Every one I know has been asking if I’m excited. I nod my head and give a smile and say yes. But to say I’m excited is actually lying because the truth is I haven’t wrapped my head around it yet.  My mind has bursts of fast paced moments (when I am anxious) and then there’s mostly the slow languid thoughts that take me a few hours or days to have the gravity of events sink in.  Up to today, it feels like I am just going for an extended vacation. 

Yet, when I really think hard and something clicks in my head that I am being with  B for good then I start feeling  unexplained glee. Like having a really really good secret and you’re the only one who knows what it is. Everything else feels surreal. 

I have anticipated this day since the day I met him. Every fiber of my being has been screaming to be close to him since the day I realized I love him. And now it is here. I am just minutes away. Yes, you must understand that unexplainable glee I feel and why it feels surreal. Because there is no words to contain the emotions I feel. 

The diagnosis given to me by the doctor at the Mental Health Services clinic last Monday was something  not new to me. All these years I have known that I have been living with Borderline Personality Disorder. I first came upon this disorder when I was dating a guy who had a medical background of some sort (don't ask me what as I have long forgotten already) and he said after a few dates that I was "difficult to handle" and I should consider seeking help for my BPD. I remember though that I felt shock then rage for what he told me not realizing that he was right all along. My friends started noticing my self-inflicted pains, my moods that swung like a pendulum, and then they finally sent me off to a shrink when I failed in an overdose..

Let me tell you, it was an "a-ha!" moment when I finally found out I have BPD. I felt a sense of relief that finally I am able to understand why I do what I do and why I think the way I do. Why it was hard to make friends and keep relationships. Why did I push people but inside I want them to stay. How I can feel such deep love yet be consumed by profound rage simultaneously. And it helped me see why I cut myself. I was able to move past the desire to harm myself in order to feel something. But the depression, anxiety, the  black and white thinking, the emotions the emotions the damn emotions stayed. I was starting to be better in keeping relations but at the same time I know that I was just hiding from them how bad I was because I didn't want them to judge me. If they knew how bad I really am, then I'm certain they will make fun of me and leave.

There's the stigma that come with the knowledge of being afflicted with a mental illness. Mental illness runs in my mother's side and I remember how they mocked my uncle who seemed to have lost his marbles. I didn't want to be defined by what I have so I thought if I worked hard enough and I become nice enough then people will start liking me and I can pass as a "normal" person. Most of all, no one needs to know that I have BPD. No one.

There are no secrets that time does not reveal. No secrets that can be kept from the people we love. After being with  B for more than than three years, the real D started seeping through the façade I have created. We fought more often and my insecurities were getting the best of me. Getting married only made it worse as I realized there is no turning back, I become a sitting duck to pain and rejection in case he cheats on me or realizes I am crazy and leaves for someone better. When I am most rational I see how I was recently irrational and I know that  B is slowly wondering where was the vibrant, confident, laughing woman he fell in love the first time.

And that was why I sought help. Now I am ready to face the skeletons in my closet and exorcise the ghosts of my past. I know it is not easy. I know there is no cure. I know that medication will not work (as I've tried it before). It's not going to be cheap also but I am hopeful that I will be better and I can live a life not burdened by so much emotions. I wish though that  B will not get tired of me and that he will develop the necessary skills to support me. And I hope he won't call me 'crazy'.

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For more reading about BPD:

• Dialetical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for Borderline Personality Disorder
• My Wife is Not Her [Borderline Personality] Disorder
• The Mystery of Borderline Personality Disorder

Courage, they say,  is not the absence of fear , but the triumph over it. 

If you have been following my blog, then I am pretty certain you have a general feeling already that I am not “all right” up there.  I’ve probably been dropped too much when I was a baby that I am easily suspicious and afraid of being hurt. It does not help also that I have always carried in me a feeling of abandonment and neglect from my parents.  I must confess that if I were to judge myself critically, I can say I am pretty mental.  Mental enough to admit even to myself that I want my madness to stop.

This is not an epiphany that came to me in the middle of night. I have known for more than a decade that despite the mental strength I possess, parts of me have been scarred so badly from emotional trauma but were not given time to heal before new wounds were inflicted on it again thus leaving my brain so broken. I  had wished that the trauma and the anxiety that goes with it will diminish over time or I will out grow the fears and the pain but it hasn’t and now it’s something I have to face.

Facing this has not been easy. It has been months now that I have been contemplating of going to a mental health doctor and all because after each fight I had with  Bit made me see how irrational I am with my jealousy, fears, suspicions and doubts. If I was able to cut off my relationship before it gets to the point of no return well now that I am married I am not able to do that anymore. Now, I have to man up to the job and get my act straight because this is what marriage is. I love my  Band I will everything it takes to make him happy. He is one of the reasons why I want to be better.

So come Monday I get to see a mental doctor. Get my diagnosis and hopefully get a treatment. Maybe just maybe if I have a name of what I have I can understand myself better and when I am rational I can train my mind to avoid situations that trigger my defense mechanisms and when I am in the thick of things I can pull my mind out of the rut that makes me cruel and insensitive.

There are so many instances when I want to blog about something that has caught my attention in the news or during the day at work or a conversation I had with some people.

But the rush of emotions I feel blocks out all the words in my head... You know like running away from a tsunami but the wave eventually hits you and you are tossed around... That's how my feelings become that brings me in a bad kind of edge... Faint and breathless.

Instead of blogging I stand up from my Mac and walk away so I can escape these horrible feelings which is what I will be doing now. 

And there goes another moment I missed out in making a post.

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After reading about how sequestration has affected the Army in this news.