inflamed

I’m learning a lot of lessons recently. I don’t know what I should attribute these revelations to… but it doesn’t much matter. Ultimately, I wanted 2016 to be a year where I devoted my free time to self-care and maybe, just maybe, putting that desire out there opened me up to the possibility of change.

For starters, I’ve been learning a lot about my body. I hired a personal trainer in January who’s been helping me understand its strengths and weaknesses. Recently we’ve been re-framing my Chronic Fatigue as “inflammation” and noting correlations between my mental state, the behaviors it produces, and the effects these elements have on my physical state. It sounds so simple but it’s the kind of thing I’ve NEVER paid much attention to. I’m pretty good about getting sleep but otherwise, I don’t think about hydration, nutrition or my resting pulse. And after looking at these metrics, it’s no wonder everything in me is inflamed. As I’ve been training, I’ve been shocked by how truly debilitated I’ve become. But since I know have a long road of rehab ahead of me I’m being patient with myself. Reversing decades of damage takes time.


Probably (and most importantly) I’ve been working on my co-dependent relationship with my parents. My husband and I struggled through two, back-to-back terrible visits with them this winter and then, a few weeks ago, my father informed me that we’d be in for more of the same next year. He had no intention on honoring the promise my mom made to celebrate Christmas at our house this year. I’ve explained to my mom that a difficult thing about not having kids is that you never get to celebrate a holiday in your own home so she said they’d come. I doubt my dad ever meant to follow through on this and so he conveniently found an excuse as to why they couldn’t come.

So despite all the old neural pathways that were racing through my mind insisting I couldn’t assert my own needs, I did exactly that. I informed them that I was disappointed and that they’d be missed. And that we’d be making our own plans separately. They’re currently sulking and haven’t mentioned the matter since. But most importantly, I’ve ceased to care. We don’t value each other’s company. We don’t even really like each other. I don’t care if I win or lose - I’m just not going to keep playing the game. Trying to take care of them doesn’t work & only hurts me.


Finally, I’ve been thinking a LOT about my equally baffling relationship with my boss. I mean… something’s gotta give. I’ve been talking to my friend back in California (the one I posted about back in January) about this really annoying feature of our shared diagnosis:

“Impairments in interpersonal functioning: Intense, unstable, and conflicted close relationships, marked by mistrust, neediness, and anxious preoccupation with real or imagined abandonment; close relationships often viewed in extremes of idealization and devaluation and alternating between over involvement and withdrawal.” – DSM V

Out of all the *super fun* things there are about being a borderline, this diagnostic criteria is just the most awesome of all. This tendency to become overly attached a person who gives us the sense that they can fill our needs. I could probably name a person from each part of my life I felt this way about. Thankfully, since I've been with my husband, this has been a LOT less of an issue and the only times I struggled with this recently has been during periods of extreme stress.

But I’ll admit: I’ve had the tendency to make my boss this person at times. And I see her every day so I've thought a LOT about the kind of person who becomes enmeshed with a borderline in these kinds of relationships and what THEIR needs are. It’s a two way street. I see her gravitate towards creating a relationship with others who need her. These people have the need to be caregivers but not always the capacity. It's only when we can describe what's happening - and more importantly, see that there are positive things about us that drew THEM to US - that we can start to end this lovely tango. I wish we could find that special thing without needing these people since we're obviously quite, well, special in our own right.

I opened up my facebook feed this morning to see a picture of my boss at a social function with a colleague who I adore and respect (and I hired). And I was immediately jealous. I know she drives this colleague completely crazy and facebook is a space of manufactured happiness and a picture of them hugging with #loyalty  beside it does (when they are most likely quite drunk ) does not even tell a fraction of the story. Last week he said she was the most verbally abusive person he still spoke to. And despite all this, I instantly plunged into a “why even bother” kind of mood. And yes, this comes on the heels of about six other horrible things she’s said or done to/near me in the past week and maybe because of that, it suddenly clicked:

I’m afraid to go out on my own because she has this hold on me – one that is part of my diagnosis. 
And on some level she knows this.

I mean, my husband has probably said a similar version of this about a hundred times but my recent conversations with my friend in California reminded me that I have a hard time putting my needs first in relationships. I put my work before my health. I put my parents’ needs before my own. And I put my loyalty to my boss before my own professional goals. And it has to stop. I need an anti-inflammatory STAT. Because have you seen my resting pulse rate? Yikes.