Living on the Border

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By Lucy

Sometimes I’m alive. I exist and I breathe and go about my daily life just like everybody else. I’m “normal”, whatever that is. I can go to work and do everything that I need to do, I feel empowered, and I exude confidence. I laugh and it’s genuine, full-hearted, deep-bellied laughter until such point that my lungs give out and I’m choking. I’m happy, but even so, constantly on edge that I know it won’t last. Because it doesn’t. I’m on the border…

All changes

I get anxious. Paranoid. I talk to myself. Voices shout at me, telling me that everything I know is wrong. I tremble viciously, I pick any ridge of skin that I can find and I stumble over every single word that comes out of my mouth. Every time my fiancé’s phone vibrates, I just know that it’s the new girl he is speaking to because he wants out but is too scared to tell me. Nothing is wrong but nothing is right, and my brain fills up with this thick, muggy fog that refuses to be broken through until it’s ready to clear.

Then there’s the mania.

Happy?

High. People just think I’m hyperactive – they’ll join in as if it’s some game, laughing when I laugh; laughing at the self-deprecating jokes because how else do you react? They pass it off as me being happy because there’s no need to worry. This girl is smiling, so obviously she’s just on cloud nine and deliriously happy! I become obsessive and impulsive.

Imagine having a budget plan, making sure you have money aside for every bill that you have. But then you see a really cute dress, and if you don’t buy it now (even though the money technically doesn’t exist) then it will obviously sell out within ten minutes.

The dark cloud

Low. My fiancé picks up on it straight away and then it makes me anxious that he doesn’t want to be with me anymore because he’s sick of having to manage my mood when I can’t. I get depressed, dangerously and stupidly depressed. To the point that even driving to work becomes scary because there’s theoretically nothing to stop me from driving head-first into a wall. I sit quietly no matter where I am. It feels like a literal dark cloud is looming over me, where no matter how much I try to shine through, I’m stuck in the shade until this mental storm passes.

Even on the days that I’m “fine”, there’ll be a passing reminder that I’m on the border – this is who you are, you’re stuck like this. A fleeting memory of when the mental health specialist told me there is no cure for this disorder, that you just have to simply have to learn to live with it.