the basic nature of a man is constructive, faithful, and trustworthy

If you have been following this blog, you will know that, over the past few years, circumstances, and my own stubborn nature, converged with my incipient depression to create a weird and unsustainable view of life for me.  Not only that, I was also suffering from vicious, undiagnosed, and untreated Borderline Personality Disorder, (BPD), and that blessed me with paranoia and a morbid fear of abandonment.

Add those things together and what happened was that I became an agoraphobic, anti-social, celibate, friendless, psychotic recluse.

My door stayed locked, I seldom left my apartment, I avoided meeting people, the telephone remained unanswered, and I deleted unread any emails I received.  Quite honestly, I may as well have been dead as to live that kind of non-life.

It took years, and I do mean years, for me to begin to break out of my self-made prison.

My escape started because I like to write, I wasn’t writing anything, and so I went to a writers’ group, met a few people, and even spoke to them without my being stabbed, attacked, denigrated…..  And then I started to write this blog ~ and trust me to begin with it was terrible.  Yet, an amazingly articulate woman in California found something that she liked in the way I wrote.  And, as things happen, we became long-distance, online friends.

Those of you who have been in a long-distance relationship will know that it’s fraught with problems, and my friendship with this cool Californian woman is probably no better or worse than most relationships that started on-line.  As you would expect from a guy with Borderline Personality Disorder in their background, I became obsessed with her, had unrealistic expectations, and did stupidly impulsive things.  I was not constructive, reliable, nor trustworthy.  None of that was helpful.

My good fortune is that I spent some time with a therapist, my doctor, and a psychiatrist.  The general consensus of their opinion was that I had been suffering from BPD, but I was mostly recovered ~ at the time that was all news to me, (I even had to look up what the hell Borderline Personality Disorder was).

But, if I was mostly recovered I could start to live my life the way I wanted, and not the way a serious mental illness was telling me to exist.

Ergo, I am on a journey of self-awareness, self-discovery, self-development, and self-improvement.  Now I mostly say and do what I think is right, and those that don’t like it can just feck off and have a nice day, and please don’t keep in touch.  That new and more assertively honest attitude of mine has ruffled a few feathers ~ but I’m never going back to being that agoraphobic, anti-social, celibate, friendless, obsessive, psychotic recluse.

Maybe I need to find some new friends, and maybe I’ll be alone again for a while.

Some say that a friend in need is a friend indeed.  And that you should choose your friends wisely.  All I know is that I’d rather be alone than have fair-weather friends.

~

jack collier

jackcollier7@talktalk.net

at least I have a friend in Marmaduke

and he’s always ready for anything