Feels like Eminem

Many people don’t understand famous rappers like Eminem. They ask themselves what the hell the guy is rapping about. Well, I  do understand the man, at least, in part. I feel like he must have felt when he was about 14 years old. You see, there are some people in life who can treat you like dirt, who yell at you all the time, who cannot treat you as their equal. You’re only good for them in order to do some things for them as they like, like the household drudgery or dealing with the trash – literally and figuratively.

Now I know more or less how I developed this Borderline Personality Disorder. What’s happening at this moment - and what's been happening all my life - is that certain people in my life, people who should treat me fairly, as their equals, are treating me as dirt. They yell at me all the time and I’m only good enough to do what they don’t want to do themselves. For Christ’s sake, I thought I was doing the right thing, I thought I made the right decision, I thought I was actually doing some people a favour… but then it turns out completely the other way around…

Eminem was only good enough for cooking, cleaning and emptying the trash can, so to speak. I feel like trash. I try to do the best I can, but there’s nothing I can do right. Everything is wrong. And the worst of all is that I know that it’s not my fault. I know that it’s somebody else’s fault, and that because there are some misunderstandings between those people, I am being handled like trash. And thus this is how it feels like… I feel depressed. I'm choking. I'm not able to breathe anymore. I have to take tranquillizers in order to be able to act normal. Can you imagine? I'm drowning, drowning in this pool of trash...

As a borderliner, you already feel worth less than nothing. Even after all these years and with the whole backpack of experiences I have as a borderliner, I don't cease to be stunned by how badly people can treat me. I wish it were different, but nonetheless, I know I also have a part in this. I should stand up and speak up, but I don't dare to do that, out of fear of losing even more people. People overestimate borderliners. They think we have a big mouth. They suppose we are tough, that we don't care about anyone but ourselves and the people closest to us, but the opposite is true: we just care too much about more or less anyone in our lives. We can't let anyone go. I wish it were possible for me to let some people go, out of my life, give them less importance somehow. I've tried and I've tried and I've tried... without any result, however.

Every day is a burden, every day people trespass my borderline, but I don't undertake action. If I even try to do as little as that, I get a really, really tough couterreaction, and that's not what I want. I want to do things for other people, but not at all expenses. I know and I've learnt that I have to come up against other people to protect myself. However, to put that into practice is not an easy thing. How can you do that? I really have no clue. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but they're hurting mine all day long, day after day. I don't want to disappoint anyone, but they disappoint me all the time. I don't know what I've done wrong...

Cut the crap!

Among your friends and family, there are always those people you never expect to drown in their feelings of loneliness, hopelessness or depression. Nevertheless, they do. So it happened in my family too. Today I found out that one of my favourite cousins has done a suicide attempt. The strangest thing is that I was surprised, yes, but I wasn't feeling anything else. No anger, no shame, no shock, no. It's just as if it was something normal, while she is one of our family's laughing beauties. Seems like it can really happen to anyone...

She wrote a blog post about what has really happened. I tried to reach her as fast as I could, just to chat. Luckily, there's such a thing as Facebook, because I'm far away in Holland, while she is in Belgium. Anyway, we talked, and we decided to meet when I'm back home in Belgium for the holidays, which is real soon. While reading her blog post, many feelings of recognition came to my mind. So I think that she's right. She's been lying for weeks now about her situation: "I'm looking for a job, but unfortunately I haven't been successful so far..." It's time I stopped lying too...

You know, I've been lying too, and it's time I cut the crap. Ever since I graduated last year in July, I've been wondering if I will ever find a suitable job. As you may know, I live from a social allowance because I can't work. My idea was that the social allowance was only necessary as long as I was studying, because I couldn't combine my studies with a job. I was 100% sure that after finishing my studies, I'd find a job and I'd no longer need the social allowance. However, now I'm doing some voluntary work, and it's kind of tough. Fortunately enough for me, every week, one or the other student cancels his or her lesson, so I never get the full load, but if I would, I would be teaching for about 8 hours a week. I never get that far, but it costs me a hell of an effort to be able to fulfill the few hours I do teach. 

You see, many people think that teaching is just working for two to four hours a day, and finishing early after an easy day at work. Well, I can tell you, they're completely wrong. First of all, you need to prepare your lessons very carefully. You need to calculate what you're going to do in those hours and what kind of matter you are going to deal with. Don't forget that, if you give private lessons - as I do - every single student has his or her own needs. Secondly, you have to know all the answers and you have to be able to explain everything properly, in plain English (or Dutch, or Portuguese, or...). And thirdly, you have to turn a dull piece of grammar into something diverted, to present a dull list of vocabulary into a nice exercise. Believe me, that's not easy, and that's why I always use a hand-out with nice colours, sometimes with drawings, in any case, a hand-out which has to be carefully composed. 

I think people overestimate and undervalue the job and the art of teaching, and so did I, until I came into the circuit. And yes, it got to me. So now I know that it's not easy. Now I know it requires a lot of preparation. And it still gets at me. I'm dead-tired after two or three hours of private lessons, even though it's all voluntary work. And now I will have to face it: I'll probably never ever be able to get a normal job as a teacher. Then you have to work at least 24 hours a week. I barely get half of them. I'll probably never be able to work more hours than I do now, and the advantage of the work I'm doing now is that it is all voluntary. Okay, the disadvantage is that I don't get paid, but the advantage is that if I'm feeling too tired or if I have a relapse, I can always step back, which is not quite possible if you have a stable job. 

However, all this is bothering me. My family expects great things from me. I graduated Cum Laude twice: Bachelor and Master, so the expectations are high. I should have found a job by now, because it's almost been a year since I graduated. In the beginning, I was fierce in my attempts at finding a job: I sent my CV to various employers. However, after not receiving any reactions, I quit and I subscribed to newsletters, hoping that one day, I would find my dream job. No, I'm not looking very intensively anymore, and I know why: because I'm not able to take on a full-time job, maybe even not a part-time job. It's disappointing, and it hurts. It frustrates me and it wears on me. I've been talking about it with my psychiatrist and my psychiatric nurse. They understand me, but I know for sure that my family will never, ever understand this without feeling resentment. Just because they haven't been there, just because for them it was easy, just because they don't have to rely on those awful pills.  

There is still hope, however. I've applied as a volunteer, that is to say, as a hands-on expert. Tomorrow I have my first reunion in a group in which people are working around the theme of recovery. It's good to do this, because at the moment I'm all but feeling well. I'm having small psychotic episodes and large depressive episodes. I'm in a crisis and my psychiatrist and psychiatric nurse decided to give me more tranquillizers. So now I'm back on the so-feared but at the same time so-loved Tranxene. I'm practically dependent on it, because I feel the moment coming when it's time for the next dose. I despise myself for it, but unfortunately I don't have any other options left at the moment... 

So let's cut the crap: Debz is not feeling well at all at the moment. She tends to isolate herself from her friends, because that way, they won't be able to notice something's terribly wrong. She's not going to karate, nor to the Leiden observatory. She's afraid of some people in her life, people who have humiliated her, people who have the power to make her feel like a piece of sh*t. When she's among friends, she tries to put on a brave face. She's terribly afraid she'll end up on the closed ward again, because she's not feeling well. She's depressed, she's tense, she's nervous, she's agitated, she's frustrated... everything but fine. She'd like to take a nap that would last a week, at least. Unfortunately, she has responsibilities, called "students". She's looking forward to going home, to Belgium, in the weekend, but she's extremely afraid things will run out of hand over there and that she'll be admitted to a psychiatric clinic over there, with well-known consequences. 

 

No excuses!

It is said that I often aim too high. It is said that I look at other people when I'm frustrated or angry. It is also said that I try to find excuses to justify my behaviour. And what can I say? I have to admit that those who say those things are right. I have to admit that my frustrations can make me try to justify my behaviour by pointing my finger in the direction of others. So it's time that I set things straight: No more excuses!

You see, every week I've got an appointment with my psychiatric nurse, and during the past few weeks, it seems that that moment is my "weeping hour". She is even better than a best friend, because you can lose a best friend, but - if everything stays the way it is and if the budget cuts keep our relationship unharmed - she will never ever let me down like a friend can let you down. So I can tell her every single thing that bothers me, every single frustration, every single thing that makes me mad and/or sad. However, today I asked her if I've disappointed her recently, and she told me yes. She explained to me why. She told me that I can make things very difficult for myself, especially because I aim too high. Also, she told me that on the one hand, I'm somebody who wants to persevere and who succeeds in doing this, but on the other hand, I easily give up while at the same time aiming too high. She also wants me to make no excuses. When I have a problem, I easily point at others and the problems I have with those people to explain the problem. However, it is well-known that you can't change others. Do you want a change? Yes? Well, start with yourself. I should take that message for granted, I know, but it's not that easy.

I really have to make a change in my way of being. I have to quit making excuses. But where to start? It's easy to blame people in my family for the feelings of frustration and helplessness. It's easy to blame your Sensei when you are the one feeling clumsy and inferior while doing karate. Somehow, I have to find a way to start taking more responsibility. But where to start? 

First of all, let me say this: I won't blame my family members anymore when it comes to my psychological problems. Those problems are my problems, and I'll have to learn how to deal with them. You see, it's also easy to emphasise what you don't have. It's a lot more difficult to see what you do have. I told my psychiatric nurse today that I don't have a boyfriend or a mom or dad who live closeby. Then she told me I should look at what I do have. Well, I have Timo, of course. And believe me, people, he's awesome. It's such a special bird. He's content with every little thing you give him. For example, the weather in Holland has been tropical lately, and as I live in a small student room on the fifth floor on the southside of the building, it's like a hot oven in here. That's why my windows are open almost 24/7. However, Timo is used to being out of his cage, and so was Chico. When Chico had to stay in his cage, he could be quite difficult, so to speak, but Timo isn't that difficult at all. Of course he's happy when I let him out for about an hour in the morning and in the evening, but really, he's even happy in his cage, he knows how to enjoy himself. I'm glad to have him, even though I still miss Chico every day.

I also want to thank God for the people that do care about me: my parents, several other family members, the people from the Leiden observatory, my students and the people from church. Did I miss anyone? I think I missed a whole lot of people actually, because I didn't even mention my friends ;) I remember what my mom said on my graduation day. She said that she didn't know that I was loved by so many people. That kind of shocked me, because that means that she thought that I wasn't loved at all, or at least, less. Anyway, I'm blessed with so many people who love me and care about me. 

Mom and dad :)

So I think it's time I told myself: no more excuses! Stop blaming others! Stop pointing fingers in the direction of others when it comes to your own problems! Keep it to yourself. You are the key to your problems ánd to your successes. These are some things I should keep in mind. And I will :)