Borderline
It’s not that I have nothing to say. I just have no motivation to say it. My mom and I found that word this week- motivation. I knew I was lacking something, but couldn’t find a word for it. I stare at blank pages in the journal I’m suppose to have ready for class and this anger comes over me. “I don’t have writer’s block” I jot down, “I have life block.” I know there are more precious subjects, but I can’t adequately write about what I care so little about. And I can’t write about that either, since apparently writing about yourself and your life are the lowest form of writing, right there next to comedy. I have to pretend I care and that’s all I’ve done lately, pretending. Pretending I have a life and am not lonely and am doing absolutely fine on my own, thank you. I try switching over to my reading assignment and I don’t get three sentences down the page before I feel the urge of throwing the book at the wall. The projection aimed to hit a lamp I bought just before my stay at Duke so many years ago. Ironically, it was summer writer’s workshop. I felt so much smarter then. I may have not understood music as well, I may not have been as emotional, fist pumping at a song that rightfully shouldn’t be fist pumped to, the tempo doesn’t warrant it. I didn’t feel music back then, just listened to it. And maybe not even listened. Now I listen to music and I feel like yelling. Yelling with the classical orchestral behind me. Then again, conductors do a sort of fist pumping, so perhaps it wouldn’t look as odd. My writing has always been a freewrite, but now nothing comes together. Just strings of sentences that may seem nice and have some meaning in their own right, but together have not much to do with each other, often contradicting my own inconceivable ideas, flipping from one subject to the next like channel surfing as fast as my fingers can click the broken buttons on this cable remote. It get thrown on the couch, barely missing the wall, and off I go to school, that place I’m always late for. Even if I’m early, I sit on the train and can’t think of anywhere else I want to be than under said train. It’s not that I hate the class, it’s probably one of the easiest I’ve ever been in. 101 English, c’mon, it’s a joke to be stressed out by this. Yet I feel as if I really don;t belong there. I have to sit through these classes where although I know the professor isn’t talking about me or directly to me but I’ll be damned if I get psychoanalyzed in a 101 English class. I sat up night after night, crying for reasons I wish I knew, tapping the box belonging to this Thursday on my calendar and wondering what if. What if I drop the one and only class I’m taking? The only thing keeping me here is the 500 bucks left over for my books, supplies and transportation that I refuse to give back to financial aid. It wouldn’t be such a hassle if I didn’t feel this way. If only I could shake the impending panic attack arising within me, ‘Just keep staring into your binder for another hour and a half and make as little eye contact as possible,” I tell myself. Can they tell I’m freaking out? What if they think it’s related to anything going on at the moment in the class? Because it isn’t, if they’re wondering. I realized this last night. I came home, angry about my existence as usual, and all those images went through my sight. Staring into my empty word processor, standing on the yellow edge ignoring the sounds of approaching trains, sitting next to strangers and wondering where to go, even though my body is taking me exactly where I need to be and thus exactly where I don’t want to be. The professor trying to lighten up the room and me trying to hold back tears that find the perfect time at which to find their own freedom. All of this was not new. I’d been through this before. Twice before. I don’t want to make this the third. I know it doesn’t have to be. I can’t decide to fancy the edge of the subway platform every time I question my performance in an academic setting. But it’s never just that. I understood depression. It was straight forward to me. I did a lot of research about it and had come to terms with it. Same thing goes for my ADHD. I even understand illnesses that don’t pervade me, the small amount that are left on that list… But this borderline thing is beyond me. There are no well-known movie references, or songs about it, or famous people who overdosed because of it. And if there are, they must not be that popular because I haven’t heard of it. Borderline where? Of what? I read somewhere that it once meant borderline of psychotic. Well that doesn’t help because I’m pretty sure I’ve passed that line a long time ago. The more I try to figure out what’s wrong with me, the more confuse myself. If they don’t understand me, how can I understand me? It’s quite a hopeless feeling. All I can do is make educated guesses. I’m borderline. On the borderline of dropping out of school again, on the borderline of fancying yellow edges, on the borderline of checking myself in. The end.
I found a Keith Olbermann reference there in the introduction of "Borderline Personality Disorder for Dummies." I miss him so much.
