Ten Things I Hate About Me

by Joe Tracini

Because, as much as I might want to now look back and see Mick’s hands in everything, making things the worst they could possibly be, so he could have the best possible run at having me kill myself, I also have to accept responsibility so that I can stop doing it.

There’s a link between thinking that people are watching you and imagining a specific ‘they’. Paranoia and dissociation are linked, because to feel the full force of BPD paranoia it requires a certain dissociation from reality.

When he suggests suicide because I’ve missed a train or run out of melon, it’s easier for me to go through the process of dismissing that as an option so he’ll show me what my other options are. But when he suggests it because I did the worst thing I’ve ever done, that becomes a lot harder.

Rock bottom, by the way, is potentially the worst place to change your life around. You can’t truly change until you get to rock bottom, you’re told. But after crashing through all those floors, I was knackered. I just wanted to lie there and be left alone. I was covered in dust and bruises and scratches and the remains of a toilet I’d hurtled through somewhere on the 13th floor and this is when they wanted me to be at my strongest? That wasn’t where I was going to make my best long-term planning.

I realised that I didn’t always agree with my own thoughts. I remember that occurring to me very quickly and I remember not panicking. I just realised that this was, well, a bit weird.

Thoughts aren’t things. So long as I don’t enact the thought, it’s not a thing, it’s just a thought inside me. If I keep doing the work that stops the thought becoming a thing – and I know if I slip and allow it through to my hands and mouth I will absolutely do that bad thing – then it’s just a thought.

The devastating thing about suicide is that you feel like you’re the good bit killing the bad bit inside you. It’s the complete opposite, but by then it’s too late to realise.

I’m in a relationship with my own thoughts and it’s not always a great one but it’s the longest relationship I’ve ever had. It’s one I have to learn to live with because any external relationship I have will suffer until I do.

The old cliché says you can’t love others until you learn to love yourself. Bollocks. I have so much love to offer people because I’m not wasting any of it on myself.

People with BPD are sometimes called psychopaths but it couldn’t be more different. If a psychopath had lived my life so far they would be feeling absolutely fine with everything I’ve done because they lack empathy. Having BPD doesn’t rob you of empathy; it just holds it back from you when you need it the most and gives you it back once it’s too late. Mick is a psychopath, or would be if I let him.

Don’t wait until you think you won’t kill yourself before you tell anyone. Tell somebody you trust as soon as you realise you’re thinking it.

I struggle in other people’s houses and other people’s spaces. I don’t feel I belong anywhere at the best of times and this is heightened when I’m in somebody else’s home. I feel like I stick out. I’m constantly on edge.

It made me worse, because when I did try to read them, as far as I was concerned, they were full of shit, and they made me feel more unfixable than I did before I picked the bloody thing up.

Of course it didn’t. I’ve got a personality disorder. Trying to fix my brain by writing a gratitude list is like trying to remove a tumour with a fucking spoon.

It’s created a world in which feeling sad is something that can be fixed by going for a jog, and your anxiety can be relieved by spending 30 seconds looking at a picture

Thanks Mum, but the only thing that’s done is remind me that I’m more mental than the rest of the world, because everybody loves that shit, but I look at it and feel guilty that the help you’re trying to give me isn’t enough.

So I either have to say, ‘Please don’t send me this shite’ and upset you, or say, ‘Thanks, love it, smiley face emoji’ and let them think they’re making a difference when really they’re making you feel even less understood.

I wouldn’t recommend the second option by the way, that would be a lie, and as we’ve seen, if you lie to somebody about the help they’re giving you being enough, it keeps you on your own. If you’re thinking about killing yourself, we know that’s not a good place to be. You’...

Sometimes, just knowing somebody wants to help is help enough.

It’s great that you sorted your life out and wrote a book about it, mate, good for you, but I’m not thinking about how good my future could be, because I don’t think I’m going to have one; I’ve not even decided whether I’m going to do tonight yet, let alone March, and there is no amount of strangers being reflective about their own problems they’ve sorted that is going to make me feel like being alive any more is worth it.

Just because you’re fucked up, doesn’t mean good things can’t happen to you.

The things you can’t see are difficult to explain to somebody that doesn’t have any experience of that thing;

Even if you can explain how you’re feeling, you might be scared to tell anybody else in case they don’t believe you.

Arguments occur more frequently when they’re about something you can’t see, because if somebody can’t see something, it can be denied. Unfortunately, mental ...

That allowing the bad thoughts in your head that aren’t you doesn’t need to define you. That having a brain that hates you and shows this via addiction or depression or suicidal thoughts or BPD isn’t something to stay silent about.