investment of my entire self. My heart, my mind, I would have even invested my body if she wanted it, in exchange for her to do the impossible task of filling me unendingly. Of course at the time I did not know that I was engaging in this kind of relationship, however, soon after circumstances revealed the nature of my attachment, things went bad fast.

I was already in too deep to pull away, and she was already too scared to love me or care for me past the newly instated boundaries she felt compelled to enact. The result was a perpetual state of rejection and hurt like none other that I have ever faced.

It hurts so freaking bad. I feel like God must be punishing me for being such a bad person. I believe that he orchestrated all of this on purpose to break me. In my mind He must be punishing me because her joy and her peace has been restored, leading me to think that it was Him and her against me this entire time. And I’ve had other borderline relationships end but despite the pain, my internal sense of peace and connection to God, was never affected because things just made sense. This never and doesn’t make sense. So I run away.

Though I began by subconsciously running away, when God brought it to my consciousness with a post on my instagram that I’m running. And a follow up verse to show me how just to guard my heart, I ignore Him. Philippians 4:4-7

4 Be full of joy in the Lord always. I will say again, be full of joy.
5 Let everyone see that you are gentle and kind. The Lord is coming soon.
6 Do not worry about anything, but pray and ask God for everything you need, always giving thanks.
7 And God’s peace, which is so great we cannot understand it, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

I found it a cruel joke to be told that the way to guarding my heart is by having God’s peace. A peace that comes from not worrying about the trials in my heart, but instead praying for a God to do what He sees fit, when I’m scared that what seems fit to Him is punishing me because I am a bad person that does not exemplify His Glory in the way I live my life.

But yesterday, two weeks after this initial run in with God, my ways failed me, like they always do. My way of guarding my heart backfired, because I truly was always unable to do it alone. Though I thought I removed her from all social media platforms, yesterday night her blog showed up on my wordpress feed, because I completely forgot she had a blog. And like clockwork, just at the mere sight of her name, my heart sank. Everything I have been protecting myself from came rushing full force. I felt pressed at the thought of her noticing that I unfollowed her blog, and feared her thinking it was out of malice and not self-preservation, then saddened by the realization that she wouldn’t even care or give it thought because whereas she was able to stop caring for me, she still means so much to me.

So when I woke up this morning, with no desire to move, or eat, or breathe, I began to cry because I realized that I have to confront my hurt, and my heart, and that I have to do so with God. Removing reminders of her is a way of preventing constant bruising at wounds that are trying to heal, but that is not what guards the heart.

Guarding the heart has to be more, it is meant to be more. It is not trying to protect myself from heart grievances by instituting walls that keep everyone out and me locked in. Guarding my heart is a daily walk of prayer with the God who I am angry at. It is covering myself with prayer, and accepting His comfort. I didn’t know how deeply betrayed by God I felt, until I tried to sit and watch a sermon and anger boiled inside of me, then despondency, then finally waterworks to my friend, that revealed through my rambling that my soul is so unstable, because it recognizes it’s emptiness, and fears that God doesn’t recognize it too. That God doesn’t care about my pain or hurt because He thinks I deserve it. That God has His other children’s backs and I have to get the cinderella step-daughter treatment because I am just inherently vile. I believe that He would have her build me up and help me learn to love myself only to have her reach a point of being unable to love me to reflect the reality that I am unloveable.

Guard my heart because from it flow the issues of my life. “Guarding my heart” against a relationship is not what this verse intends. Who we are does not flow from relationships but rather relationships reveal who we are. Guarding the heart means guarding the thoughts that we store up inside of ourselves that then color the lens through which we live.

Hence why it is only appropriate that Paul follows up his discussion about Gods’ peace with Philippians 4:8-9

8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

9 Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.

The thoughts we think are important. Not seeing her name is not how I guard my heart. Dealing with the fact that I feel unloveable and unworthy of connection when I see her name, is guarding my heart, because then and only then will I stop equating my worth with the value I felt I had in our relationship. Then and only then will I be able to see her name without feeling that I will inevitably be rejected because that’s all I deserve. Once those thoughts have been replaced with new ones, I will not only truly heal from this past relationship, but will be better equipped and ready to handle not only new relationships, but different avenues that I may need to get to, that my stunted self-esteem has kept me from.

God must see something in me that makes Him pursue me, and it has to be more than wanting to punish me. Only by working with Him, and not against Him will I be able to purify my heart and gain His peace to help me grow.