Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

A lot has changed. I realize full well that I have borderline personality disorder, but there has been another drastic identity change.

My mother and I had a talk after my last nice big nervous breakdown involving drugs, alcohol, bad grades, failed relationships, and general ennui regarding life, and she told me that I try to hard to make everyone else happy. Thus, I decided that I'm allowed to do whatever I want to do and that there is no impending doom that will happen if I fail or mess something up or don't make someone happy. Btw, yes, that is a very real thing when people with anxiety disorders tell you about it... you constantly feel as if there's something about to absolutely destroy/ruin/f**k up/torture/maim/break.... it's a sense of impending DOOM that is there all the time.

SO...

I'm withdrawing from school. I'm moving to Jackson for at least the summer. I'm going to work and sleep and be happy.

Then I'm going to write, like I've always wanted to do, like I've always put off because everyone told me I'd never make any money with it or get anything out of it. Even the nice people were like "Well you could always major in English and do technical writing..." NO! That's not what I want!

I realize that life is a balance between what you want and need, but goddamnit, if I'm considering jumping off buildings because I can never do what I want because I'm always worried about making everyone happy and proud of me and doing what I'm "supposed" to do... then what the f**k, pray tell, is the point? I'm sick of trying to please everyone.

My whole life seems to have been planned out for me. Every time there's a deviation from the plan, I feel like I've failed everyone and f**ked up everything. It took FOREVER to be okay with being gay because that was a huge screwup with the plan. I was supposed to be a straight, married, 2 children-having, God-fearing, sane, successful architect.

I AM a gay, single, childless, atheist, insane, unsuccessful dropout.

I ACCEPT THIS! No one else can! BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? They aren't me, and the only thing that matters at the end of it all is whether or not I did what I wanted to in life. I don't want to end up like everyone else I see around me; middle-aged or older, completely miserable, but still drudging through life and trying to convince themselves that they did the right thing while the regrets they have gnaw at their sanity.

Apparently a major part of the therapy for borderline people is radical acceptance, meaning TRUE acceptance. Not the acceptance as a path to change. Acceptance as accepting what you are, who you are, where you are, how you are, how your world is, everything. TRULY making yourself KNOW that it's okay to just BE.

Another major part is the movement toward synthesis. Think of an equilateral triangle with the third point at the top in the middle. The top point is synthesis. The bottom left is thesis, bottom right antithesis. The idea is that thesis and antithesis are opposing modalities, goals, paths, identities, whatever. It's a CHOICE, a decision. Borderline people get stuck between thesis and antithesis, always going from one extreme to the other in search of their definitive, validating choice. The idea is to break this cycle through radical acceptance and reach synthesis, or the merging of the thesis and antithesis to relieve cognitive dissonance.

So....

It's all okay.