“Once a woman has given you her heart, you can never get rid of the rest of her”

True, isn’t it? Most women (note how I didn’t generalize and say “all” women) love with their entire being. When truly in love we give our all, our entire selves, we don’t hold back. So when the object of your affection doesn’t return your love, it can crush you like a rock. Like a giant boulder. Because yes, that’s how it feels when you hear him say those 7 words “I am not in love with you”. 

Of course every situation is different, but when you have given all that you have to give, poured your entire heart and soul into this person, this love, you feel lost when the love that you have given doesn’t get returned. You feel crushed, like your heart will never be whole again. Let’s be honest here, haven’t we all felt this way one time or another?

Once he has uttered those 7 deadly words you just find yourself standing there in shock. You heard the words but it just hasn’t registered completely. Your brain is still processing the information that it has been given. About a minute later it all kicks back in, you can suddenly move again, you have regained your speech and that’s when it really hits you. That’s when you feel the first tear flowing down your cheek. When you feel that huge lump in your throat and you find that your chest is clenching up, your pulse is racing, your head is getting all foggy, your breathing feels like you just ran a marathon. You reach for something near you, anything that you can hold on to, just to prevent yourself from falling to your knees and screaming out in pain. Dramatic? No, I don’t think so. It’s the best way that it can be explained. And any woman to claim otherwise is basically a liar. Yeah, I said it. But I digress…

He continues talking and you’re just standing there, trying not to break down in front of him. We’re women, we’re strong and fierce, we have to maintain that image. That’s what feminists have been lobbying for all these years, to finally be seen as equals as opposed to “extra sensitive” human beings that cry at the drop of a hat. We give birth to mini humans, we can do this! So that’s what you keep telling yourself in the back of your head all the while still trying to hold back those tears.

This is how I basically spent yesterday evening. Fun eh? Oh but let’s not forget the fact that it felt like someone punched all the air out of me and that I got so upset that I had to run to the bathroom and puke. No, no worries, no mini human in this tummy. I was apparently so upset that my stomach decided to chime in a little. And by little I mean a lot. I spent about 30 minutes hanging over the toilet bowl. Charming image, right?

At this point, or somewhere between being hit by a ton of bricks (read: 7 deadly words) and being reunited with your last meal (stir fry noodles btw, yum), I had detached. Completely dissociated. My body was present but Lord knows where the hell my mind was. I was most likely floating above, looking down at my own dumb founded self. I guess that you could say that the word “numb” describes best how I felt in that instance, and still do.

Once my entire world stopped spinning and I had chucked up everything there was to chuck, I went for a walk. This walk lasted a total of 5 minutes seeing as how it was pretty cold outside. And numb or not, you’re gonna feel it. So I had a smoke and went back inside. I was calming down at this point, I no longer felt like I had just ran the New York Marathon. I put on my favorite piece by Tchaikovsky and I just sat there, on my bed, staring into nothing and nowhere, waiting for myself to return to my body. I waited and waited, but to no avail, I apparently wasn’t ready to come back. That’s when I felt those urges that have been lingering under the surface for months. I could feel that itch become worse and worse. I needed release, I needed SOMETHING.

At this point I had calmed down considerably and that’s when I found myself rifling through my candy store (aka my drawer filled with various medication) looking for my old friend. Ah yes, my old friend Blade. Blade (not the devilishly handsome actor Wesley Snipes, I wish!) was my dear old friend that I had buried (purposely) deep in my candy store, hoping that we would never meet again. But a part of me knew that we would bump into each other at one point or another, so there we were, face to face, me and my blade.

Despite the fact that I had calmed down considerably I was still very numb and “out of it”. I really did consider not doing it but in the end I just turned my music up, grabbed a towel and some rubbing alcohol and I cut. Off the wagon I went, relapsing all the way down the hill with my eyes wide open. When I say “with my eyes wide open” what I really mean is that I was perfectly aware of what I was doing, and I still did it even though a part of me truly didn’t want to do it. But another part of me just wanted release, take the edge off, something to really calm me down.

So I sat there on my bed with  Blade in my right hand and my towel in my left hand and I carved his initials (let’s call him XX for privacy reasons) in my left thigh. I carved it right above the “M” I had carved on October 17th 2012 during my last major breakdown.

Within minutes of “carving” I felt the exact same way that I felt all those years ago when I used to cut.. The second that Blade touched my skin I felt nothing and everything, all at the same time. With every cut I could feel (and see) the blood trickling down my skin and as I watched it drip away it was like I was watching all the pain just roll away. Like I was cutting all the pain away. This might not (and it will not) make sense to you but if you’re like me (cutter, BPD-er), you will understand. You will understand all these emotions that I am describing, because you’ve felt them as well.

I made myself stop at one point, I didn’t want to carve my entire leg up so I made myself stop, which was fairly easy to do. Despite my state of mind at the time, I could still think. Still detached I decided to self soothe. I put on some music (Evanescence, duh) and I listened to it until I fell asleep.

What you need to know is that I’ve known for quite some time now (almost a year) that he wasn’t in love with me but my “other” side (see previous blog post) didn’t want to accept the fact that he wasn’t in love with me. My “logical” side was very well aware of this and had accepted it but my  “other” side (aka my BPD/emotional side) wouldn’t and couldn’t accept it. I don’t know whether I have accepted it now or not but I guess that despite my previous knowledge of already knowing how he felt, that it still hit me very hard.

This morning I had to get up and go to work so I decided to just take it all and just push it away. Put it in that little metaphorical box that I keep deep inside of me and never look back, at least not for the time being. I put on my daily “smile” (as you can imagine, this smile is extremely fake) and I went to work, pretending that all was peachy keen and that I don’t have a care in the world. Unfortunately I go through this every morning.

I always said that he and I would always remain friends, whether or not we were lovers or “together” or not, and in a way, I still stand by that. But I know that it is going to take me some time (maybe even a very long time) before I can  “accept” his decision to be “regular friends” (without play time) and just be friends with him. I don’t know how I will react if I were to see him with another woman in the future. Suffice it to say that I will probably not have the best of responses when this happens.

I won’t process all that has happened because I have too much going on, too many people depending on me so I can’t afford to break down right now. Maybe I will process all of this one day but for now it’s all in my “box”, and this is where it shall stay for the time being.

For so long I wished and hoped for him to be IN love with me. I changed almost everything about me, just because I knew he would like it. I always said that I would never change myself for any man and yet here I was, changing the way I dress, getting my nails done and trying to please him. I guess that is where my “lovely” Electra complex comes in. I don’t know if this feeling will ever go away, I don’t know if I will ever stop wanting him to “want” me, to love me in the way that I wish. But I do know that I will try my hardest to “get over it” (ha, like that’s every gonna happen, right?) so that he and I can be “just friends”. He has always been my (close) friend and “father figure” and I know that I don’t ever want to lose him so I am going to have to try my hardest. One way or the other, he will always be with me, I have a tattoo of his initials to prove it. Ha.

He broke my heart into a million pieces but somehow I will have to try and glue it back together, despite the fact that I am convinced that I am destined to die alone with my 50 dogs and cats nibbling away at my corpse.

I “survived” today and now all I can do is wait for tomorrow and see what the future brings me. Gosh, how very “adult” of me. Ha.

For now I will leave you with this…

“The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned”

 

– William Somerset Maugham