About being stuck in the past. Again.

It seems that the overall theme to my life right now seems to be "being stuck in the past". Or maybe being constantly caught up by my own past, or limited by it. And by my past I specifically mean the fact that I have been through many years which were dark and troublesome. I had my first depression at 10, I lost my mum at 12 and moved on my own at 15. My depressions and anxiety haunted me all through my teens, finally culminating in me being admitted to a psychiatric emergency ward at 22. After that I spent 3 months living at a psychiatric institution and was diagnosed with one and half personality disorder (Borderliner PD and Avoidant PD). I was in therapy for a long while, and was given medication that worked. I've come a long way since then, from a girl who could barely get out of bed every day to being in school studying to becoma nurse. But.

I'm in therapy these days, which might be why I feel so haunted by it right now. But it just keeps cropping up everywhere. As I've mentioned before we are writing essays in school, and all three of them has very much touched on very personal aspects of my past.

Most of my family are also evidently very stuck in my past. They have never been the best at giving me acknowledgement for the good things I do, or even to focus at the positive at all, or let me know if they were proud of me. They might notice the positive things I do, but they very rarely say it to me directly. But they are good at pointing out and focusing on the negative. If I don't answer the phone I must be dead - because of my past. If I postpone an internship to give myself some time to get through losing my soul brother, I must be depressed and headed for the institution again. It couldn't be a rational and wise decision based on the fact that I was emotionally worn out and grieving, and so I needed not to force myself through an internship that to me is very intense and demanding simply because I wanted to avoid hitting the wall and getting completely burned out. No, no. It had to be a sign of me giving up, of failing. Again.

Lastly, I've applied for some jobs lately. Partly because I know I won't get an internship spot this semester because they don't have one to offer me, so I will have fuck-all to do between October 15th and whenever school starts up again next semester in January. And partly because I want more work experience. A lot of students have a part-time job in addition to school, mainly because they have to to make it financially. Student funding and loan in this country isn't enough to get you through University if you live on your own. I'm lucky, I'm on rehabilitation money from the government and therefore am a lot better of financially than most students, so I haven't needed an extra job. But that hasn't been the main reason for not working - I haven't worked out of consideration for myself. School can periodically (like now) be a very rough thing, at times there's a lot going on with exams, lectures or essays, and at other times we have internships which I will claim are a lot more intense than having a full time job, and I know just about every student at my school will agree with me on this. And I know myself pretty well, after years of therapy and analysing my own personality. I need time on my own, to a greater extent than others. And I know that I spend a lot of my energy just maintaining an everyday routine, having to motivate and argue and coax myself into doing the things other people find easy or do automatically. "Emily, do your laundry. Do your dishes. Make a proper dinner. Get a workout done. Brush your teeth. Keep in touch with your friends. Pay your bills. Say yes and go to that party, you need to be social every now and then." Its just who I am, it's a result of my personality disorders, of years and years of isolating myself and not functioning properly. Basically I'm still working on learning how to do the things other people have known how to do since they were 18. And thats why I haven't gotten a job; between trying to get through school and managing my own everyday life (and mental state), I was worried a job would just be too much. Overload. Too many balls in the air. So I have been reluctant to take that risk. But this week I found a few classifieds about small weekend positions suitable for nurses or nurse students. The positions are at Sanderud, a large psychiatric institution about 30 minutes from me. They deal with all kinds of psychiatry; psychosis, drug-related, geriatric psychiatry, you name it. But here comes the past and kicks me in the teeth again; I was admitted to that hospital. Just for 6 days, in an emergency ward, until I was transferred to the long-term institution where I lived. And they might have policies against hiring former patients. And even if they don't, the people hiring might have some serious issues with hiring someone like me. Of course, having been a psychiatric patient yourself can be seen as an advantage in a job like that, at least I do; I've been in their shoes, in a similar situation, I have some insights and experiences that most people don't and therefore can show some genuine compassion and understanding. But they can also view me as a liability, an unstable person. Or they might just simply be prohibited from hiring me due to policies or guidelines.

The thing is, I value my past. Most of it was absolutely shite and parts of me wish I never had to go through all the crap I have. But I know that it has a huge part in making me who I am, for better or for worse. And I truly believe most of it is for the better. I have learned so much, about communication, about how people work, how life works, and how I work. It's made me wiser, better at giving advice, more compassionate and it's given me a lot of invaluable experiences. If I didn't have that past I probably would have been a much shallower person. So I can see the positive side of it. I just wish other people would too.

“We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it’s our job to invent something better.”
- Chuck Palahniuk.


“When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours?” - Franz Kafka

About writing a paper

The near week that has past since last time I blogged has been a rough one, at least emotionally.

In school we are currently writing these essays. We are supposed to write three in total, and on mid-october they will randomly pick out one of the three to be handed in as a major exam. Each paper is supposed to be around 3500 words, and we are given a specific patient situation/case and a "problem" we have to answer for each of them. I'm finished with two ; the first was on general psychology and the 2nd was on "overall rehabilitation". It's funny how I've drawn on just as much personal experience as nurse literature in writing these papers - I've been an admittet psychiatric patient and I've been in rehabilitation, a lot of the aspects we've been lectured on or read about, I have experienced. "I've been there, maaaaan". Some times it feels very paradoxical, before I was on the other side, I was the patient. Now I'm supposed to be the helper, the one with the answers, the knowledge, the provider of help and support.

This monday we were given the patient case and problem for this last paper, and this one hit particularly close to home. I've been dreading it ever since the semester started, because I knew the topic of this last essay was going to be "care for the dying patient". And to make it even worse the case had to be about a terminal cancer patient. It's already been 10 months since I sat by Mats deathbed, but its very much something I struggle with every day, and why I am in therapy again. In many ways I struggle more with it now than I did in the first few months after. And now I have to sit here and write an essay where I have to describe the illness they call cancer, its symptoms, why it kills, I have to write about pain and pain management, what the term "palliative care" entails and describe all its aspects. When I was with Mats I was a next-of-kin so to speak, I was as close and personal to the situation as humanly possible, but now I should try to look at palliative care with professional nurse-goggles. Of course I will meet dying patients, and cancer patients, in my work as a nurse in the future, I have to learn to deal with it. And I have the dubious advantage of having had personal experience with it, giving me invaluable insights into a very difficult subject. These are all things I could try to take comfort in, things that could make writing this essay easier. But it doesn't. Every time I sit down with this essay, Mats is constantly on my mind. Or, more specifically, my last weeks and days with him - I relive them over and over, the emotions I had, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the mood.

To top it all of they've made the "problem" for this essay as wide and general as they possibly could. I could probably have written a doctorate based on the case and that problem. So I have to narrow in the paper, leave things out, and I still haven't quite managed to figure out what. All aspects affect each other, and to me they all seem as important; the physical, the emotional, the social, the spiritual. And I have a lot to talk about on this subject, a lot of thoughts and opinions. Oh well. I'll get through it. It's just making my life very hard right now.

About never letting the past go.

My brother and I had what you might call an encounter yesterday. You would think we had grown out of that sort of thing, me being 26 and him 38. Maybe some siblings will be eternally different and never will. Anyway.

In short the situation boiled down to that I was asleep and my phone on silent (at 7pm, which admittedly is an odd time to be asleep). My brother had an iPod charger cable that he wanted to give to me, and he was driving past the town where I study. Suddenly I'm woken up by someone banging on the front door, and my dog goes bananas. Before I get time to get clothes on the banging continues on the frigging windows, first at my bedroom, then my livingroom. Was someone dying? Was the earth collapsing? No, he just wanted to give me that cable. Jeez. "I've tried calling you three times!" Well it was on silent, and there was a reason for that - I was sleeping!

Yes yes, he was just doing me a favor, wanting to be nice and handing me a cable I'd forgotten in my home town, even I can see that. But the niceness kind of vanishes in the fact that he seemed prepared to bloody tear down my house to get to me. I would have surived without that cable. No one was dying, no crisis was happening. I just had the audacity to not answer my phone, because it was on silent and I was comatosed. If I had rung his doorbell, banged on his windows and then shouted angrily at him for NOT answering his silent phone when he was asleep, he would've been slightly cross as well.

But here comes my point - whenever I bring up the argument of not having heard my phone, they bring up the "but we were worried, something might've happened!"-argument. Geez louise, what did people do before mobile phones I wonder? And then it really comes - "well, considering your history..." Ah, there we have it. I'm crazy. So god knows what I might get up to! I might decide to carve an intricate pattern into my lower arm with a sharp knife, or swing by my neck from a rope? Ugh, I never even tried to commit a serious suicide attempt when I was at my absolute worst mentally, for chrissake. I've come one hell of a long way in the past 4-5 years. But apparently I'm the only one who can see that. How about showing me some fucking respect, giving me some credit and even more importantly, show me some actual trust? Trust in the fact that I have the capability of doing something with my situation before it gets so bad that I'll fancy ending my life, that I'm more stable and predictable than I was 5 years ago. "So, is my history going to follow me and haunt me forever, then?" I asked my sister. "Yes." Too bad. I just won't accept that.

I understand that I have been sick, that I probably was a huge burden and source of endless worry and frustration back when I was really sick. But that doesn't give you the right to use that against me any more. All I am trying to do it put the past behind me, all my wrongs and mistakes, and live my life as best I can. But you can't seem to forget the past, so how am I supposed to?

About the cure for the common cold

Yes, I'm still here and alive, to the great disappointment of some of you, apparently. Anyway.

I've just had the manflu, transmitted to me via internet courtesy of Wulfy, or at least that's what I suspect. Now, so far no one has managed to cure this ailment also known as the common cold, because the cold is a virus. And viruses (virae? viral infections?) are notoriously impossible to kill for reasons I could explain to you in intricate detail, but I won't because it'll bore the pants off you, and I wouldn't want to do that (well I would want to bore the pants off some of you but that's another story).

(By the way, fun fact about the cold! When you have a cold lots of little cold-virus-particles hang out in your sinuses. A virus particle then injects part of itself into one of your own cells, whose normal job it is to be for example skin or musocal tissue or cilia. This poor cell gets mindcontrolled to stop being whatever it is and to start producing new virus particles instead. It continues to do so until it gets so full it explodes, destroying the cell and all the new virus clones spread out to the surrounding cells. So that whole thing of having a stuffy nose, feeling like your whole head consist of phlegm that keeps dribbling out your nose? Yup, snot is basically blown up bits of cells and virus trickling out the only way it can. But, I digress.)

Now, the cure! I tried running 18 minutes on that elliptical thing, thinking logically that evil might chase off evil, but that didn't work. So the next day was spent moping in bed. But then I made a smoothie and et voila - it's gone! So here's the cure:

• A handful of tropical fruit mix
• Some raspberries/strawberries
• A dash of rice milk
• A splash of orange juice
• A few drops of lemon juice
• A pinch of cinnamon (no really)
• And a tablespoon of flax seed oil (oddly accurate, that one)

Mix/crush with a blender of some description, and nom. If you have a sore throat use frozen fruits and you'll have a lovely icy slush to soothe the throat as well.

Also - eat spirulina. It's literally the most nutritious food known to man, and don't be discouraged by the fact that it's a blue-green algae because it comes in pill form. Consists of 60% complete protein (compared to beef or chicken at 25%), complete meaning that it contains all eight essential amino acids (and 10 other non-essential ones). It's also rich in Omega 3, 6 and 9, it's the highest know source of vitamin B12 and beta-carotene and provides other nutrients such as vitamins E, other Bs and minerals like calcium, iron, phosphorus, iodine, magnesium, zinc, selenium, copper, chromium and potassium. It also has chrolophyll, other phytoutrients and powerful antioxidants. And to top it all of this microscopic life form doesn't have the usual tough cell walls found in normal plant life, making it very easy to digest and absorb. There's a reason it's called a "superfood".

About exercising.

As I'm already on the object of body glorification (or rather the opposite), I might as well stay on the subject. Because for as long as I have had issues with my weight, I've also had a wish to get more exercise in. "Wish" might be the wrong term, come to think of it. More lik "it's been hanging over me like some cloud of doom", one of those eternal demands you put upon yourself but never seem to get around to fulfil. "I should work out more. I should eat healthier. I should stop smoking." And I should exercise more. Not just because I want there to be less of me, but also because it makes me feel better. I get more energy, more focus, I feel less heavy, is reduces stress hormones, makes me sleep better and can lower my blood pressure.

So what's the problem? Well, for one I am incredibly lazy. My mum claimed that I was born tired; I came out, yawned and went to sleep. And that's pretty much how it carried on. As a baby I was so docile and apathetic my aunt has in later years admitted to thinking there was something seriously wrong with me. "All you did was just.. lie there, and look around at things!"


I have succeeded in exercising, occasionally, but only for a limited period of time. Growing up I tried a lot of different sports, if this was of my own volition or me caving in from parental pressure I can't remember. I swam for many years, I even have a prize or two proudly displayed on my piano (they're basically glorified drinking glasses, and my sister used them as shot-glasses at a party once...). I did Tae Kwon Do for a year or two, and I loved that form of exercising, but when all my friends quit of course I did too. I had some feeble attempts at handball and football, but soon realised that having astigmatism ("optical defect in which... oh, google it.) made me practically incapable of catching a ball with my hands, or hitting a ball with my feet. Astigmatism should be the term for "always getting hit in the head with the ball". Plus, I'm just not a "team" kind of person. I had a summer I did nothing but cycle - everywhere, miles and miles every day. Until I got so tired of it I wanted to chop my bicycle to bits. The year I went to "folk high school" I was very active - but it's easy to be when you live on campus and people knock on your door every day asking if you want to come work out, and the gym + swimming pool is in the neighboring house.

I guess that's my other problem, besides my inherent laziness - lack of motivation. I can be so good for a period, if I am working towards something, like looking good for a holiday or an event. But if I hit a rough spot, get depressed, get extra work at school or have a heavy internship, I just.. fail. I also have a slight impulse defect, being I give in to them way too easily, and the impulse so skip the workout and remain seated tends to win quite often.

The key to getting exercise done is finding a form of workout that you like. Said my therapist. I couldn't agree more. He promptly suggested youthful stuff like pilates, aerobics and zumba. This is where my illustration for this blog post comes in. Because that is how I feel in those sort of classes; like a hippo in a tutu. A huffing, puffing, sweating, red-faced one. Seeing all the other slim, happy, fit people bounce around me like they were made of air is very demotivating. And those manicly perky instructors always inspire so much hatred in me you could bottle it. The sheer idea of going into a gym is in general a very icky thought. I know they are there for people to get into shape and start a better life, but have you noticed that when you go there everyone seem to be in perfect shape already?

I would've loved to start doing Tae Kwon Do again. But I tried that a year and a half ago, and learned the hard way that I have exertion asthma on top of everything else. TKD is just too hard and brutal for me, I need to get myself into better shape first. And gyms are, in addition to being icky, very expensive around here. I could always swim, but that's not cheap either. My neighbors have an ellipse machine that they never use anymore, it just gathered dust and took up space in their living room so they asked if I wanted to borrow it. So I said yes. It's the least horrific of those kinds of machines - treadmills, step machines, cycles.... This way I can workout at home, whenever I want. I can be as pissy and angry and moody as I want, I can listen to loud music and yell at myself or the wall and sweat without grossing anyone out. And to be honest, sometimes getting a workout done really is that much of a challenge. Sometimes I get so frustrated at how tiring it is, how uncomfortable everything is, the poor shape I'm in, that I end up in tears. Or throw things around in a tantrum. Maybe I'm fighting some of my demons, who knows. But I will at least try to get it done. I started out with 12 minutes, upped it to 15 now, the goal is to reach 20 within october and then up it to 30.

Wish me luck. Or kick me in the backside. I need both.

About weight.

My body is my arch enemy. It's badly constructed, things keep getting broken and it keeps malfunctioning.

First of all I'm short, but no one informed my back about that. So, I ended up with the back of a person who is about 180cm tall. While I in reality only measure in at 154. On a good day. After 8 hours of sleep. As a result my body consist of about 75% upper body. Which surely isn't the right porportions.

My body was also designed with a funky feature called PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. Say that 10 times after half a bottle of whisky, I dare you!) This is a medical condition that, without going into too much detail, messes with my ovaries somewhat. The result is a hormone imbalance which comes with an array of delightful sideeffects. Thin hair, thin skin that scars easily, striae (stretchmarks) and depressions to mention a few. But the real kicker is the overweight. And it's not normal, everyday "oh I'm a bit too pudgy and should lay off the cinnamon buns" kind of overweight. It's the kind that makes me gain a pound by just thinking of pasta, or indeed anything else that might contain carbohydrates. And, in stead of all the adipose tissue being distributed evenly over this poor excuse for a body, it all gathers in the middle. Causing me to look like I am four months pregnant. Or like I really, really, really love beer. Oh,and it gives me a hump. Yup, like The Hunchback. Lovely condition, this PCOS, isn't it?

There isn't much I can do about this. Ironically the only cure for PCOS is to lose weight. And losing weight is three times as hard for someone who has it. The hormone imbalance causes us to have a quite apallingly bad metabolism, and we are nearly "allergic" to sugar and carbohydrates. We just can't handle our glucose, and we handle fluctuations in our bloodsugar levels as bad as a diabetic. But as they go into insulin shock, we just get fat and cranky.

I've been grieving over my body and my weight for many years now. I've always felt fat, but looking at photos from when I was 20-25 kilos lighter Ican't help but think "seriously, what had I smoked?" I looked perfectly fine. Now I weigh an horrific 84 kilos, which is 25-30 too much. I feel, to varying degrees, very uncomfortable in my body, when I am out and about I feel... just wrong. I look at myself in the mirror and sometimes I can't help but think "Who are you? This isn't me. This isn't who I am, no on the inside."

And it's not just my vanity that makes me hate the extra weight. My mother was overweight, and being on cortisone for her asthma most of her life just made it worse. She died of a heart failure at 45. My brother had two (small, but still!) heart attacks at 30. Clearly people in our family aren't constructed with the best of tickers, quality wise, and being overweight isn't going to prolong my heart's life span (or, as a result, my life span). "They" say that the tummy fat is the most dangerous kind, but then again "they" say a lot of things. Discovering that I had a high bloodpressure that needed medicating at 25, and heart arrythmias, didn't exactly soothe my nerves.

And honestly, I'm tired of being heavy. Of feeling awkward and uncomfortable. Sick of sucking my gut in. Sick of having no energy, of hating clothes because nothing ever looks good on me, of hating on skinny girls who can stuff their face with whatever they want. And I'm so. tired. of. obsessing. about. food. I've changed my diet a lot over the last year, eliminating a lot of carbohydrates and dairy out of my diet. Now I eat mostly proteins, meats, eggs, I have a home-made high-protein granola, I make berry or fruit smoothies with rice milk. And I've added things like coconut oil, flax seed oil, lots of cinnamon and spirulina tablets (yay for superfoods!) I feel better for it, I have more energy, my blood sugar is stabilized somewhat, and I am a lot less sick. But I'm not losing weight.

My extra kilos get unfairly blamed for a lot of things, probably. Somehow my overweight is in my mind inevitably linked to me being a miserable, lonely wanker. For some reason I have some notion of life being so much easier, simpler, happier, if I had just been designed a bit differently. Take away 20 kilos and a pregnant beerbelly and I'd be happier, healthier, have more friends, everything would've been perfect. And I would definitely have had a boyfriend.

Which is probably a very unfair way of thinking about boys. And people in general. Because I really want to believe that people aren't that shallow. I should give people more credit. I want to believe that my weight has nothing to do with how many guys talk to me out at the pub, or how many friends I have, or whether or not that person I have so much in common with and love talking to, would fall for me. But evidently people are shallow.

In some ways I have to believe that. Because I can't face the other alternative. If I'm miserable, reclusive, lonely and single because people simply just don't like me, that it really all comes down to my personality and it's completely unrelated to my beergut... I can't deal with it.

I can't be fat and have a horrible personality. Life just can't be that cruel.

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
- Charles Bukowski

This poem touched me in an incredible, profound way. Maybe even more so because I saw it read by Tom Waits. Sometimes I can't help but hear songs, or poems, words in general, and feel like they concern me more than others. Like I was meant to hear them, and take them to heart.


I must admit, I'm not much of a poetry reader. I do have my favorites, like old Haféz-poems or poems written by one of my absolute favorite Norwegian writers Lars Saabye Christensen. I should read more poetry.

About finding the meaning

The meaning of life is supposed to be one of the great riddles of human kind. You know. The question. What does it all mean? Why are we here? Whats the meaning of life, the universe and everything? Many have tried to come up with an answer, and so far "42" is as good a guess as anyones.

You know what? I've figured it out. What the meaning of life is.

The meaning of life is to find meaning in it - any way you possibly can. What gives a human a sense of meaning in their life is probably as varied and diverse as human kind itself.

For me life has meaning when I learning new things. And when I can pass on what I know, what I've learned and experienced, to others. The meaning of life is to see new places, meet new people, to laugh, to simply be, as much and as happily as you can manage. The meaning of life is making a difference in someone elses life, however big or small that difference is. But most important of all, the meaning of life is love. As simple as that. Finding someone who loves you for you, for everything you are, someone who is safe, someone who feels like you're home, like you are right where you're supposed to be.

See? I've figured out the meaning of life. At least, the meaning of my life.

Weekly recap #1

In short: Not the best of weeks.

Monday I had an appointment with a study coordinator at school, and set up a plan for how I will finish this bachelor degree, seeing as I am "behind" on my internships. According to the plan I'll be finished with everything by summer 2013, exactly one year "late". I'm glad it won't take longer, but the thought of two internships in one semester next year is very daunting. I just hope I can hang in there and get through it.

Also got a mail from the student organization, who owns and rents out the house my apartment is in as well as the neighboring house. They'd been "made aware of me keeping a dog", and requested an application asking for permission to keep one. I've only had her here for two years already, so god knows who suddenly has objected to it now. Worst case scenario is they kick me out on my arse, or make me get rid of her.

Monday night I went to this choir practice, having been told that I had to do a singing test and that this was just "a formality". So imagine my surprise when I was basically tossed out of there after 10 minutes. I'd actually looked forward to join a choir, all though my experiences with it has been very limited I've really like doing it when I've had the chance. Apparently they had way too many "alts", which is the darkest of the female singing voices, and had no room for me. My chronically poor and tested self-confidence can't help but think that I sing so horribly they couldn't imagine having me in the choir.

Wednesday was one of those mandatory school days where we were divided into groups and had various workshops around our current theme "rehabilitation and people's health". I didn't particularly like the one where they forced us down into the gymnasium with some overly-perky, energetic instructor to do various strengthening exercises for 20 minutes. In everyday clothes. Not only am I in appallingly bad shape and weigh as much as your average manatee, but I also have a problem with er... perspiration. (Too much info, yeah yeah) It's mainly a horrible side effect to some medication I am on. Utterly humiliating. And I'm still sore.

Our current school assignment is this 3500 word long paper on "overall rehabilitation". We have a patient case and a "problem" to work from. This is the fourth one we are writing of these types of assignment, and it's not as daunting anymore. Having been in the governmental "system" of rehabilitation for many years I'm familiar with it and definitely have some views on how a patient should be met and treated, and some views on how to rehabilitate "the whole person". It's strange how I seem to draw as much experience from my personal life as I draw from my actual lectures and literature in this education. Our next paper will be on "palliative care", or "care for the dying patient". Yeah, yet another subject where I have more than enough personal experience to take from. Not particularly looking forward to that one.

And to top it all - the Dr Martens I ordered yesterday which I was so psyched about turned out not to be in stock after all and the order was cancelled. So much for trying to cheer myself up.

About socializing

Here's something I probably shouldn't admit, but will anyway:

Being social is hard.

It can be exhausting, it wears me out and can make me paranoid and nervous. To varying degrees, I will admit; there are certain times or in groups where being social is easier and less stressful than other times, it all depends on how well I know the people surrounding me. Or maybe it depends even more on how well they know, understand and accept me, how much we have in common, if we share the same humor and how much alcohol is in my bloodlevel (this last one is a particularly sad but true fact).

The reasons for this are many and probably complex and deeply psychological. Maybe it is because I have somewhat unusual interests. Or maybe everyone has, they're just better at hiding them and acting normal. Maybe people are just better at smalltalk than me, I'm bad at hiding when smalltalk bores me, at that point I just sign out of the conversation. I'm not the girl you'll choose foor a night of drinking alcopops while chatting about which fake tan works best and share mean gossip about the other girls at school. If you fancy a Dr Who marathon, or a game of Risk, or need someone to watch that Tom Waits live DVD with over an unknown amount of beers, or a pyjama-party in your "killer-rabbit" slippers while we make oreo cheesecake and I dye my hair purple, I'm your girl. It's just who I am, being "different" is part of my personality, but sometimes I really wish I could just be... plain and normal. Fit in. Have long blonde hair and be fashionable and host Tupperware parties. Maybe I'm not even being different, I'm just... specialized and specific.

My biggest problem is that I just don't know about people. I never know where I stand with them. I don't understand them. I always wonder what they say behind my back. It sounds paranoid, but after a few sudden, metaphorical punches to the face that I didn't see coming in the last few years, this paranoia has just grown. In fairness it can't be worse than the shit I keep telling myself, but getting it from someone else is always that little bit worse because it just confirms the suspicions you already have about yourself. This is probably mostly true about girls, because in general they tend to be conspiratory and sneaky and sometimes just flat out mean, cold bitches. Boys tend to have a more direct approach, more honest (and sometimes more violent), but at least you know where you stand; a few real punches, not the metaphorical ones, and you either make up or you try your best to avoid each other for eternity. I prefer the direct approach.

So I tend to keep to myself. Because it's more comfortable for me, but also because I can't help but think that it's best that I spare everyone else my odd company. I read an article once about people having "social sensitivity", and I fall into that category. Some people just are like that, and years of being depressed and isolating myself has made me used to having a lot of "me-time". Despite this I often feel lonely, and wish I was more social. Or, that being social was easier, that I had more good social times, and less of the stressful ones. But I would chose staying home alone over having a bad time in some social setting.

Who knows, maybe I wouldn't have been this way without internet. Because on this computer, I socialize all day, and being able to talk to my friends online probably fulfills the little need for socializing that I have. Talking to someone online entales less commitment, somehow, less severity. Online I can adjust how much I talk to people, and when, and finding people with mutual interests and hobbies is much easier. People are often more honest online as well, more direct, more open about who they are, what they're all about, and that way you can find out whether or not you can get along with that person a lot quicker than in real life. And to be honest, just about everyone I would count as my true friends today, bar a person or two, are people I "met" online. Most of them I have met in real life on one or more occasions, and spending time with them is always a lot less stressful than being with everyone else.

I do like people. I like that we are so diverse, so different and unpredictable and strange. But that is also what makes it so scary for me to relate to them. It's not your fault, it's probably all down to my own attitude towards myself and the people around me. Just... don't give up on me. I'll come around.

About being a snotball

For someone who is ridiculously prone to colds, flus and infections in all concievable forms, I have been blissfully free from them for a record breaking time lately. In fact I don't think I've even had so much as a cold since November 2010 when Mats passed. It's probably my change of diet that gets the credit for that. Smoothies, good fatty acids, proteins, lots of antioxidants and very little carbohydrates. Sugar is the devil, I tell ya.

Now, cue the irony of life. I'm supposed to attend my first choir practice today in a local choir. So naturally I've developed a cold that has reduced me to a phlegm-infested snotball with barbed wire for vocal chords. And I'm supposed to do a "singing test" as well, mostly just to determine what voice type I am (you know, soprano, mezzosoprano, contralt..). I know that I usually am a contralt, which is the deeper female voice, but with my throat being in the state it is I will either be thrown out on my arse, or stuffed with the guys in the rear singing bass.

FML.

About inspiration

This song was the inspiration for writing the last blog post.
I heard it in the car today on the iPod, not having heard it in years, and it struck a chord in me, no pun intended.

Magnet - Believe

Walking in with open eyes
Fingers crossed, throw the dice
Not enough room in here for compromise
Turning water into wine, or turning sober and left behind
One chance, out of my hands, and it all starts making sense

I’m gonna do this like I know what I’m doing
I’m gonna do this my own way
‘Cause I don’t know what I’m supposed to believe in
Might as well believe in me

I don’t need to see the light
I just want to get this right
Cool, calm, not alarmed, and not uptight
‘Cause I’ll remember to forget whatever it is I won’t get
I’m already a junkyard of ends that never ever met

I’m gonna do this like I know what I’m doing
I’m gonna do this my own way
‘Cause I don’t know what I’m supposed to believe in
Might as well believe in me

‘Cause I know on my part,
There’s no one else to blame
So when those hummingbirds start singing out my name
I’m due to pay my dues, I’ve nothing I can lose

I’m gonna do this like I know what I’m doing
I’m gonna do this my own way
‘Cause I don’t know what I’m supposed to believe in
Might as well believe in me

About believing in yourself

Hi, my name is Emily and I am a borderliner.

"Borderliner" means having borderline personality disorder (hereafter shortened to PD), also known as emotionally unstable PD. I was diagnosed with it at 22, and being so gave me a lot of answers about how I "work", what makes me think, react or feel the way I do, seemingly out of my control all of it. A few years of good therapy and finally finding medication that worked has made me a lot "better". That's the good part of it being diagnosed "early", you can work your way out of it, at least to some extent.

But I will never be miraculously cured, it'll never be completely gone. Having developed this PD has influenced my life and personality to such an extent that it will always be with me. And in some way I'm even thankful for it - having gone through this therapy has taught me so much about myself, my family, about social interaction, about roles, about human psychology, about life in general. It has also made me more aware of what goes on inside my head, given me more insight into myself - for better or worse I suppose.

Being a borderliner means hating yourself. Doubting yourself and your self worth, being convinced that everyone around you dislikes you, or if they by some miracle dont despise you they will leave you eventually when they get sick of you. All you can focus on are the things you can't do, your failures, your shortcomings, the things that went wrong. Every human has to deal with poor self-confidence to a lesser or greater extent, but borderliners pushes it to the extreme and turns self-destruction into a sport. And of course, all the things they think about themselves eventually becomes true. Because who can bear to be with someoen that self-destructive and depressed in the long run? Their excessive focus on all the things they fail to do becomes so prevalent they become unable to do anything at all. They lash out at people as a form of self-defense, and are impossible to relate to. And if they do let you in, let anyone come close, they hang on for dear life until they smother that person to death. An evil downward spiral, a self-fulfilling prophecy and a catch 22.

The fact that I am aware of these things in itself means that I have come a long way. Being mindful of your own destructive thoughts and how they do nothing but push you further down is one of the key aspects of having this PD that borderliners need to figure out. Because what good does it actually do anyone to beat yourself up that badly? It will never help you or motivate you to change your situation, it will never enable you to do the right thing, all it will is make you feel more depressed and worthless. The day you stop beating yourself up about all the things you didn't manage that day and in stead focus on having a new chance tomorrow, that is the day you start makign progress.

Now, I have become so much "better" that I started school. I've finished two years of my bachelor degree in nursing and just started my third and final year. But the fact that I am still at it, without failing an exam or without dropping out, is frankly a bleedin' miracle. One would think that a university where more or less all the teachers are nurses with many years working experience is the last place where you would hear phrases like "oh but you have a mental history, you can't be a nurse." And I have been told that. In many different ways. I was threatened to leave my first internship, otherwise they would fail me. "The patients have enough to cope with, they don't need your problems as well."

You could ask why on earth I decided to go into such a intense and social occupation where you get very close to people, when I probably have more than enough things to deal with on my own. And I'm not even going to argue, it's a valid point. But I have grown up around illness all my life - my mum had heavy asthma all her life that eventually took her life 13 years ago, I've been plagued with bad mental and physical health all my life, and my best friend whom I only got to know for 4 years had cancer three times. My mum was also very passionate about helping the weak ones in the society, she worked with mentally and physically disabled people and taught me from a very early age to have respect and compassion for people who are different in any way.

My most important argument for wanting to become a nurse is that I want to help people, because I find meaning in it. Being a nurse means that you can come into work when having a bad or just very boring day, and make a difference in someone elses life. I can make them feel better, heal them, help them, make someone smile, and when I do I forget about myself for a while, about my own troubles. It puts life in perspective and reminds me that my life has a meaning, that I am here for a reason.

Despite having had people reassuring me that I am a good person, having grateful patients who has told me I am a good nurse, the nagging doubt stays. Should I become a nurse? After my traumatic first internship, where I was basically told that I should find myself another occupation pronto and was told how unlikeable I was, that nagging doubt has always been there. When I started school I was "just" worried about whether or not I was going to make it through school, and I frankly didn't consider my own abilities. I've proved to myself that I can make it through school, but what about life after school? I don't have any ambitions (that word again..) of working full time, I honestly doubt that I will be able to, I need time to myself and social interactions can make me pretty exhausted, plus keeping general upkeep in my own head takes more time than it does for the "sane" person. But what if my personality disorder is so obvious and bad that I just can't do it.

People are generally better at seeing the limitations than seeing the possibilities in situations. And I absolutely hate how much this diagnose, with all it entales, have limited me. In an ideal world where I still had my mum and my best friend, and no history of depressions or mental problems, where could I have been, what would my life have been like? But there is a part of me that doesn't want to believe that this diagnose limits me. That just refuses to accept that fact. "Damn it, I can become a nurse and a damn good one," it says. I wholeheartedly believe that people who has been through rough times, depressions, personal loss and trauma, are better equipped to show genuine understanding and empathy. Some things you just can't learn through reading it in a book. And I also believe that those who have struggled, but who can put it behind them, or learn to live with it, and can find a way to use it for something good; those people become the best nurses. But will I be able to put it behind me, or at least learn to live with it?

I realise that I can be moody, and that I am very much an "individual", and can be viewed as an odd one. I have particular interests that aren't necessarily of the most feminine persuasion, I dress funny and I have my own opinions. And I don't expect everyone to love me, or even like me, because that will never happen. But the impression I got from my first internship was basically that I was a horribly unpleasant and unlikeable individual, to such an extent that I would never be a nurse. And the borderliner within me can't help but wonder if maybe they are right, and that I have a major blind spot where I thought I had some insight into myself and how people view me.

Keeping myself motivated, staying positive and believing in myself is hard in the best of times. Lacking a major support system makes it even harder - my family are practical realists who are a lot better at pointing out the limitations than seeing the beforementioned possibilities, and I don't have a pile of friends around me offering me support. (But, the few I do have are probably the ones keeping me going <3) Add in the fact that my own teachers and mentors at school as well as my case worker at the employment department are questioning my capability to be a nurse as well, and it becomes apparent that me still being in school is a miracle. Sometimes I think the only reason I'm still at it because I just can't face another failure, I just can't give up on something one more time. If I did it would be the death of me. And if I did, Mats would make lightning strike me down. Repeatedly. I have to finish this, so I can say that I have at least finished something.

There are probably as many opinions of what makes up a good nurse as there are nurses around - people value different traits and abilities differently. Nurses can have such a huge array of jobs, from psychiatry to geriatrics to working in an ambulance or behind a desk. The fact that it is so hard to define what makes up a good nurse, and that there are so many ways of performing this occupations, is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it is impossible to measure whether or not I am a good nurse through what feedback I get from other people, because what will get you praise and approval one place might get you trouble in another place. Some value efficiency and keeping the time schedule, some value good patient contact, some value good medical care. On the other hand, the fact that it is such a diverse occupation must mean that I will be able to do it in some form or another? And I just have to keep believing that somewhere out there is a place who will want me, a place where I could do a good job and make a difference in people's lives, despite my obvious limitations.

About a new start

I've been thinking about starting this whole proper blog-malarky up again for a while. Tumblr is great and all, but it's not the right arena for long wall of texts, and every now and then I have a huge rant in me that I need to get out. Plus, I miss writing.

I am painfully aware that I probably disclose too much information about myself when I talk to people. It makes people uncomfortable, I know that as well. They didn't ask for my life story. I can't tell you why I do it. Maybe I'm trying to get some sort of acknowledgment or attention or maybe I just want to be pitied, maybe all of the above. My story is a sad one, and sometimes I wonder if that's all, if that's everything I am and what makes me me - my story. If that's all I have to offer in this world.

So by blogging, my rants and ravings about what goes on in my mind will at least only go out to the few who actively came on this blog - if they come on here they asked for it. And maybe it'll make it easier to keep my mouth shut in the outside world.

I promise I won't just write about the sad things. And if I do I'll try to throw in the old joke here and there.