My BPD Shitshow: Crunching the Numbers of Real Love (Episode 3)

	No, This isn't a psychology essay. Nope! Not a data science lesson! And no, this isn't my third written entry in this story; but rather the third part of my experience of real love and most likely the most bizarre and embarrassing.

    In Episode 1 and 2 I analyzed my history of obsession and contradicting realizations involving the love of my life. Let me just fail at summarizing here real quick; I lost my virginity when I was 19 with a girl I loved deeply (let’s call her “Kali”). She was 18 and moved into my mom’s house to live with me for a year and a half before she finally moved in with her dad. She ended up leaving me for a born female enby who is a sociopath and a longtime rival/arch-nemesis of mine. Kali would awkwardly see me on and off in the beginning of their relationship and tell me how abusive her partner was being. Nothing sexual happened between us during these visits and there was only one romantic incident. Many years went by, years that led into a short prison term where I had finally convinced myself that as I cherished and still loved her, I no longer needed to be hung up on Kali because she is still happily with her partner and most likely not the same person anymore. It wasn’t until after I was released from the joint and after my partner of two years moved away that all that work I did to move on from Kali was reversed. The same week my partner had left, Kali reached out to me. It took less than a week for an affair to start that lasted a whole year. She was still with her partner (this is 7 years later) and they lived in Colorado. Kali would come home to visit her best friend who would aid and abed our affair. It was highly intense and sexual. I realized that everything I was holding onto about Kali was still there. She was still the same person and strangely enough she had still been in love with me the whole time we were apart. It ended with her partner finding out and me not hearing from Kali again. I heard from her friends though, that her partner got terrifyingly abusive after this and cut her off from everyone. This is where Chapter 1 and 2 of Episode 3 starts.

	Over the passed year I have dealt with immense trauma. Among a handful of little transformative experiences peppered in here and there, there were also some massive ones. I got clean from heroin and joined my longtime best friend’s distributed tech thinktank. Then I got addicted to speed and witness my friend blow his brains out in front of me. This was incredibly difficult obviously, but even more so because I come from a small town where everyone knows everyone and needless to say the rumor mill was running at full steam ahead. It was too much for me so I moved away to live with some friends from the thinktank on a beautiful lake in Indiana. This was incredibly healing and was a new start in my life. There was the usual existential dread and memories of the past giving me a little slap in the face from time to time, but ultimately I felt like I was reborn. I planned a lot of business stuff, networked with people, made new friends, and worked on finding out my identity. This time away unfortunately lasted only a few months before some bullshit with my landlady started and I ended up moving back home, however it okay because I had learned and healed a great deal and was ready to try again in my hometown as the new me.

	Being home has been a whole new type of challenge. It’s not as easy as I expected; this place is toxic. I have been doing well with being steady however. I’ve been carefree but calm; I’ve been having fun but there hasn’t been any excessive acting out. I’ve also made strides in doing the dumb “adult in a post-capitalist society” thing. I got a job at a Halloween store ran by good friends of mine, and had been tinkering with the occasional hookups and light dating. All in all I’ve been pretty lonely and yet extremely numb. Nothing was phasing me. I could have a meaningless hookup and not have a weird thought about it. I could do casual e-dating and flirting without pushing it on myself for it to actually mean something. This hasn’t ever happened before, and as the title of these musings should make it clear; I have really fucking bad Borderline Personality Disorder. I’m BAD at this shit. Every sexual or “talking” type-of-thing I do ends up with me confusing the shit out of myself. Well guess what! It all got reversed again, yo! Here is where this story enters it’s precipice, and let me start by saying “Fuck My Life!” About a month ago after a long night of partying with coworkers I stroll into work in the afternoon absolutely wrecked. I go straight into the back and do a bump of coke with my manager so I can get out there and deal with the crazy Halloween shoppers (I’m lead sales associate so I have to work hands on with customers.) After the cocaine I head out to do a loop of the floor to assess the situation and up front a couple people catch my eye. It was Kali and her partner. You see, I didn’t mention this earlier, but I found out when I moved back that they also moved back from Colorado. I assume Kali and I’s affair had something to do with that decision; some sort of effort to save their relationship. I had a feeling that they would fucking come into my damn store. Can you guess what happened? I had a panic attack at the cash register, they saw me and left. Kali made eye-contact with me as she walked out, shadowing her partner. Now, other than the panic attack, this didn’t really affect me at all that I can tell. I’m so god damn fucking numb to relationship shit now. Well, that is until “Annie” showed up in my life two weeks ago.

	They all told me my 30’s would be dope. “Don’t be afraid! It only gets better from here!” Ya, I mean it seemed that way for a second, but this isn’t a good start. So, I turned 30 on the 21st of October. I had promised before I’d fucking kill myself when I turned 30 but I’m over that. It started with a hilariously fun tinder date on my birthday where my date threw up on me. I was completely unaffected.  I had a couple casual lines of dialogue going after that with people I met but really had no interest in. Then my best bud told me his GF’s best friend, Annie, was single. Annie is a good amount younger than me and that’s the opposite of what I am interested in. But there was something about them that fucked with me. First off, those thick-lensed glasses that made them seem like a walking nerd television trope. Second, short as fuck with a nose-ring and pink hair. Ya, they are my kinda sad pop-punk gay princess (fucking cringe did I just think that outloud?) I ended up getting Annie and their friend (my buddy’s GF) a job at my store and immediately started hitting on Annie, which went fantastic. The friend ended up hooking us up. We decided to all hang out the night after our first shift together. Me and Annie quickly found ourselves in their dorm room. We hands down some of the best sex either of us ever had. At one point they bit my lip so hard I realized there was blood running down their face. I stopped and let them know and asked if they are okay. We both honestly just laughed and shrugged. Not only did we have intense sex through all of Rocky Horror but tried to finally go to sleep like three separate times and failed miserably. The sexual chemistry was obviously there. I went home around noon and realized I had bite marks all fucking over me. Hot. I knew this was supposed to be a simple hookup so I tried to play it cool and planned to not ask to see them again right away. They quickly invited me back over every night for a week and a half straight. We spent time in the day together, we went to work together, we went home together, we had  good sex, we got to know each other, we got vulnerable. We set ground rules; exclusive but taking it slow because of both our life situations. I thought “hey no problem, I’ve been doing good about this kind of shit.” Haha, who am I fucking kidding!?

	So, me, Annie, their friend, and my buddy went to this Leftover Crack show in Cincinnati. It all started pretty fun! I never went to a real show with someone I was seeing before. Annie was always pretty good about making me feel comfortable with them around other people. No partner has come close to the way they did this. They’d lovingly be near me; chillingly hold my hand, kiss, etc. It made me feel really fucking good because this is something I am insecure with due to partners being weird about not showing affection in certain social settings. But then, something really fucked up happened; the opening band threw out a bunch of balloons and insisted that the crowd pop every single one. I do not do well with popping balloons. The week my friend blew his head off I was making a friend and I Mac’n’Cheese, and he popped a balloon behind me and I fell to the floor and had a flashback. So, the balloons started popping and I mumbled something to Annie and our friends and ran outside. I shakingly smoked a cigarette and started getting bad tunnel vision. I finished the cig and started stumbling through the outside crowd back towards the door to the bar. I felt a hand grab my arm and I looked around confused until I realized it was short little Annie staring up at me with the most caring and concerned look anyone has ever given me. They went and sat me back down and we smoked another cig and I explained what had happened to me. Nobody had ever been so accepting, supportive, and genuinely fucking skilled at making me feel comfortable. I knew they had experienced trauma themselves, but I was surprised at the amount of understanding Annie put towards this situation considering how young they are. Well, here is my fucking downfall. In my manic drunk state I told our friends, in front of Annie, that “I’m 90% sure I’m fucking in love with Annie!” My buddy dragged me back outside and told me to tighten up. I was like “shit I’m fucking up here big time, your right, Ima tighten the fuck up.” I went back inside and apologized and said I was just drunk. This didn’t seem to scare Annie off. They still were very sweet and had their arms around me all night. We got home and went to bed in their dorm together. We woke up in the morning a couple times, but one of those times I fucked up hard. I told myself before going to bed to fucking watch it. In my daze after the long crazy night, I rolled over and kissed them, and said “I love you!” I almost got up and ran away but instead rolled into the corner, curled into a ball, and mumbled “fuck I’m sorry I didn’t mean to say that.” It was a legit accident and I don’t even know if they actually heard me say it but still… The days after this was when they started to seem to get scared off. I’d hear less from them throughout the day but they kept inviting me over… I got confused and scared very quickly. I broke the rules we set, so I broke things off with them before they could hurt me… This isn’t where this story ends, things are still playing out, but this is the end of the first two chapters of Episode 3.

	I want to end this entry as an intermission. During this I have thought about my mistakes, how bad I fucked up, and how I really feel about Annie. The facts are this: Annie brought me completely out of my numbness and I am certain that whatever is happening that I am actually in love with them. I thought it may be some trauma bonding type shit but it’s so much more than that. I’ve analyzed them after all this and I know they are someone who has impacted me so fucking deeply that I’m feeling not only things I didn’t think I could feel anymore but completely new things. I even came out as queer to my friends after this experience. I’ve only been in love with two other people and I am way more in tune with myself these days. I see enough parallels in how I feel about Annie compared to others I’ve loved, and I see what I love about them as an individual person...