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Bella here 👋🏼 *TRIGGER WARNING*
Today has been a really hard day for me - mentally and emotionally. One of those days where i’m just ready to hang up the towel on doing what i love (photography)
. I struggle with boarderline personality disorder - so i feel every emotion on 100% at least once a day and don’t necessarily even know why in the moment. My medications help but only to a degree - there is no actual medication specifically for this diagnosis, it is a diagnosis that you cannot be born with - it is not hereditary: it is a trauma based disorder - meaning you developed it over years of prolonged trauma such as abuse, neglect, assault and other similar situations. It is literally our brain rewiring itself to function on a completely different frequency because of trauma.
Anywho - because of this i struggle to regulate my emotions, or understand where they are coming from. Well as i said, today has been really hard for me.
When i picked my children up from school, they brought up today’s date - August 26th.
Two years ago today my best friend of 13 years died. Her 7 year old son walked into their home and found her in the middle of the hallway covered in bloodfilled vomit and bile - she had developed a serious drinking problem because of depression (something she had never struggled with before and insisted she didn’t need help with). She literally drank herself to death, and after that phone call my brain tried to block it out but my body quite literally has not let it. I have not been able to get out all of the emotions i have felt - it has just been tidal wave after tidal wave and i am struggling to keep my head above water. Everytime i think i have healed past it and have found peace in her being gone there is something that throws me right back to where i am today. My bpd diagnosis came about three months after her passing - my therapist said i “regressed” back into my bpd. It never goes away - it just gets better and worse.
I don’t know why my emotions on that have so heavily affected my feelings of self worth and the pride i have in my work - but that is how it transpires almost every time, because i lack the ability to regulate like a normal person a lot of the time - today i’m just really feeling it. And i’m trying to correlate how the two play a part with one another and i just don’t understand.
I don’t really know what my point in posting this is aside from letting it out a bit - i do a lot of socialization online as it is my job - not only here but also for other companies, but i don’t ever have anyone to talk to about what is going on with me and in my life.
I don’t have a lot of friends and the ones i do have live elsewhere - i spend most my days in bed doing my work, alone, with no real interactions outside the internet, my husband and kids.
My brain is exhausted and i’m losing the will to keep pushing forward with the things i love. And i just feel stuck in this rut.
I appreciate anyone who’s stuck around to listen to my rambling.
As manager of the app i want you all to see me as vulnerable as you come to this platform. I’m a real person - with real feelings and struggles like anyone else. We want people to continue to feel safe coming here and opening up with everyone by being able to relate to the people behind the app - hence why Trevor comments from his personal profile and i post and speak with you all in the manner that i do. This may be a business but first and foremost it is a community.
So thank you community - for providing me with the same safety and security to open up as i hope we provide to ya’ll.
First off, I'm just sorry. I'm sorry that loss is part of your story and a scar you carry.
Second, thank you. Thank you for offering back the same vulnerability and openness you created this space for in the first place. It's easier to breathe with the windows open. I hope this is inspiration for others here to keep opening them. I won't pretend to know the first thing about a BDP diagnosis. But I will say that I've experienced sudden, traumatic loss and I've seen friends and family work through it in so many different ways that I can 100% understand a body holding on to things while the mind tries everything to shut it out. I lost my Mom suddenly 7 years ago and I can relate to the feeling of waves upon waves. Just when you think you've weathered the worst of it, something happens or you notice an absence at a holiday, another wave breaks, and you find yourself screaming at the dash in your car because that's the only acceptable way to let something that raw out in our sterile society where a perfect front is the expectation. Maybe your experience is different, but even so, I see you and I applaud you for wearing it and showing the cracks and hurt in this space. No person is an island, and we're all better when we see, understand, and encourage one another. All I can offer beyond some small bit of understanding is a little encouragement. For what it's worth, the work of yours that I've seen here is stellar. I've got so much respect for what you and Trevor both do and say in this space. And I'm extremely proud to be here with such quality people. Sometimes it's hard to have pride in the things we put so much heart and soul into. Especially when inevitable criticism comes. We get caught up in feeling like it's never enough and we forget to look back and see how far we've come. Don't forget no matter what level you're at, there are always people looking up to you. Whether it's your kids wanting to do everything you do or someone just starting with photography and digital media or someone quietly watching the way you handle your own grief and treat other people in the process, you're an inspiration to more people than you'll ever know. You may not always get it right and there will always be failures and setbacks, but you deserve to be proud of your work and you're setting a quality example every time you take another step forward.
You're doing it right. We see you.
-T