Borderline - Martina Dansereau

“I am hard to love:

the way I switch back and forth so quickly,

my emotions always shifting so swiftly—

I am a pendulum, swinging too fast

for you to read me; you never know

if you will be greeted with sweetness or acidity,

and I’m sorry. I told you: loving me

is like walking on eggshells.

Don’t breathe too quietly, I need your essence—

now you’re breathing too loudly;

I can’t stand your presence.

One night my mother found me crying

and I became a monster in her child’s skin:

I snapped at her heart when she tried to reach out.

She said, “I just want to hug you.”

I said, “Tonight, tonight I don’t want you to.”

I am hard to love, a parasite starving

for attention, give me attention—

but not like that, that sounded fake,

the tone of your voice isn’t what I wanted,

I didn’t want that kind of attention, you’re

doing it wrong. And if by chance you do it right,

you are perfect. I love you. You are a sun

and I want to build solar systems around you,

build a pedestal for you, build my world around you,

until your illusion of perfection is shattered

by the smallest disappointment; then I will loathe

you on and off while your flaws fall in and out of shadow.

I should come with a warning label

for unpredictable weather because I can shine love

on you at the hour and rain down resentment

at the next, all the while carrying a flurry of panic

that you will abandon me too, so I’ll cut to the chase:

cut you off, cut you out, and cut my wrists

because I know that you will forsake me one day;

you would be right to do so, because I am worthless,

a waste of effort, I am borderline,

and don’t you dare say it doesn’t matter;

don’t you lie that you can love me this way.

You asked me what I wanted and what I wanted

was for you to worry about me, but then

I felt guilty when you worried so I tried

to reassure you that I was fine. Then I was angry

at you for believing me. I am not fine.

I remember the night I tried to jump off a bridge

after a bad break up with my first partner

and they called me manipulative,

but in the moment when I’d been climbing up the rail,

I hadn’t been thinking of how to hurt them.

My mind was too busy trying to answer

the call of the cars below. I am hard to love;

I live my life on a suicidal impulse.

I’ll try to kill myself because I’m bored,

or because the emptiness is so sharp inside of me

that it’s whittled its name into the lining of my stomach,

or because I want attention and I don’t know how to ask,

or because I’m a butterfly with torn wings

caught in the web of memories and mistakes

spun together in my mind and nothing makes sense

so I try to carve some sense into my flesh

as if meaning can be birthed from the womb

of slit skin and blood and everything is overwhelming

and all it takes is a moment to push me

to the edge of suicide, and you’ll ask me

why I want to die but the truth is it’s less about dying

and more about self-destruction, about stopping

the tornado spiral of emotions churning

inside of me, my own volatile whirlwinds gusting

guilt and rage and rain that rusts my heart

and I just want to stop, I just want to stop,

I just want to stop.”

— Martina Dansereau, Borderline

Follow me or else

Not to be that person but I keep slipping in and out of dimensions

big fan of love, being in love and making others feel loved

dogs with jobs

WHAT. GOOD. DOGS.

Sometimes having mental illness is like living paycheck to paycheck but with your brain

if shes your girl why is she on the floor wailing in unison with me and six or seven other flower crowned empathy maidens?

You're not stupid, you're sick. You're not lazy, you're sick. You're not weak, you're sick. Let's stop treating symptoms of mental and physical illnesses and disabilities as if they were character flaws! It's not your fault if your symptoms make your life harder than it ideally should be. Don't beat yourself up about things outside your control.

This is why the gays fucking love this show.

If we were married I’d pack your lunch with one of these bad boys every day

It’s not that you have issues…… it’s that you have a tendency to continue using instincts you picked up in childhood that are no longer useful to you on your journey towards achieving openness and intimacy and reliability in your personal relationships w others. It’s not that you’re defective or difficult or incapable it’s just that what you learned to do to save yourself from the experience of abandonment or rejection or ridicule or failure is not helpful here anymore and you need to start thinking creatively and collaborating on better ways to cope with that instrinsic fear that you are not correct, that you are faking, that you will be found out and left, whatever it is