About Me

My course is set for an uncharted sea

Welcome to my corner of the universe.

I was born in northern Germany in 1988. My family are all blue collar, a little lower on the education scale, but pretty high in both wisdom and being dysfunctional. They are a bunch of loving people, who eat too much, party loud, mostly have their heads on right, but in my opinion, care too much about what other people think. This last part is something that I have only recently discovered, but I can almost understand it. Everybody in my family lives in villages and small towns, where everybody knows everybody. I cringe every time I think about this fact. I myself have lived there until 2016, and when I went back home and noticed how people were staring, I was immediately reminded of why I left.

Me leaving was a bit of a twist of fate, I didn’t actually have it in me to move to a different country without help. After graduating grammar school, I attempted to study the law in Kiel, the biggest city north of Hamburg. It’s a beautiful city, that I dearly miss.  I was living alone in my first apartment, when I met my now husband online. I spend a lot of time online back then, because my life was completely falling apart. Even though I was eager to stand on my own two feet, my childhood has left me incapable to cope with anything. As soon as I was by myself, I fell flat on my face. Not in the incompetence way of not knowing how to boil water or do laundry, but in the heavy depression and anxiety made it impossible for me to leave the house type of way.

I have been abused by my alcoholic farther since I was a toddler, all the way until I finally had the courage to lock my door at night, when I was about 14 or so. Then on my 18th birthday party, in a drunken stupor, he tried to molest my two younger cousins. That was the point when my mother could no longer live in denial and we were looking for a place to live. For the next 4 month, we still lived in that house of horrors, fearing that we would be killed in our sleep or come home to a burned down building, each and every day. My father, I have known this for a long long time, wasn’t just an alcoholic, he was also seriously mentally ill in other ways. A loser, who thought of himself as the emperor of the world, ridden with anxiety, and just a plain ever grumpy, sarcastic to a fault, asshole. I wished him dead early on in my childhood, but he wouldn’t do me the favour of killing himself until after I graduated.

By then my mother and I lived in the basement of the house that my brother-in-law and my sister bought. Cracks in my facade started to appear, and in the relationship I had with my happily oblivious family. About a year later was when I enrolled to study in Kiel and moved out. I cannot deny that all of my family members help each other and have helped me when it comes to offering a place to stay, lending financial aid, giving furniture and household items, helping with renovation, chauffeuring, bringing food to feed us, and all other things like that. But, if only a single person in my life as a child would have opened their eyes, and been courageous, that would have been awesome.

Anyways, when I met my husband and we started our long distance relationship, he was the one who helped me get back on my feet. He was on the phone with me, to lend me support when I had to go outside. He was the one that I trusted enough to share my problems with, and who convinced me that there is help for me in my home city. I met him in 2010, so our long distance relationship lasted for 6 years, isn’t that amazing? By the time I moved to Canada, where he is from, I had my finances figured out, a social worker to help me with paper work and grocery shopping, a therapist that I saw every week, a dog who would force me to go on walks, a volunteering position at a library, and a best friend. Oh, and I mended my relationship with my mother.

Back then, when I was finally receiving psychological help, I was diagnosed with PTSD, depression, and an anxiety disorder. If it hadn’t been for my husband, I would have not survived those years. I would have un-alived myself, as they say nowadays.

After moving to Canada, my life has made a huge turn for the better. I am employed, I get along with my in-laws well, thanks to my husband I live in an apartment that is our own, and our dog Rudi, who immigrated here with me of course, loves his daddy. Unfortunately, things aren’t perfect here either, and I still struggle massively with a lot of things, but marrying my husband and moving to Canada was the best thing that has ever happened to me. The things I struggle with now are different than before, they strangely feel a little more advanced. As if my problems have somehow leveled up in accordance with my life leveling up. (Yes, I like video games.) Before, I struggled with going out, taking care of things, and constantly being in a state of mental terror. Nowadays, I struggle with existential dread, emptiness, stationary oblivion, and a messed up subconsciousness that for some reason still reaches out to the past, as if it only knew how to exist as a victim of circumstance. I am idle, frozen and broken.

Very recently I have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. When my psychiatrist told me my diagnosis, at the end of out first session, after spilling my guts and answering her questions for 1,5 hours, I was tired and exhausted. When she started her conclusion, somewhere in the first sentences she told me it was BPD, then went on to explain how it stemmed from continuous trauma, starting from early childhood neglect and abuse, then due to the decline of my mental health or something or other along those lines. I wasn’t listening anymore. Half way through her conclusion, I burst into tears, maybe because I didn’t want it to be true, or maybe because I had spend a year waiting for this appointment and was at the end of my strength. I cried out that I was so heartbroken that I still don’t know what is wrong with me, that I still don’t know what this is! (It is actually quite comical, looking back at the situation. She telling me it’s BPD, and me, in tears, demanding that she tells me a definitive diagnosis. 0_O) She repeated the name of my disorder, this time I heard heard it, my brain was able to compute. I immediately stopped crying and apologized for my confusion, my stomach in knots.

My initial disbelief quickly vanished. The more I read about it, which I have done plenty in the last month, the more it makes sense. It actually all makes sense now, all of my weird and destructive behaviour since before I moved here, as well as my everyday battles. Although I have been crushed to learn that I have personality disorder, you know because something is inherently wrong with my personality (who wants that?), I have also come to terms with it. I mean, what else am I supposed to do? Be in denial, like my family would?!? /ahem. My advanced demon now has a name. Its face is becoming clearer each day. This now I can beat, or at least learn to live well, despite its everlasting present.

My husband, in his desire for me to be happy, and us to live a better live, has always encouraged me. He wanted me to do something with my life other than working 9 to 5 and spending the rest of my time in idle dread. Over the years he has instilled that desire in me as well, and with his help I have tried to better myself countless times. I am talking about building discipline with workout routines, working on projects that could make us money, so I don’t have to do such a physically straining job anymore and we can see the world, and creating art, which would allow me to express my pain and perhaps conquer it. None of those things worked, and I have to shamefully admit to myself over and over again, that all of his efforts (and it was a shit-ton of time and effort) was wasted on me. I am grateful he is still married to me, and sometimes I wonder how he lasted this long.

Anyways, knowing what exactly is going on, I can take steps accordingly. Don’t get me wrong, the steps that my husband suggested were all valid and would have worked, if I ever took them, but something was missing. The big unknown in my head was punching holes in the best made plans. But now, whenever I run into an obstacle, I can no longer shrug my shoulders and think, well, I am still just not capable. Now I have the ability to precisely research what it is that’s stopping me, why me and my peers have that particular issue, and then gain a better understanding of how to deal with it. To give you a better example, before when I was trying to find out how to stop binge eating, google would tell me to get up and take a walk when the urge arrives. Well, fuck me sideways, the question is how can I stop having urges, because once they are there, taking a freaking stroll doesn’t do shit. I’d just eat afterwards. 0_o That’s when google says to just eat more protein and fibre, which as we all know, is a default answer to many things concerning the body…where was I? Right, the more encompassing plan.

The plan now is to deal with my mental illness through proper medication (screw you, Prozac!), group therapy (hopefully soon!), Dialectic Behaviour Therapy, and constant reflection of what is going on based on a proper diagnosis. No more wild guesses and giving up hope. At the same time, I am seriously committed to working on the betterment of our life. Me and my husband both deserve it.

This blog is one piece of the plan, as it allows me to reflect and express, as well as practice my writing skill. I am also attempting to express myself with digital and physical art, like I did in my teenage years and early twenties. Unfortunately, the muse to paint rarely visits. Perhaps, just like with writing, I should just start doodling and see what comes out. My husband and I are also starting to develop computer games together, which is a hard and steep learning process, but this too instills hope for a better and more financially secure future. I am also sticking to a simple work out routine, which not only makes me stronger, it also shifts my focus on a healthier lifestyle. I am reconnecting with my best friend, who still lives in Kiel, as well as our gaming group of friends, with a new understanding of why I am often socially destructive, and careful to avoid being exactly that. Also, as I am working on my past traumas, I am exposing myself more to the world on social media, instead of hiding myself away, like I was a hideous thing that doesn’t deserve life itself. Hopefully, all of this, this whole tapestry of the person that I can become, will allow me to thaw, take my life into my own hands, and stir to become a person that I can be proud of. At the end of the day it is all about growth.

Thank you for visiting my blog.

Love,

Chaos