
What will your life be like in three years?


What will your life be like in three years?



From February to July, Iβve continued to maintain the healthy coping skills Iβve acquired in therapy and have made even more progress. I started group DBT therapy in April and thatβs also helped me tremendously. Listening to members in that group talk about their issues has made me gain a lot of perspective. Iβve also had a few obstacles along the way of course. In May, I upped my dosage on one of my meds that ended up with me having a major depressive episode, hereβs a blog post about that:
Borderline Awareness Month: I Could be 1 in 10
A year later, I can honestly say that Iβve been successful in managing my emotions in a much better and healthier way. My growth has been phenomenal in many areas of my life due to my hard work. Iβve had incredible support from my therapists, medical providers, friends, followers, and family whoβve helped facilitate my growth by encouraging me and giving me the space I needed to be who I needed to be at different parts of this process. Sometimes that was a complete emotional mess, sometimes that was an angry and salty poet, sometimes that was a cringy mom or a moody coworker. Restarting this blog and creating content for it has been instrumental in my healing process and has been a great outlet for the inspiration and creativity Iβve had during this time. Another beneficial thing Iβve done is simplified my life by letting go of anything that doesnβt serve me. I keep my life simple with work, kids, friends, family, and writing and this is the right combination for me to maintain my emotional stability. Iβve learned to prioritize my mental health above everything else because the consequences for me and everyone are too great for me not to do so. I understand now that the βold meβ before her diagnosis was trying to have βeverythingβ and well, that extended my emotional bandwidth to the point it was detrimental to my mental health to the point that I constantly lived in a flux of emotional dysregulation. I donβt blame anybody or even myself; I did not have the knowledge or awareness at the time to do any better.
Iβm not completely where I want to be because I have two areas that I still have problems with:
-sticking to my boundaries especially when I feel pressure from others to bend to their will and desires
-my cognitive distortions which include black and white thinking and thinking in absolutes
I’ve lived with these cognitive distortions since I can remember, and itβs been really hard to break these unhealthy thinking patterns but Iβm working on it.
There is a lot more to say about this journey, but Iβll save that for later throughout this year.
To conclude, here are a few thoughts:
To have an immense amount of progress and growth this year; I had to learn to be brutally honest with myself about things I had been lying to myself about for too long. I had a tendency to blame others when I felt terrible about my life. This year, I changed that pattern and I had to learn to hold a mirror to myself and take accountability for any harm Iβve done to myself and others and that was extremely difficult to do. It also meant facing some of my biggest fears and insecurities and that was fucking hard. Sometimes it was so much work, I wanted to give up but I didnβt. And now Iβm here, at a place where Iβm truly happy and content with myself and my life. And to not have major depressive episodes every other week where Iβm stuck in this rut of misery feels like a type of freedom I canβt describe. To manage hard emotions like anger and sadness without it affecting my whole week or my whole day is something I always felt was impossible until now.
And while I am thankful for everyone thatβs been helpful in my journey, I feel the most gratitude to myself and my determination and resilience. I had always known myself but just this year Iβve finally started to understand myself and finally felt a sense of freedom to be who I really am without a need to filter out the crazy or hard parts that make me the complicated and resilient human that I am. A year later, I no longer allow life to happen to me and feel powerless and have an immense need for validation from others. Now Iβm a person who lives a life with intention and purpose for my own betterment.

Around September,I started to logically understand how out of control my behavior was at times. The strange thing about it is it doesnβt feel like me when Iβm acting that way. Iβm a person who has always tried to have control over all aspects of my life. For example, when I was first diagnosed, I was naive enough to think that I could somehow βfast-track my healingβ . I quickly learned thatβs not how healing or therapy works. It didnβt matter how quickly I read my DBT workbook or did the exercises from there, how many poems I wrote about grief in one day, or how many healthy coping mechanisms I picked up along the way; healing and changing my behavior was going to take time and patience. I couldnβt speed up the process if I truly wanted to get better.

I needed to learn to sit with my grief, anger, mania, self-hatred, and any other uncomfortable and painful emotions and learn a healthy way to process and cope with them instead of chasing it away with booze, sex, or binge shopping. Itβs been hard to do, and Iβve stumbled along the way and have made many mistakes. One thing Iβve learned this year is that changing unhealthy patterns in my behavior had to be the most arduous and difficult work Iβve ever done. For example, maybe one day Iβm feeling fat and ugly, the old me would have gone binge shopping on Amazon for a pretty dress or reached out to one of the casual Joes in my life for validation; the new and healthy version of me had to ask myself the whys of why Iβm feeling fat and ugly and what triggered this reaction in me, do I need to write about it, what can I do to make myself feel better that doesnβt involved shopping or the validation from others? Itβs way harder to face my insecurities head on than chase them away with a quick and temporary adrenaline rush or serotonin fix. Throughout all this it helped to have an incredible support system who gave me what I needed emotionally to process, grow and move forward in my journey. Part of that support system was my therapist who was kind, compassionate, knowledgeable, and patient with me. I was really tough to deal with at times and I wanted to break up with her at times cause she pushed me a lot when it came to my driving phobia. I remember having a panic attack in front of her because of a driving exposure but she calmed me down enough so I could do it. I got paranoid after thinking she would leave me but she didnβt. She stuck by me through the end of our therapy sessions in January of this year. The few times Iβd missed a session, she would call me to check in and talk to me for at least 10 minutes to make sure I was okay. She was also respectful of me and my experiences. Iβve had therapists in the past who talked down to me and were condescending and she wasnβt one of them. People talk about finding βthe oneβ at the βright timeβ; well in my case, I found the βright therapistβ at the βright timeβ in my life. Here is a poem I wrote about her:
From September to January, there was so much progress in my healing and mental health journey thanks to having the adequate resources and tools because of my therapist. I did beat a driving phobia (but thatβs a story Iβll tell in depth later on) and I was free from suicidal ideation until May of this year. What was strange to me during these months was how I was learning to really live and enjoy my life. I remember that before my diagnosis, Iβd get annoyed sometimes at having to spend time with my kids. During the months of September to December, something switched in me to have this new appreciation for motherhood and spending time with my children. My relationship with my three sons got better and I grew closer to them. I feel like Iβm finally the mom my children deserve.
Here is a poem I wrote about them:
My Three Kings
My first king, I met at 17
when the nurse placed
an alien like being in my arms
She was like βfeed himβ
and I was like βhow do I do that?β
What should I do with him?
Eventually I figured it out
My second king, I met at 24
as a birthday present, just like me
he had to make a dramatic entrance
but it was love at first sight
No one could take him from my arms
I knew what to do
My third king, I met at 30
He was a dream delivered
After a dream lost the previous year
He was planned, he was awaited, he was loved
He was welcome by everyone
with him, I felt a completion of love
1/24/2022
As Iβve also mentioned, my therapy sessions ended in January and after that I was on my own with my maintenance plan making sure I didnβt do anything to sabotage the progress I had made.
6/30/2022
Itβs been a year since I received my life changing diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder and so much in my life has changed because of it. I started therapy sometime around late June and I had to do a 3-hour mental health assessment in two separate sessions where my therapists asked me questions about past trauma and past patterns of behavior. It was a really, rough week emotionally for me because of that and other personal stuff going on in my life. I sat down across from my therapist as she explained how Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis ended up on my concept map.

My reaction was one of numbness and shock. And then I made the mistake of going to the internet and looking it up and well BPD gets a bad rap for good reason. After reading all the bad things about BPD, I thought βI knew I had issues and was kind of messed up, but I didnβt expect to be this fucked up, this brokenβ. It doesnβt help that a couple of things that stand out on the internet about BPD are βBPD is the most painful mental disorder “Or βBPD people are manipulativeβ or βSome people with BPD are incapable of loveβ. It didnβt help that at the time I was diagnosed, I was also having a mental breakdown and my relationship at the time was on the rocks. When I told my friends and family about my diagnosis, most of them were supportive and encouraging but some were in denial and didnβt fully accept it. I was told βI couldnβt have BPD because Iβm not so awfulβ or that βitβs not a big dealβ.
A couple of weeks after my diagnosis, I was broken up with. While I donβt want to go into the details about the events that led up to the demise of that relationship; I will say that the last day I saw my ex, there were a couple of things he said to me that really impacted me and made me really look at my life. I wonβt say what they were, but it was useful for the next part of my journey. The breakup validated my worst fears about myself, βIβm unlovableβ, Iβm hard to loveβ, βIβm always going to be too emotionally unstable to be in a relationshipβ βI donβt deserve loveβ βI always fuck up everything good in my lifeβ βIβm too fucked up and broken to be lovedβ etc., etc. Yβall have read the poetry and stories about how I donβt handle breakups well-ever. So, Iβm lying-in bed crying and thinking all these things and donβt want to get up. I was on vacation when this happened so I couldβve stayed in bed all day and it would have been fine. However, something told me to keep going and getting up. The rest of the month of July is a blur to me at this point. I did document through video and journaling what I did so I know what I did, however there are parts of that month I donβt remember living.
I know I kept up with my therapy appointments and worked every day and wrote. Something I had to do for therapy was keep a daily diary card monitoring my emotions and any situations that brought out strong emotions in me. The main emotions I felt the months of July, August, and September were anger, sadness, and despair so filling out my diary card was a task but also necessary for me to get better at coping with life.

Something my current therapist said in group therapy was how grief makes one take a stock of life and how youβre living it. After the breakup, while yes, I felt this immense grief over that situation, I also felt grief and anger over other traumatic events in my life I hadnβt healed from. It was like I had this closet full of unprocessed trauma that was about to burst open at any time and in July, the door busted wide open and out came well, almost everything I kept inside of me well hidden. Shame, guilt, anger, fury, despair, sadness over past trauma were feelings I became well acquainted with for those first three months. I felt stuck at times in this emotional fog but somehow kept going. I continually asked myself what the purpose of all my hard work was and at first it was so that I donβt ever βsplitβ on my kids like I had on other people in my past. I also had to learn a new language with my BPD diagnosis. I know that sounds weird but with all the new vocabulary words thrown at me, itβs what it felt like. In June and July, I learned real quick what dissociation, masking, and splitting was because that’s basically what I did those months. I also learned the term hypersexuality which Iβve addressed in some of my posts and poetry in this blog. Reflecting on everything that Iβve learned I can understand how my behavior can seem scary and unsafe to some people. Iβve finally had a deep understanding of how much of my erratic and impulsive behavior has greatly impacted my life.
To be continued to part two…
Resources:
BPD Terminology:
https://shitborderlinesdo.freeforums.net/thread/37/important-bpd-terminology
Here is an episode from my favorite podcast “Back From the Borderline” about breakups that resonated with me: https://open.spotify.com/episode/19fVPtpfy8bsO2qEKQueWv?si=8NWz6oVVQ52coU1g-Bcwyg&utm_source=copy-link

It was April of 1996 and I had just broken up with my boyfriend of 3 months after he had grown distant from me. I was in a world of despair and teenage angst and longed to no longer exist. I was feeling this rush of intense sadness as I was walking home from school. I looked at the cars on the street and thought about how easy it would be to end my sadness if I got run over by one. As I was alone in my thoughts, I stopped paying attention as I crossed the street and wasn’t aware that a car was coming. It stopped within inches of hitting me and the driver honked at me and yelled at me. I continued to walk in shock of what had just happened. I didn’t know then but I would be walking into many more BPD episodes like this one.
Fast forward to the summer of 2021 and I’m 40, the mother of 3 kids, work 2 jobs, and have a complicated love life. I decide to go back to therapy due to some recent trauma and driving anxiety. I do a 3 hour assessment and when the feedback comes back, it’s there on my concept map: I have Borderline Personality Disorder. I expected the driving phobia but the new diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder was definitely unexpected.
What is Borderline Personality Disorder?
According to Mayo Clinic, “Borderline Personality Disorder or BPD is a mental health disorder that impacts the way you think and feel about yourself and others, causing problems functioning in everyday life. It includes self-image issues, difficulty managing emotions and behavior, and a pattern of unstable relationships.“
What are the signs and symptoms?
Causes for Borderline Personality Disorder:
Risk Factors include:
Learning about this disorder has been overwhelming and also life changing. Some of my friends didn’t think it was possible for me to have BPD because I’m too nice. I was also kind of in denial at first until I did the research and thought damn, my life finally makes sense to me. I’ve been coping with intense emotions since I could remember and have a pattern of risky and impulsive behavior and sometimes self sabotaging my own success and romantic relationships. One minute my mood can shift from happy and joyful to full on anger and sadness if I am triggered by feelings of rejection, abandonment, being criticized or judged. I also have a tendency to villainize people if I feel threatened by them. Also, when I feel like my life is “too normal” or “too boring”, I seek out an adrenaline rush and create chaos.
Throughout the years, I’ve leaned some healthy coping mechanisms like journaling, writing poetry or blogging, exercising, mediocre dancing and singing. I’ve also had some unhealthy mechanism like drinking, binge shopping, binge eating, having sex for only validation purposes. I’d like to think that I’ve gotten better with time because I’ve become more self aware of myself and my need to survive not only for my myself but also for my kids.
I’m hopeful that with this new diagnosis of BPD and therapy, I’ve have way better coping mechanisms to become a better version of myself. I’m hopeful that going on this new journey, I’ll not only be surviving but I’ll be thriving. I also hope that I heal the girl in the picture above who was a teenager trying to find love for within the arms of a any dude because she didn’t know how to love herself.
I wrote this poem in June of 2022.

The cure for a broken soul is finding love and validation
within yourself
Itβs finding beauty in the ordinary
Itβs finding joy in the mundane moments of life
The cure for a broken soul is finding faith and hope
in the most trying of times
and accepting the darkness within you is temporary
and not everything deserves your energy
The cure for a broken soul is acceptance and love
from the universe, the source and God

I didnβt know what kind of post I was going to write for Mental Health/ BPD awareness month but then I saw the news about the death of blogger Heather Armstrong appear on my newsfeed. Here’s an article about her passing: https://apnews.com/article/dooce-heather-armstrong-dead-83c8f4812bda1766301793ea3afb02cb
I want to preface this by saying that I havenβt had a suicidal ideation episode since May of 2022 and hereβs the blog post about that:
Borderline Awareness Month: I Could be 1 in 10
I think the news of Heather Armstrong hit me hard because well, looking on the surface, her life seems almost idyllic. This is a rich white woman who has all of the resources at her disposal to help her get to a much healthier state with her mental health and Iβm like WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED? WHAT THE FUCK WENT WRONG? While I could speculate why or how this happened, I wonβt. What I will say is that nobody could possibly understand why she made that decision or how much suffering she was in. This made me reflect on my own journey with recovering from mental illness.
I have battled depression and anxiety since I was a teenager except I wasnβt formally diagnosed with it until after I had my third child in 2012. Itβs been a not so well kept secret in my family that I continuously tried to mask to seem well, normal to everyone else. For years, Iβve mostly kept my depressive episodes to myself because more often than not when Iβve disclosed Iβm depressed, Iβm met with the comments: βYou need to get over it , we have no time for thisβ or βThink about your kidsβ or βBut you have SO MUCH to live forβ. I know the people making those comments thought they were being helpful but all it did was drive me further into a spiral of shame for having no control over my brain chemistry and being depressed. It adds fire to the fuel of my inner critic who tells me during this episode, βletβs add being a failure as a mom to your thoughts about being a worthless and terrible human beingβ.
The Elephant
The sun is shining
Everything is green and bright
And yet winter feels eternal
In my heart and my mind
I feel a profound darkness that
Seems to seep and ooze everywhere
Inside of me
Is this what true loneliness feels like?
Will I ever get rid of what feels like
my forever depression?
Or do I just learn to live
with the elephant that
lives on my chest?
That I try desperately not to wake it up
Writing, exercise, friends, tv-
Everything to keep it calm
But no matter what
The elephant always seems
To wake up
In a lot of my poetry, Iβve talked about the impossible pressure Iβve had to deal with in being a mother but I donβt think I talk enough about how this was modeled for me growing up. Growing up, I saw my mother as this larger than life woman who constantly worked hard and sacrificed for her family. She worked countless hours to provide for us. She was this superwoman who at one point had 3 jobs and still managed to keep a clean house and cook dinner. I remember her sleeping a couple hours after she got home from an overnight shift at her job and waking up to walk me to school in the morning. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I never saw my mom breakdown or cry.

The message I received and perceived was one that in order to be a good mother, you have to be this superwoman who balances everything perfectly all the time. Being a good mother also meant being strong and resilient and if needed it was necessary to suppress emotions to continue to function. When I became a mother at 17, I had these unrealistic expectations of motherhood that I wanted to attain. And we wonder why I ended up with a diagnosis of BPD-lol. Honestly, while I’ve healed a lot from my past, I feel like itβs still necessary to share it because this isnβt just my story. Itβs the story of other mothers who are still ashamed about having a mental illness and more often than not, donβt seek help and mask, mask, mask until they explode.

Iβve often talked about how my children are one of my greatest motivators for continuing to move forward with my life, to try to continue with my self improvement; but what I have failed to talk about is how my children are a major source of guilt while Iβm in a major depressive episode. If I had to be honest with myself and everyone else, when Iβve been in that really dark place with my depression, Iβve had thoughts about how maybe my kids would be better off without me, how my kids deserve a better mother than me.Iβm coming from a very vulnerable place talking about this. I also want to add that I havenβt been in this dark place with these thoughts since 2021. It is a fucking scary place to be in and itβs something I would never wish upon my worst enemy. Thankfully, I have always been able to pull myself out of this headspace and seek help if I need to. However, once I start to get out of this head space, guilt over how selfish I was for not thinking about kids hits me and ooof Iβm off to a shame spiral that almost loops back around to another depressive episode but nowadays Iβm able to get a better handle on it. In January of this year, when I had another major depressive episode, my worst thought was, βI donβt think Iβm doing enough to improve the lives of me and children ” which is irrational for many reasons. Anyways, I decided then and there that I needed to go back to therapy. It was hard to make that decision but in order to prevent my depression from getting worse; it was necessary. Some part of me felt like a failure because of how many healthy coping mechanisms I have now, how much emotional support I have from family and friends, and how much therapy Iβve had; I felt like I should be able to get this on my own. However, Iβd rather be safe than sorry and get the extra guidance and help I need so I can get through this depressive episode before it gets worse. It hasnβt always been this way for me. For several years, I thought that the brave thing to do was to suffer in silence and try to get through my depression on my own. Journaling consistently since 2019 has helped me get through the worst of it but looking back on those journal entries, Iβm filled with grief for the version of me who thought strength and being brave meant keeping it all in. Iβm filled with grief at the version of me holding it together trying to balance it all and functioning at work when inside all I wanted to do was die or disappear. However, I hold compassion for that woman because she was doing what she knew best to survive. And sure at times that looked messy and unhealthy but at the end of day what matters is that Iβm still here.
Hereβs a poem I wrote about my depression in 2020:
Darkness
The Darkness comes back
with a fierce strength
and takes over my mind
I want to run
I want to hide
But most of all I want to die
The Darkness comes back
like a hurricane
and wrecks my body and mind
and I donβt want to work
and I donβt want to talk
and I donβt want to breathe
The Darkness comes back
and not even the promise of love
keeps it away
Fortunately for me, I learned to work through my feelings of shame in getting the help I needed to get better. My mental health improved drastically after getting a BPD diagnosis and hereβs the post about that:
A New Diagnosis: BPD
Iβm very fortunate that my meds, my therapy, and the strict routine and consistency I now have in my life has improved my mental health so much, my depressive episode and low moods are milder and my quality of life has gotten so much better. I know that even in 2023,there is still so much pressure on mothers to be superwomen, to be βbraveβ and fight their battles alone but it doesnβt have to be this way. I hope that any mother out there struggling with depression/mental illness who might happen upon my blog post understands that they donβt have to fight this battle alone. In this journey, it is important to understand that being brave can also be taking the first step to seeking out the help you need to get healthier. Iβm lucky to have found my own village ( my support system, my therapists, my writing community) to improve the quality of my life; my hope is that other mothers find their own village as well to lead healthier and happier lives.

I want to end this post with a poem I wrote in February of this year:
The Finish Line
I have yet to cross the finish line of my uprising, my marathon of healing-
Sometimes I stumble and fall for a few days, a few weeks.
a month when life gets overwhelming
I dissociate and drive around aimlessly
Forget about all the progress I made-
but always get up and do the best I can
Sometimes I mask well enough to fool the people in my life
Sometimes, itβs not enough and they start asking whatβs wrong
but somehow I always manage to get back to a place where
I move forward and evolve-
listen to my therapist-
healing isnβt linear-healing is messy
and just because I stumble sometimes,
it doesnβt mean I canβt cross the finish line
Below are some resources that helped me along my journey:
Back from the Borderline podcast episodes that have really helped me
One thing I want to add about the above resources I have shared is that I take notes from the books/podcast episodes . I jot down certain phrases, concepts, or quotes that resonate with me and/or I find helpful. I take notes on sticky notes and have a notebook where I taped them later in a notebook where I write about it as to why I related to it or why it was helpful. This method of mine works for me in finding understanding the book better or validating my experience. You don’t have to do this at all, of course. It’s just what I found helpful. Also, if you want more books or resources, feel free to contact me:
Contact Info
I also want to add other helpful resources:
Below is a link to find a therapist and other mental health professionals-
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists
I wrote this poem in May of 2022.

In therapy Iβm supposed to write about the last thing that cause me grief
and I think itβs funny considering the tons of poetry and journal entries
Iβve written about it
Iβm tired of writing about it, Iβm tired of talking about it
Iβm tired of thinking about it
and I want to tell my therapist I donβt have homework for this week
but this is part of therapy
this is what I need to address the unhealed trauma within
so Iβll write for the 1000th time about the last thing that caused trauma and grief
hoping my therapist will provide valuable insight on how to let go of it

I still ache inside at times
over past regrets, over past mishaps
itβs when doubt in me starts to rise
And I fear another emotional relapse
but then faith whispers to me
let go of your past and focus on your present
and I float back down to reality
and once again gain confidence
my past and trauma never defined me
itβs part of my heroineβs journey
at times I may have been terrible
but Iβve always taken accountability
at times Iβve felt irreparable
but itβs a false story I told myself
Iβve finally learned how to knock out
those thoughts of how awful Iβve been
Iβve learned the art of compassion and grace
for myself

If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?


Have you ever broken the law and didn’t get caught, if so how?

I wrote this in December of 2021.

At 40, I feel like the ultimate Queen
after losing layers and layers of my princess skin
The broken princess I had to beat
to finally feel enough and complete
Friends and men full of duplicity
Have no place in my world of authenticity
I no longer wear my crown of guilt and shame
It caused me too much emotional pain
Instead I wear a crown of confidence and power
being true to myself is my superpower
Fuck anyone who thinks Iβm too much or not enough
You assholes were never deserving of my love
I am the ultimate Queen
and Iβm finally making myself seen
Day 20 of doing a 31-day poetry prompt challenge. Today’s prompt is “Falling in Fall” .
