By Mary Stathos

i think that i am trying so hard but things aren’t getting better.

i don’t know how to accept that things getting better means that they will be different than they were before.

maybe things are getting better. maybe i am having fun.

the people who used to love me are going to love other people. i just want them to love me. i just want to be good enough for them. 

i hate you for not thinking i am good enough. please stop thinking i am not good enough. i would do anything to be good enough. please don’t leave me. i love you so much. i love everyone so much. why are you such an asshole? why is everyone such an asshole?

a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation 

i don’t know how to accept that people are going to change. i want everything to stay the same forever.

my therapist says that i don’t know how to get angry the right way because my dad made me afraid of being angry. i still don’t know how it is supposed to feel. 

i don’t know what i look like. it feels like a surprise every time i look in the mirror or open my front camera. 

i don’t even think i look bad i just don’t even know what to expect. 

identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self 

i am sitting in my bed by myself. i haven’t left my house except for going to therapy in three days. i have watched three seasons of criminal minds and eaten two boxes of eggo waffles. 

i dyed my hair three times this month. 

the last time i hung out with a boy he asked me why i couldn’t just be normal for a second. he was joking but i wonder that too when i am not joking.

my therapist asks me every week to practice describing myself and my interests, what i am good at. 

i am getting better at it now. not that good though.

chronic feelings of emptiness 

how do you know if you’re doing the right thing?

when people don’t text me back it feels like i am going to die.

i just want everybody to care about me. i don’t know why i am not good enough for people to love me. 

how do you stop yourself from sending the people you love angry texts while you are crying in your car? how do you stop avoiding going home because you don’t want to be alone anymore?

how do you keep everyone you have ever loved from ever leaving?

frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. (note: do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in criterion 5.) 

i don’t need a reminder on my phone to take my medicine, i just take it when i start wanting to die again. every six hours. it’s like clockwork. 

sometimes i set my alarm early just so that i can take my medicine and fall back asleep so that it can start working by the time i get up.

i went to the hospital because it felt like nobody loved me. 

one night i gave myself a stick and poke tattoo on my leg that says hard to kill. i thought it would help me stop wanting to die. i think it looks terrible. 

recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior 

i am either feeling everything or nothing. it takes maybe thirty seconds for me to calm down after things stop feeling so bad but when they are bad it feels like they will be bad forever.

sometimes i think i would rather feel bad forever so that i don’t have to feel guilty about the things i say to people when i was upset. 

i don’t know what makes me a good person. 

the only good part of my personality is really just that i love my cats, the rest of it is pretty bad.

when i am sad it is like the regular part of my brain turns off and i forget about everything that has ever made me happy. the same thing happens when i feel good. i wish i could just keep that on all the time.

affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days) 

i am trying so hard. why do i still feel so bad?

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