Borderline personality disorder is distressing

That really sums it all up if you know anything about the condition. But, since it is likely you do not, I'll give you a bit of information to explain what I mean. I love and I hate. No, that's what the diagnosis generally implies, but that's not what I always do. It does seem that way often I must admit. Socially this is a problem. Romantically this is augmented and magnified to a degree approaching lunacy. It is ludicrous, the life I lead.

Katie, since I know you read this, I'd like to let you know that you are my exception that proves the rule. You are tonight's subject but do not ever doubt even for a moment my complete love for you. You are my one and only and seeing this has allowed me to recognize and tackle each mental problem I have as it comes to me and admit my weaknesses.

Tonight I spent time with my fiance. Some fun was had, not too much, but enough. My twisted wicked mind pesters me like a stick poked into my side over and over. "If she is not with you completely physically than you may as well be acquaintances." That statement is false. There's no arguing for it with any sense of logic. But I'm not a Vulcan. Knowing something is not logical does not pull it from inside my head, doesn't force me to be normal and feel what I so badly want to augment my love for her with. I have not doubted for an instant that I love her, because it is just that kind of love. My soul, which I have never even been sure existed before, sympathizes with her and symbiotically bonds to her presence.

But this nagging voice persists at me like Marge Simpson grinding her teeth I can't seem to separate it from the audio track playing in my head. I know that unless she is completely mine, a shared life in every conceivable way, this will nag at me. This will carve itself into my flesh day in and day out while I contemplate my life in the shower or gaze into the mirror or twiddle my thumbs. It will keep carving this with the broken glass that is my grey matter: Not really yours. It's like it's all a sham to that little voice in my head. Every emotion I feel, every moment we share, each kiss and nibble and orgasm, it all lacks substance to that creature who I very much wish to name so that my torment may have a name and I can assign it a face and picture its grim countenance feeling the pain I inflict.

I miss cutting my flesh. I miss the pain, I miss the pleasure. I miss the blood perhaps most of all. I'm not a religious man, but the first time my blood flowed out over my joints and dripped onto the carpet I understood baptism, being hurled under a liquid so pure and beautiful it cleanses your soul. So cutting is sort of a mirror image of a baptism. Holiness reflected in a mirror, darkly.

I feel so guilty and upset, distraught really, over this whole thing that my stomach churns. I wrote a bit on it in math class this morning. I will put it into poetry later, but not poetry for her. I haven't written her poem for today yet. This guttural poem is for my own growth, and perhaps for the folio. But it is not a side I would like to read to her. It would only make her upset.

I cried just a few tears while holding her tonight, I felt so close and so in love that, as the flaming lips would put it, my happiness made me cry. I'm finishing tonight's entry with another lyric:

And still this emptiness persists
Perhaps this is as good as it gets

My old wallpaper is now making a comeback:

Join us in our sunship balloons.

I know it's so silly and cliche but I'm so in love. It seems a habit of mine to write blog entries while she sleeps on my bed. As some of you may know I love watching people sleep. In the past it's been pets, babies, and occasionally lovers. Not many people get this about me. It's understood that I'm a people watcher but when you are observing the oblivious you can see every nook and cranny of their personality. She's about half covered by my black comforter, resting on the similarly covered sheets and pillows. Her eyes are closed but not moving much. I don't think she is dreaming. Her face is still tiredly expressive though. Her eyebrows raise and her face scrunches and her cheeks grow pink and the corners of her lips curl and rise, sneering at the waking world she is separate from. This whole thing has felt like a dream, the magic of falling in love and knowing so soon and so completely that we've nowhere else to go in this often life-long quest for companionship I see so many of my peers wrapped up in every day. Her hair falls in obtuse streaks across her forehead. Too thin to be clumps, too thick to be strands.

In conversation today I said the words "my fiance" much to the surprise of some of my peers. A project group member saluted me for my ability to make such a decision. The biggest decision he made this month he said was choosing what beer to drink in the evenings.

So I'm here, at home. She is with me always, sleeping or awake. We went out to buy her a ring guard today and now the silver holds to her skin like a leech, seemingly siphoning energy off and pulling the cheap stone to levels of grandeur the small jeweler I bought it from would never imagine, the high standing of the ring on her finger. When she needs to say the "W" word or refers to me with the "F" word it drains her and scares her and excites her and I love her all the more for all of it.

She doesn't know I'm watching her like this when she slumbers only a few feet away from me, but if she does catch me doing it she can't be too unhappy. After all, when I look at her I grow the biggest goofy grin I have in my repertoire that no photographer has been able to capture yet.

Perhaps the wedding photos will contain it.

I know this was kinda...sudden. I'm aware. But sometimes you just know. I can't seem to find a simile or metaphor that contains my reasoning in its entirety but I have been trying. For the absolutely geeky in my life I've got this:

You ever fall across something while you were browsing these here internets that is simply beyond passing up? Not porn or anything, but some data that fits you perfectly. The song collection that has every missing track off every album you owned but never were able to complete because your disc was scratched. The 15 pages in a PDF file conspicuously missing and leaving out the climax of a downloaded book. The last pages of a comic you bought second hand and could never ever finish. It appears in your life and you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you simply must posses it, and it is what has been missing and you never want to delete it as long as your hard drive still lives.

So yeah, news.

Oh man, is that an engagement ring? You bet it is! I know many of you will rant and rave and scream and shout, but she and I are not the type to give a care to such drivel and nonsense. We are each others one and only. Deal with it. Oh, and October 2010, save the date.

Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing the betrothed, Benjamin and Katie:

Crisis Averted

So this is what it is like when two crazy people date successfully. So the crisis of epic proportions I was freaking out about like a couple hours ago? Yeah, it was nothing. She thought I was mad at her and thusly quasi-snubbed me, as a way of dulling it and being non-confrontational. I thought she was mad at me and thusly freaked the hell out. Once she woke up I pressed the issue and we came to this revelation. She's just scared that if we do anything physical I'll up and leave her. I have reassured her repeatedly and we have reaffirmed our love in each other.

Happy again cradling her.

Living Hell

First things first: I was chastised in an email from my poetry professor because I was out of my gourd last class, insulting and overbearing to other students. I had inadvertently taken what rapidly revealed itself to be a copious amount of pure caffeine. If I lose this class I may as well just throw myself off a bridge. It's the only thing I enjoy at this godforsaken university that passes for a class. I have apologized profusely. I hope it was enough. I hope my written critique of Amelia was not too mean...

Moving right along:



No, we're not broken up, but I suspect she will drop me presently. I may be overreacting. It's impossible to tell with me. When I think I'm responding appropriately I am kicked in the groin by surprise and scorn. I'm just going to continue riding with the waves as they come and hope I keep breathing.

I hate everything about myself. Everything. My behavior, my body, more often than not my mind.

Katie is upset about something involving us. I don't know what. It is likely pertaining to some sort of sexual dysfunction of mine. My libido is strong, and I have shown restraint, in my opinion great restraint, in my continual optional refusals for foreplay and trying to simply turn my libido off. I may have to masturbate more often, but I'll do it to be with her.

She might just still be upset over this family problem from earlier, but I think right now that isn't on her mind. She lays, again, sleeping in my bed. She cared not whether I lay with her or not.

How did I screw up this time?

I feel nausea just thinking about every way I may have failed myself, failed her, failed life. She loves foreplay but is not one to go much farther, not for a while at least. I'm ok with this. But she is upset somehow. I know she is. When you love someone you can tell. It's a small thing that may snowball and kill this happiness we have built together.

Do I deserve happiness? I've never thought so. I'd like it. I've liked it for spurts in the past. But I don't feel I am deserving of it.

There are so many things I want. I think I'd settle to get my book out. Once I have it published I think I would be ok with death. Since I was young I've known how impermanent my existence here is. I tell my therapists and other assorted doctors that I feel as if my life will end before 30. The truth is that in my gut I just know this. It would take an astronomical force upon my life to convince me otherwise.

I love Katie, love her tremendously, but I still feel this way. I'm sad right now, sad and foolish and small. Watching her sleep while I am a million miles across the way I feel like the morning star. Cast down away from light, forever looking up at what he had lost, given up for the sake of personal power. With Katie I seek happiness, and it is not she that has cast me out today, but perhaps I. If I believed in such nonsense I'd say it was God.

My head is flushed with seasonal affectations and blood, but I feel so cold. I've got bad circulation in my hands, I know, but is it sadness that chills me presently, or acceptance? It is not my lot in life to partake of fluff and star shine. I work best in the dark, in the undertow, in the position where I am saddest and without any hope for this life I thrive creatively.

That last sentence sickens me.

Why can I not just be happy? Is there a reason behind all this? Katie and I feel that we could each be each other's one, as in "one and only." I really do think this. But I am worse than nothing.

If I had to rate how badly I want to cut, 10 being me holding the knife and 1 me being sublime, I'd say I'm at about an 8. We'll see how the night goes. It is supposed to rain tomorrow. I'll be wearing long pants and probably a jacket.

Where the needle for a blood test poked me yesterday there is a target. I can see it clear as day, where the blood flows so fast and so rich. As the syringe filled last afternoon I watched, entranced by the bubbling seemingly boiling blood filling the crystal.



A parody, I know, but quite pertinent and amusing as well.

So, where do I stand? Has love provided me with a solid foundation upon which I may jump, or must I walk as if on eggshells? I asked her to look up what it's like to deal with people afflicted by my condition. I don't know if she did.

I'm still sitting across the room. Katie is still sleeping in my bed.

Meet James Ensor

I told her today while she was stuffing her cheeks with pumpkin pie cookies that I love her. She said she loves me too.

I don't need to add anything to that.

But after she left my day just...it suffered. I've always been one to say what he means in his goodbyes. If you warrant one, you'll get a hug. If I could not give less of a shit about you, I wont even acknowledge your presence. I feel little details are important. After all, she could have died once she hit the road. My last words to her would have been of love. Her's would have been "I'll talk to you later." I know it's silly, and I know it's small, but I couldn't stop thinking about it the whole day. What if she died? What if I died? As the day pressed on I began to wonder, "did she really say it, or did I mishear her? Maybe I heard what I wanted to. "I love you too" sounds so very much like "I know you do." And it's absurd of me to think these things, but there they were, burrowing through my brain, procreating in my skull. It all drives me quite mad. But then again, perhaps I am always quite mad and merely putting on an air of lucidity.

As the day progressed I took some ibuprofen to deal with my developing cough and headache, dispensed cookies to a devastated Lindsay, and got in a verbal confrontation with an acquaintance who I have told to go fuck himself. Burning bridges is not my favorite activity to do, but damn if it isn't familiar. Just like the touch of a cool blade. I know it's terrible, but it's so familiar. Like being hit by a spouse, or the taste of xanax in a dry throat, or a writhing empty shell naked underneath you.

The keys my father gave to me do not work and so I was stuck outside of his house. He was supposed to give me cash and chili, and I waited 45 minutes, but I just couldn't take it any longer and left. Perhaps I will head back at 6. Perhaps not.

A text message from my Katie checking up on me and saying she loves me more or less fixed me when I got home. It was good timing too. To be honest, I was stuck on the thought of knives. I did not take them out even, but it was there. But just the fact that my head tortured me today is upsetting as hell.

Pretty much either way, there's one thing I know. I love you Katie. It matters not what poison festers within me, for your voice will always call out and lead me back from the darkness.



The resemblance is uncanny, no?

fifty-fifty

The human brain is a monstrous creation unworthy of the smallest speck of envy. I've been told by many that I've a "fascinating" or "unique" mind. The truth is, I hate it. Yes it's interesting and I can serve as an example of human ingenuity and worth for what my brain conjures, but the way it treats my life, when I know it's wrong, makes me want to cry.

I spent time with Katie today. We fooled around a bit. We held each other and watched TV. Now she lays beneath my blanket, napping on my bed. She is beautiful, she is my partner, she may very well be the one, but I'm being assaulted. I hate to beat a dead horse, but if I don't find a way to substitute this lack of dopamine healthy life apparently is rife with, I'm going to have a breakdown. Even when I am allowed the most primal releases my head screams out for more:

She must say she loves you!

I've never loved so completely before and I long to say it, just to give my feelings voice so I can see if they ring true. But that is not how things are done. She knows I am falling in love with her, but until I went on my most recent medication I couldn't say anyone I was with I ever loved at all. We need to wait, even if it is only a small bit longer, before letting loose the river. If we don't, as so few ever do, we may drown, as the rest have. So many before us have fallen into that well without the rope of stability we are building to keep the descent measured, to keep the sunlight in.

You should be having sex. WHY aren't you having sex??

Because we are waiting for the strong emotional bond. We want to make love. And for real, not just what I've been deluding myself with for a year. I've answered this time and time again, but I just keep being asked. Every time my answer is ignored I want to cry. I don't have control over my own head. In my twenty years I've built a labyrinth even I know not how to escape. Crawling within it are monsters, and somewhere, lost to time and circumstance, is my self. I want it back.

Other women would be yours, could be yours! Why waste your time? Abandon this one and seek the embrace of the hedonist, inside and out!

But why in any logical world would I want to abandon this woman for just sex? That's not who I am. It's not who I've ever been. At least I never wanted to be. I left Avery because it was just about sex, and Jess wanted love. Jess got love, but I found none for her. Katie arouses me in every way, and I just want to be with her. That's all I really want. A life without my counterbalance is not attractive to me. I feel like part of a whole when I'm with her, I really do. Emotionally she is a bit detached, but I know she cares for me, is falling in love with me as well.

And yet, I left her sleeping side to pour this on the page. I keep thinking about how much I wish I could just turn that part of my brain off and I want to cry. I'm on the verge of tears right now. I'm even weighing the pros and cons of mutilation again. I don't even have my good knife back yet, but I am picturing it more often. It's black handle, ruggedly sharp teeth. Cutting has always been better than sex. Not making love, but having sex. Cutting only hurts one's own body. With empty sex you harm another. But now that someone in my life cares for me, it is not an option. If I hurt myself it would dismay Katie significantly. The other night I talked about how upset I was and my connection died. She thought I'd left, that I was hurting myself, and she felt terrified. It was "the scariest minute of my life," she said. And I believe her too.

So I'm waiting to have sex because it's what is healthy, and for Katie and I, it is what is right. When we make love it will be of no comparison to my wasted women of past times. I know it to be so because she makes me so happy. Because we are so connected. And I will not cut because it would hurt her, and then it would be detrimental to myself. And I cannot eat too much because this is unhealthy, and it would make me fat. And I cannot exercise too much because then I would be exhausted and unable to do work. And I cannot buy something because I'm down to my last cash. By the end of this week I will be bankrupt. I've applied for my SSI, and I've applied for jobs, and this weekend I will beg relatives.

I'm running out of money. I'm running out of ideas for how to keep myself OK. I'm running out of composure for the rest of the world. I'm letting this out here, now, so I won't just grab her under the covers and weep into her.

I'm scared. I'm conflicted. I'm terrified.

Draining the venom

Is there a way I can just...turn off my sex drive? Temporarily mind you. I love it when it's doing what it's supposed to. As opposed to doing what it's so very good at, poisoning me socially. In the past I have hit on every girl I've ever talked to for more than like 2 minutes. It's hilarious, yes, but it also has hurt me in the past. Being a slave to it allowed me to be used for sex, at least twice. The first time it was my fault. The second time, I should have seen what was going on.

Maybe I did and just ignored it.

I nearly killed a friendship that has become increasingly strong as time goes by with a now somewhat close friend. Even though it does seem like I may have used her for sex, I feel horrible about it, have apologized profusely, and remain her friend. If we are a bit detached at times.

My old tryst spoke to me today the way one addresses an old relative they've forgotten the name of. It hurt, badly. Every word she said I just kept thinking about the closeness, the physical intimacy. I still have photos of her on my PC somewhere. I couldn't bare to delete such gestures of trust.

But she seemed so far from me. So detached. She talked about her wedding plans. I wonder at what point after the affair she decided to not invite me. Was it after the afternoon in her dorm? The evening at her home that trapped me in the snow? The drive home took over 2 hours that night. I nearly crashed several times.

I'm with this...fantastic, unbelievable woman. Her name is Katie. For those of you with poison in your thoughts of me, accept it and move on. None of you were this, none of you were here, knowing me like she knows me. And, slowly, she is knowing me. But not biblically. We have saved that step for a later date, when she is comfortable and the emotional ground we tread on could hold mountains. And I'm not worried that I'm wasting time, or that we wont get there. I know we're going there. I know we'll get there. Time is all that stands between us and a complete trust.

It comes down to definitions.

For me, sex has been used....almost as an icebreaker. I feel filthy and horrible even typing that. But I'm not as bad as others, even others I know. For me sex was not really emotional, but a way to mimic them.

I always look for the connection. The unspeakable link between 2 people. Sex allows you to feign this. Nyx did that with me. It's why we "worked." We are both accommodating lovers. We do what we need to for our partner. For me, this was mimicking emotion, even showing me the hints of love, a love she would never, could never, feel for me. I doubt even for anyone. With Katie I'm feeling the emotions, we're building this unspeakable link in our words, oddly enough. Our shared feelings, experiences. And soon that closeness will be there.

But my libido will not cease its scream. Inspiring annoyance at her cuddling with me. not the act itself, but the idea of being together but not being one. I know it is what I want, and waiting for her to be ready and our true partnership to begin is perhaps the best decision I've ever made. But I am screamed at constantly.

And I am terrified that it will scream too loud and terrify her. Blow out my eardrums and throw me into the arms of some waiting whore. So many of them all around me every day. I have the reserve, I have the will. If I can be anorexic I can ignore my libido. And I have never once, nor will i ever be, unfaithful. But where is all its energy going to go if I really can shut it down, ignore it?

I do not know.

Like the Longines Symphonette I do not rest

No, I'm not 100% sure what the literal meaning is either, but I have a few things to say here. My first topic is of course the concept of predestination. I'm not going to sum it up for you. If you know it, keep reading. If not, hit the link and then return here. I feel that predestination in some form or another actually is true, despite my atheism. Weird, huh? It's not really contradictory, see, I think there is a universal order and ultimate purpose to the universe as a whole and therefore every last bit of minutiae must be in its place for creation to unfurl in its proper and obligated way.



As Prometheus says, "even Zeus cannot escape what is fated." There have been moments in my life where I have felt a unique and unmistakable sense of this purpose. Inner peace isn't the right word, but it's the first that comes to mind. Perhaps enlightenment because I feel detached, removed from reality and observing the strings pulling us along. When I began work on my book I felt this way. A screaming static that rolls through my stomach and infiltrates the hollow behind my eyes with arcing blue energy. My book is not of all that much importance in the grand scheme of things, I know. I've yet to even assure its publication, but it is what I am to do. It's one of the things I was meant to do. Not a little thing like opening a door for a person downtown who then carries that kindness into letting another driver go first but that driver was on his way to kill someone but then he got there before he expected to and was stopped by a police officer who saw him checking his gun and the police officer attempted to bring him in but was caught by the man first, and lays dying on the street right now. Did my opening the door kill that man? In a small way, yes. It all goes back to chaos theory. Life is made up of billions of variables like this. So every now and then I feel this pull, not for creative expression, that's entirely different, but a pull towards purpose. It is not linked or a cause of happiness or despair. It is but happenstance to the emotions of the moment.

I feel this way again now. I feel it when I'm holding her in my arms. Am I happy? I'm infatuated, it's early, and I am orgasmically happy. I'm doing it all right. We're avoiding the physical aspects for a while, enhancing the emotional connection. Katie and I are suddenly close, after a past of some animosity. But, when we suddenly really saw each other it was like a supernova. Her mother likes me, her brother likes me, even her cat Mittens has approved. My family has reciprocated in kind. My littlest sister adores her more than even I.

When I am holding Katie in my arms I am home. I will maintain my composure, keep myself restrained physically, and continue to live happily. I feel as if the nite-lite brightening my soul has finally been plugged in. I finally can crawl back up into my psyche again. It's been months since I could get in there. It's no longer a vast calm world. I see it now as a fluttering of images I must interpret. The odd calm of my mind with part of me shut off was far too unhealthy. I am myself, truly. And I am by her side, honestly.



But i'm still me.