Love is...

I talk about love a lot. It's the main thing people with BPD tend to do. It's the main thing we are focused on. We search day in and day out for someone, anyone to love us. My best friend says I have the emotions for 10 women. All the romantic, lovey dovey emotions. My problem is that I'm not sure what kind of love is real. I see older couples sitting next to each other in booths and looking at each other with all this love radiating from them and I think that is what I want. I don't know however if they have been married for 40 years or if they found each other after the loss of previous relationships and this love is new. I know at the beginning of relationships, it's always more exciting and then it slows down to a friendship with benefits sort of thing. I love the love you see in movies and television. The kind of love you would climb mountains to reach. But is it real? I keep asking myself and others this. Over and over again. It's the way I am broken. In my previous post, I talked about all the anger I have inside for the way I have been treated my entire life. I also have waves of compassion, joy, lack of patience, a fight or flight mode, a yearning to travel and a compulsive need to not be alone. I am a complicated mess. Sometimes all I can do is take one minute at a time because life has a way of being unbearable. It has a way of keeping you in the dark place. The dark place is somewhere I don't like living in but sometimes it is easier than dealing with all the thoughts and said emotions above. Sometimes it is a welcoming state.

I often wonder if love like what you see in movies is real than what is wrong with me? Why hasn't anyone loved me like that? What is in me that turns people off? I think I am a good woman. I don't cheat or lie in relationships. I value honesty, and respect and encourage the person I am with in pursuing their dreams and goals in life. I love taking care of them, and keeping their clothes washed and their house clean. I try to make all their favorite foods and to make them laugh as much as possible. I ask in return for communication, honesty, safety, kindness and of course romance. I like to think that this romance is simple, a slow dance in the kitchen to the radio, cuddling in bed before we roll over and fall asleep, an occasional coming home with store bought flowers. Maybe that is naive. And if it is, how do I live my life craving that and it not being real? How do I get those expectations out of my head? How do I accept the reality that no one is going to love me like that? No one is ever going to ask me to marry them in that romantic gesture that women love. I wish someone could tell me that. I wish someone could tell me that there is nothing wrong with me, it's just not a realistic representation of love. And then I wish I could just fade or drift away like a soft breeze through the trees. Because maybe love is really just a lie. Maybe it really is just a big illusion.

I am a very emotionally driven person I must say. I can't tell you if that is a BPD thing or just a Bonnie thing. Sometimes, it can lead into trouble for me. I call it a "mother hen" mentality, my therapist would say it's a symptom of my BPD. When someone I care about immensely is being bullied or harassed or treated badly in any way, I will go off on that person. I don't know how to turn that off and well frankly, I don't want to. If someone I love is hurting, I hurt right with them. I'm especially protective of the people I'm closest to. I can't understand why that is a bad thing.

Growing up, I was taught to never say anything back to someone. It didn't matter if I was being bullied or felt uncomfortable. I was taught to be accommodating. It's one of the things I am angry with my mom about. She didn't teach me how to stick up for myself or to say no. When we would go visit a friend of hers, who later became her last husband, I would have to sit in his lap. It didn't matter if I was uncomfortable with it because he would get a hard on. It would hurt his feelings if I said no, my mom said. It became a ritual for me to be hurt by various guys growing up and being used overall throughout my life. This has caused me years of unnecessary pain, years of being verbally abused by my husband. But after that fateful night of him raping me (which he still denies) something snapped inside me. I'm not sure if it was me becoming angry or finally letting myself feel that anger from all the years before. And I wasn't just angry with him and my mom. I was angry with everything. I still am angry about a lot of things. I am angry about church, about the people who call themselves christians but have no idea what it means to be one, I'm angry with the far right, I'm angry that men think they have a right to tell women what they can or can't do. I'm angry that there are people who talk about freedom but yet want to deny that same freedom to the gay community, or the black community or just anyone who thinks differently than them. I can't understand why people just don't let people live their lives the way they want. It doesn't affect their lives in any way. Just let people be who they are. And I'm angry with the people who try and force their religion on the entire country using terms like "this is what this country was founded on!" When all it takes is a little bit of research to find out that our founding fathers developed this country on freedom of religion and freedom from religion. It was the main reason they left Europe to establish here. So that they could practice or not practice whatever religion they wanted. So when you say that you want prayer back in schools, or gay marriage to go away, or to have biblical principles be mandated- you are actually going agaisnt what this country stands for. No one is telling you that you can't be however religious you want to be. Your religion belongs in your heart, your home and your church. Not be forced on everyone in this country. End of rant.

To get back to the point, my anger has spilled out into my everyday life all at once and that is what gets me into trouble. But I'm tired of being told how I should be, how I should feel, how I should act. Why can't I be who I am? The overly-protective, crazy, sometimes shy, sometimes not shy, angry, gypsy soul, animal loving, overly emotional, curious, singing badly in the car, horror loving, super romantic, 70's music lover, borderline progressive, sometimes freaky person I am. My life is my life, and I'm not a bad person because I think or do things differently. I choose to love people the way that I can. And if you a person who hurts another person, I will say something. Because after being told not to say no, and to just let people treat you any way they want, I'm not going to let another person have to deal with that. And yes, maybe it isn't my place, but when someone is broken in a way that they can't defend themselves, I want to step in there. Because I can't bear to see someone go through the pain I had to endure. It's okay to say no. It's okay to stand up for yourself. It's okay to say i don't want to sit in that man's lap because it makes me feel uncomfortable. And it's also okay to just be different. To dance to the beat of your own drum and not fit the social norm. Be who you are because there is nothing braver than being who you are. And love on people, don't mistreat them. There is beauty in that. And the world needs more beauty. So just be.

It's been a little while, I know. I have too many things that I want to do and not enough time or motivation to do them in. My life is pretty much the same as it has been. I'm still on my weight loss journey to help my knees. Mainly just the right knee now because the weight I have lost already has made the left knee problem free. My family doctor is proud of my progress. He told me today that I really impressed him with my determination. He just doesn't know me that well yet. I have always been the type that once I make my mind up about something, come hell or high water I'm going to do it. I'm an aries so that may be a good help with that. Stubborn old goat I am.

I still struggle with the symptoms of my BPD daily. The big one of course is love. I crave that more than anything in the world. I crave it so much that I let go of my dreams in order to get it. I am a free spirit/hippy/gypsy type of person. I love the simple things in life and I am quite okay with living in a tiny home, RV, camper, van etc. As long as I have my flowers and my pretty things that I love, I'm pretty good. What I want to do more than anything is travel and see the country. Right now I am limited with what I can do because of my knee. I'm having to work at a stay at home job calling doctor offices around the country. It's not a hard job or a bad job. It's quite easy and sometimes boring, but it does give me a little bit of money to pay my bills. It's just not a lot of money. I'm dying to get back into manufacturing so I can make the kind of money I have before, but until I get my knee fixed- this is where I am. And unfortunately, even if I did make more money right now, I still can't travel because I can't stand on my knee for long. And I want to see stuff and thangs like my Rick from The Walking Dead always said. So that is my big dream. I don't have to travel all the time, maybe just go on one trip a year to one of the places I wish to see. I can be the home body type of person around that. But, I don't want to travel alone. I want to be able to do it and share it with the person I love. I've heard the stories of meeting people while you travel , but somehow it's just not the same. I want to make memories with my loved one.

I'm with the man that I love. I love him more than I have ever loved a man before. I don't think he could ever realize just how much I love him. I love him so much that sometimes I'm quite willing to clip my own wings. I'm willing to give up dreams in order to keep him with me. And I know that is wrong. I know that is unhealthy, I know it's not something I am supposed to do. And it makes me sad when I feel this way because it means that I'm not getting better. It means that no matter how hard I try to be better, this one thing is always going to be the best of me, my craving and insatiable need to be loved. I don't think it can get better. That is and has always been my main goal in life. I can love myself all I want but It doesn't make that feeling go away. It's always lurking deep inside me. So, what do I do? What does anyone do who has borderline personality disorder and this is their main struggle in life? I wish I could tell you, but I don't have the answer for that. We are broken in that way, that I'm not sure we can ever heal. We can go through every coping mechanism our therapists give us, but that is still our main focus in life. To love and be loved. I dedicate this song below to us dreamers, gypsys, free-spirits and fellow borderlines who struggle everyday. I keep telling myself that it's alright. Even if I never get better, it's alright. Because right now, that is all I can do. I can't just roll over and give up. I just have to take everyday one at a time and keep dreaming.