Thoughts Lately

May 23rd

I have a dissociative disorder.

Borderline personality disorder.

Depression.

Anxiety.

My treatment for mental illness has included:

Individual therapy.

Medications.

Hospitalizations.

TMS.

Outpatient groups.

DBT groups.

DBT.

Wholistic health.

I'm numb to it. It's my normal. Looking at this with different eyes, it is overwhelming. A bit scary. What is so messed up that causes a person to get stuck in the wanting to kill themself?

All of this because of a lack of live.

All of this because of a lack of understanding, of acceptance, of kindness and inclusion.

I want to change American culture because American culture is a root cause of suicide, of mental illness, of pain no one who hasn't experienced it can even imagine.

A lack of love has put me in hell.

A lack of love has stolen my education.

A lack of love has stolen my community, my friends, my sports, my hobbies.

A lack of love has stolen my own inner comfort.

And finally, a lack of love has stolen my time -> 7 years of soaring independence, of possible new love and new relationships.

May 25th

Which one of You would like to write?

I feel as if My thoughts are meaningless, which is not possible so not true.

I don't have confidence? That's not quite it.

I know I am on a journey, and so I feel not complete - as if that impacts My words.

"This is Audi - YOU can write, Arielle"

I keep feeling like I need to start at the beginning. Of Airi? Of Arielle? Of what? All of us have. All of us are. We are me. I am them. It's odd. This dissociative concept.

Lack of love = one path

Love = another

Two different realities, interwoven.

[Insert Image Here]

And so, we each have our own path.

I was first curious for nature and society. Reading - other experiences. What is life? What is this I have been born into? For this reason, I enjoyed school. I enjoyed my classes. Up until "projects" and "busy work". Time - MY time - was valuable. I was alive. I wanted to be and learn. Not live to follow the hopscotch.

I was told over and over "This is life. These are the rules. This is the path. This is right and this is wrong. This is love." Intrinsically, I knew better.

My life had become hell - I was caught in a strong-current river of acting against my values and well being. If this was life, I didn't want it. It hurt too much. And so - suicide. The act of death. A button of control. A message of "this hasn't been okay."

I didn't want to die. I'd always wanted to live as fully and as authentically as possible.

Thoughts and feelings related to suicide = this thing called depression. A condition. A disorder. An illness of the brain. Part of the human condition set to level 10/10.

My curiosity continued to carry me. Depression = the brain, mind, and soul affected by life. So, how to heal? Meds? Talking through the tangle of neurons?

Life was still hopscotch though: "Life was still good."

"No!" I screamed internally. All was still not okay. I had been washed so far downstream from myself and my intrinsic lifestyle that I didn't know - didn't remember - who I was or what had been.

I sought out answers. How is life supposed to be if not this machine that creates accidental defectives of mental illness? I was told God, the Bible, and Christianity held all the answers. I poured my curiosity into this.

But again, what I was being taught wasn't the peace and joy I so desperately sought. Mental illness was sin - a natural and necessary good consequence of a rebellion against God. I somehow deserved these suicidal thoughts. I somehow deserved death.

My depression began to manifest deeper into my body. The poison of hopscotch and sidewalk chalk had spread to all my organs. My immune system's natural response to fighting it was labelled "BPD", written off as simply the brain malfunctioning in the okay-normal world.

I was put into DBT. I learned skills on how to fight off my infection. Yet, I couldn't full heal in an environment that was still producing and exposing me to toxins.

After an attempt on my life, my diagnosis, my problem, was rethought. What's deeper than a mood AND personality disorder? A trauma disorder.

Finally, an admittance by outsiders that I wasn't the source of my illness. It wasn't that I hadn't been good enough at life - it was that life hadn't been good enough for me. This is what I had been saying from the beginning, until the invalidation of my experience had blown out that flame.

If God is the source of all life AND the source of all love...

Then life and love are one in the same.

On the space-time-love continuum, I need to flow back over to the plain I was born to live in.

I'm not disordered - life is.

I'm not pain - the lack of love is.

There is hope. There is a way.