Putting it out there, bit by bit.

P,
As you well know, I am one painfully sensitive girl, especially when it comes to my relationships with my women friends. At this point in my life, I barely mourn old boyfriends, but I carry around mounds of guilt and sadness and melancholy for all of the girlfriends I have and love. I want to think of my friends with a cheerful heart, but mostly I feel like I'm going to have diarrhea and start crying. I constantly think I've burned bridges or haven't done the right thing or the enough thing-- not because my friends tell me so, but because I know I've been a hard friend sometimes and maybe someone or someones just don't love me anymore. A topic for therapy? Absolutely. This could be annoying, but I must. I need to just say a few things, not because I'm looking for a response, answer, or forgiveness. I just need to say them because I believe that one way to start being okay is to get it out of the head and onto the paper/screen/blog/pea.

• Precipitating event: I knew one of my friends is pregnant. Knew because friends sometimes just know these things. She's a great and fun blogger and today she posted sonograms and I am thrilled. But also, I am sad because I want to be the one who runs over when she finds out and holds her hair while she pukes. I'm sad because her son doesn't even know me. I'm sad because I think about her all the time and feel like I owe her so much. She has seen me at my craziest and never, ever gave up. We'll probably never live in the same city and I may really never do for her what she's done for me. I am jealous of her friends where she lives. By the way, the baby's a girl.
• When I left Wisconsin, I never said goodbye to the only woman who was my friend there. She tried and tried to contact me and I never picked up the phone. I've still not said goodbye. Or I'm sorry. Or that I cared for her as much as she cared for me. I don't know why.
• I'm jealous of my friends' spouses. Across the board, I've had trouble with this and still do. I love them all (really my friends pick 'em well) but I'm the one who needs to hear all the details and anxieties and reap all the love and attention.
• I miss spending time with my sister-in-law. I love my family, really, I do, but I miss her and OUR friendship. When we were recently together, I felt terribly sad when she left. So sad that I almost didn't even want to have seen her because then I wouldn't miss her so much.
• When you, my pea, moved away I couldn't call you. I still hate that I did that. I couldn't bear it. When you were studying for exams, I barely knew and you were in a hideous situation. One that maybe I could have helped. Forget about a particular pal of yours who I stewed over for years. When I was with you two, HAVING FUN, I was a puddle of sad and selfishness. The list goes on here. On and on.
• I recently had a weird confrontation with a friend here and, after resolution, she wanted to hug me and I wouldn't let her. I also wouldn't look her in the eyes. That there's some pretty crazytown behavior.
• I miss my Philly friend, badly. So badly. I am even a little tearful now as I think about her because I worry that she thinks I'm a drain, and sometimes I am. I don't send her postcards as much as I used to.

There are at least 5 more things I could write, but I'm wearing myself out. I'm considering writing an essay on art in "therapeutic writing"-- a "considering the 'outsider art' of therapeutic 'journaling' as a literary form" kind of thing. I don't know, just thinking. I'll leave you with a rather self-aware piece (which is surely more avoidance/excuse than anything else) from a French site on Personality Disorders):

Borderlines are born with an innate biological tendency to react more intensely to lower levels of stress than others and to take longer to recover. They peak "higher" emotionally with less provocation and take longer to come down

The patients are at a disadvantage in their relationships, unable to have"normal" human relationships. They sometimes give a misleading appearance to not feel the whole range of human emotions, in fact it would be rather than they feel too much

Since Borderline people are emotionally hypersensitive, imagine what the consequences of abandonment or heartache is like for them. It would seem that their way of dealing with abandonment varies with different patients - Some will be often very alone, undoubtedly because they try to avoid their emotions. "Best" way of being never abandoned. - Others will create a cocoon around themselves that includes for example a spouse or their parents.

And there you have it for today. Off to diagnose myself some more...

Love, p.