One of the most distressing aspects of BPD for me is the
way my mood and the way I see myself and the world around me can shift between
extreme opposites in a very short space of time.
I got up this morning, showered, got Jenny ready for
school, had a proper conversation with Jo before he left for work, walked my
dog and hung out the washing. It was a
great start to the day!
Then, with nothing I can pin point to trigger it,
everything changed. A bubble descended
and settled around me separating me from the rest of the world making
everything seem distant and unreal (derealisation in BPD technical jargon). A
sense of pointlessness overwhelmed me – what is the point of shopping,
possessions, rushing around doing jobs, going to work. Everything that keeps society as we know it
running is meaningless. Full of such
thoughts I descended into a low mood and all the energy I had for doing
anything drained through my feet into nothingness. For a while (I don’t know how long), I sat
like a zombie deep in my unwelcome thoughts.
Suddenly I was brought back to the here and now by my dog (Jed) barking
at something out the window. I looked
out and saw that just as my mood had changed, so had the weather. Heavy grey clouds filled the sky which not
long before had been blue and full of sunshine.This was like smelling salts as two practical thoughts
burst the bubble I was trapped in. The
washing was out and the grass was getting long again, and last time I’d had to
strim it because it was too long for the mower.
Full of energy I dashed out, rescued the washing and got out the lawn mower
before the clouds emptied their heavy load making the grass too wet to cut again.
Usually I find cutting the grass quite satisfying. It isn’t complicated, it’s reasonably quick
and you see a very good result for your effort.
Not so on this occasion.
First, despite the grass being a reasonable length and
dry, it kept clogging the blades. This
was frustrating me and I was starting to get angry, having urges to kick the
mower and give up. My self-control held
out though, and in the end, on a more thorough search I found a twig trapped
near the blades. After removing that all
was well – for a few minutes.
The second glitch was quite painful. Our garden slopes downhill quite steeply
making doing the bottom edge quite hard work.
It is easier to work with the mower pointing uphill than downwards or
sideways. As I walked backwards to get
as near to the edge as possible I stepped too far, my foot went off the edge
into the flower bed. I lost my balance and fell backwards so I was sitting on a
rose bush! Ouch! Fortunately not with my whole weight as the
fence broke my fall and save me needing embarrassing assistance to remove the
thorns.
I recovered from that, swearing at myself for being so
stupid – but got on with the job as now I could feel the first spots of
rain. I only had a couple of runs to go
when the mower started to dig in the ground and not move across the grass
easily. I couldn’t work out why and was
becoming frustrated again. I turned and
started to force my way, with an unwilling lawn mower back for the final
run. I had started and I was going to
finish before the rain came in earnest.
I was half way back when I saw it.
There, lying on the grass was one of the wheels. No wonder I was having trouble pushing the
blasted thing. I picked it up, pushed it
back on the axle and hoped it would last till I finished. It did.
A few more drops were falling by this time so I rushed it
back to the shed, losing the wheel again in the process. It was a relief to have the job done. I went back inside to have a well-deserved
cup of tea.
As I sat with my tea, enjoying the view across to the
mountains over the valley, something dawned on me. The sky was blue and the sun was shining once
more. The dark clouds had passed by –
and so had my mood (for the time being at least).
There’s a well-known phrase “change like the weather.” Well, that’s me, and a big part of BPD.
