Happy 200

I can't believe this blog has been going for more than a year, which means my "official" BPD diagnosis is also more than a year old. It's my 200th post today - and I want to say a massive thank you to all my readers and commenters. Having you guys around has made the last year a LOT more enjoyable, and I hope some of my ramblings have helped other people to feel more sane LOL, or less alone.

I feel as though I should do some kind of a retrospective to mark the 200th post. It's certainly amazing to me how much has changed, in my physical life as well as my mental/emotional life. Working hard with Doc A, and practising my CBT and DBT skills, and finding a good medication balance has meant that I can function fairly well most of the time. I've returned to work, moved out of my parents' house, and started dating. A year ago, none of these things seemed possible. I owe a lot to Doc A, and to my family and friends who have been supportive, but I am recognising how much of the work I did myself. I was determined to survive, and to even thrive, and even when I was most despairing, I hung on to the hope. Even in the darkest times, I focused on the tiny glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel, and I think that's what got me through. It gave me the strength to keep working at therapy and to resist the evil BPD voices in my head when they told me to binge eat, shop, pull out my hair, scratch my skin, obsess, scream...

There are times when I wonder if I can keep up the effort, but I get through them (occasionally with the help of a Valium LOL). Events of the past year have tested me, often, but I do feel like I have made progress and am functioning pretty well. As mentioned in an earlier post, Doc A says that if I came in now to see him for an initial consult he probably wouldn't place me in the same Borderline Personality Disorder category, that he would assume I was at worst a mild case. I am attached to my diagnosis, so I don't know how I feel about having it taken away!! It seems weird to think of myself as just Lil instead of Borderline Lil, even though I know that it makes perfect sense - I am not JUST my diagnoses, I am a complete and whole person underneath the crazy haha.

As an update to previous posts, I am still spending time with Lloyd, though part of me suspects he doesn't deserve me LOL. We are technically "friends", and see a lot of each other, and in many ways I'm happier without the relationship label. I am still in two minds about him, and our relationship, but being with him (mostly) makes me happy. It's weird that I'm almost 40 years old and am finally falling for an Unsuitable Boy. I always made sensible, rational choices when I actually committed myself to relationships in the past, even though some of my fantasy/obsession/crushes were kind of out there. But something about Lloyd makes me retract all my feminist beliefs and my rational decisions. My friends and family think I deserve better, intellectually I know that he needs to step up and be a man, but there is a big part of me that just loves him, you know? As much as I don't want to, and I'm fighting it, I just want him to love me.

Ugh. I can't even stand the sound of myself!! It's stupid. I'm hopeful that his hold on me will dissipate, somehow, sometime, and I'll be able to move on. Til then, I just focus on the good stuff.