Feelings

This is a guest post by Lyra Swann.

When all my feelings start to crowd in, my first tactic is distraction – anything that will take me away from my own head. Last night I learned how to solve a Rubik’s cube. Turn the left side towards you then the top to the right, left side towards you again why won’t these feelings go away? They’re a jumbled confusion getting louder and louder. As soon as I get one coloured square into place, another escapes. I can’t pick out which feelings are present; all I know is that they’re filling my head, squashing me, making it impossible to think. I put down the cube and head to bed.

In bed the emotions really cram into my brain. I can’t tell what I’m feeling – it’s like having a hundred different voices screaming at me. I’m so scared. I feel like I’m going mad. I feel like I’m relapsing back into the Bad Old Times. This episode came from nowhere, and that’s one of the most frightening things of all. This could happen again, anywhere, anytime, with no warning. I think I’m going mad.

Now comes the panic. I’m going mad, I must be. I’m going to destroy everything and everyone I love – just like last time. I’m toxic, dangerous, unfit for human company. My emotions are grenades which I carry with me and hand out to anyone nearby. I feel so alone and so out of control. I’m shaking uncontrollably, hyperventilating. I message a friend, and she responds with calmness and kindness. I take my pills and they knock me out. Sweet benzodiazepines.

The next morning, a lot of the thoughts that I couldn’t identify the previous night start to separate out and congeal. I’m making this up. It’s my fault that this happens, and I could get better if only I really wanted to. I secretly want to be ill, I want this pain. I’m a wimp for taking those pills and I should have toughed it out. I’m falling back into illness and it’s my fault.

There’s a part of me which doesn’t want me to get better. There’s a part which enjoys watching everything burn. It’s ready to sabotage my attempts to get better, to get help. It doesn’t want me to talk to my counsellor, or take my pills, or exercise, or build healthy relationships. It wants me to be as reckless and destructive and dangerous as possible.

I talk about these thoughts and impulses in the third person, but they’re part of me. Part of me wants me to be ill. So when I am ill, then this is just something I wanted all along. It is All My Fault. Blame and guilt are at the centre of this, along with helplessness and unworthiness.

Why is it that I can’t manage my emotions without getting completely overwhelmed and spiralling? Why can’t I stay healthy? Other people can manage it, so why not me?

There is actually a good answer to this question. I have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

I feel scared and ashamed just typing that previous sentence. I’m not ready to accept that it’s real and that it’s a part of me. I’m scared to look at it, scared to see myself through that lens.

My BPD label feels to me now like the label of lesbian felt to me when I was fifteen. Back then, I was so ashamed to be gay. I couldn’t say it out loud; I could barely write it down. It made me into an outcast, an unlovable beast who didn’t deserve closeness or happiness. My gay shame told me that I was at fault for my feelings, and that the best thing for everyone else would be for me to hide away and to hope that I ‘grew out’ of it.

Reader, I did not grow out of being a lesbian. And intellectually at least, I know I’m not going to grow out of BPD. That thought terrifies me – knowing that this will always be here and that BPD is something I’m always going to have to manage. It’s a lot of work to manage BPD. A hell of a lot of work. And I’m still ashamed and guilty and lonely and frightened and a million other things besides.

Ironically, having BPD means I have a lot of feelings about having BPD.

I made him write it down

This is another guest post by Lyra Swann. Her first post is here.

I made him write it down: Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder. 

Once it's written down, it's real. No-one can take it away from me. This diagnosis is validation; it affirms so many of my feelings and experiences. What I feel is real, it is happening, it's not "just me". I have a way of expressing some of the challenges I face. I've always been battling, but now I've glimpsed my foe.

My Dad loves me

This is another guest post by Lyra Swann. Her first post is here

My dad loves me. 

He emails me, he wants to know how I'm doing, he cares about me, he wants me to be happy. 

He offers me advice, he offers money, he reminds me that if I need help then I can call on him. He cries when I leave.

He jokes, he uses sarcasm and play-irritation. He feigns anger for laughs. I laugh along. It's less scary that way.

I can't tell when his mood switches. Perhaps he was always angry. Perhaps he never was. His irritation is genuine now.

I put my head down. I minimise my presence, just as I did as a child. Even the wrong look used to provoke a harsh word, a smack.

I've spent my life trying to please him. And he wants to see me, to have a relationship with me. He'll be very upset if I don’t. It seems like the easiest option.

My dad loves me.

Finances, Mental Health and Academia - Guest Post by Lyra Swann

Finances, mental health and academia - a thread

I've had a really difficult year. Severe depression. Marital breakdown. Several months' sick leave. Temporary homelessness. And despite all that, I finished my PhD. 1/

— Quantum Of Queer 🏳️‍🌈 (@quantumofqueer) November 24, 2018

Many thanks to Lyra Swann for allowing us to post this thread that she tweeted two days ago. Lyra's twitter handle is @quantumofqueer, and you can find the original thread linked to above.   

Finances, Mental Health and Academia: A Thread

I've had a really difficult year. Severe depression. Marital breakdown. Several months' sick leave. Temporary homelessness. And despite all that, I finished my PhD.

Once my viva was done, I was free to apply for jobs. But I just didn't have the oomph. I was so utterly exhausted from the mangle I'd been through in the past year that I couldn't even begin a job search.

So I took on some university tutoring to pay the bills.

Turns out hourly paid tutoring *sucks*. The actual work itself is OK, tho tiring&repetitive. But it pays at £14/hr, and it's impossible to neatly fill a 40 hour week with it - there are always gaps between tutorials, and times when there's no teaching. And that means no money.

And then there are times when there's too much work, and I want to do all the hours I can because that way, I'll get enough money to live off, but I'm so damn tired that I can't do all the work, and then I berate myself for not earning enough.

And every time I go into a supermarket, all I see is 'too expensive too expensive too expensive'. Shopping takes so much energy, which is energy I don't have. Energy that I can't then put into job hunting.

The financial precarity wears me down. It panics me. It makes me less able to apply for jobs and less able to get out of this stinking situation.

This in turn makes it harder for me to look after my mental health. Which makes it harder to apply for jobs. Which means I keep working as a low paid tutor. Etc etc

I'm incredibly lucky. I have amazing friends and family supporting me. But what about those who don't have that support network? What about their stories?

Inclusion Matters: Guest post by Lyra Swann

Trigger Warning: discussion of suicide.

We are happy to welcome a guest post by a new writer, Lyra Swann from the UK (not her real name).  We always welcome guest posts and we have a standing invitation - just get in touch.  We can do it under real name, pseudonym, completely anonymous, whatever works for you. 

Inclusion Matters

You’ve probably just read the above words and nodded. After all, this is 2018. Equality and Diversity are buzzwords floating around organisations, and companies can’t get enough of the chance to look like they care and market themselves at the same time. Pride flags painted on trains; Primark T-shirts; blah blah blah.

But before we let ourselves get wrapped up in rainbow-coloured merchandise, let me tell you a story about inclusion, about acceptance, and what it *actually* means.

I’m a queer-identified feminist with strong liberal views from a non-nuclear family background. I’m self-assured and can be quite outspoken when I want to be. “Don’t fuck the patriarchy because the patriarchy can go fuck itself.” That sort of thing.

I’m also married. My partner is from a very traditional family. So traditional that the fifties are far too modern for them. They’re anti-feminist, Conservative, imperialist, global warming sceptics. Y’know, the type who think that the best thing a woman can do is to raise a family.

Now, my partner doesn’t share those beliefs. But whenever I spend time with my in-laws, I have to bite my tongue so often that I almost gag. I don’t want to be controversial, and I don’t want to start an argument. So I try and keep my head down and play the good daughter-in-law. But I cannot be myself in any way around them. I have to suppress all of my views, my sexuality and literally everything else that makes me *me*. That, my friends, is an oppressive environment.

My in-laws live a good distance away and I only see them a handful of times a year. They mean well, and they care about my partner and me. They don’t have any jurisdiction in how we live our lives. So by and large, I don’t actively think about them much. And until recently, I thought their influence on our lives was fairly limited.

But the truth is that influence spreads far further than it seems to. Although I only spent a few days a year hearing the views of my in-laws, these permeated my thinking to its core. They affected every part of our relationship. I cared about what my in-laws think of me. I wanted to please them so much that I sacrificed my own identity to do so.

I wanted to be a good wife.

“A good wife?!” What kind of fucked-over queer feminist thinking is that??!

But I wanted to be accepted by my in-laws. And to be accepted, I had to play their happy-nuclear-families game. Like a good wife, I put my partner’s needs first without even thinking about it. I organised my life around them, and felt grateful for the privilege of doing so. I was there whenever they needed me, for whatever they needed me for. And I ignored my own feelings – ignored them so well that I couldn’t even tell that they were there.

I did this right up until I almost killed myself.

Something in me snapped. I had ignored my own emotions so thoroughly and so adeptly that I ran straight into a full-on nervous breakdown. It was like walking off the edge of a cliff. I was broken, in pieces, unable to see or think anything. It hurt so much that I was in constant agonising physical pain, that slicing my wrists was a relief from the constant mental anguish.

You see, in wanting to be the image of the ‘good wife’, I was oppressing myself. In order to fit with ideals that I didn’t share, for people I rarely see. The oppressive environment that I felt inside their house actually extended right into my head. I couldn’t accept myself for who I was because that didn’t fit with who I thought I ought to be.

My partner and I tried to fit our relationship into the heteronormative mould, and it broke. We tried to play the good couple, and it broke both of us. We lost ourselves inside that ideal of man plus woman. We’re each starting out on separate journeys to discover our own identities. I’m still working on self-acceptance.

The effects of non-acceptance extend *way* beyond the arena you see it in.

Someone’s views can be oppressive even if they mean well.

Oppressive views still affect us even if we don’t agree with them.

Not all exclusion is overt. In fact, most is not.

We all need to be accepted for who we are.