An insight into a week in the life of a young woman with emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD/borderline personality disorder), to give you an idea of how exhausting it is to be in a constant state of emotional flux, having zero control over your brain or heart, being unable to regulate your feelings or react appropriately to stimuli, permanently inhabiting the fraught, nervy space between flight or fight mode with no release through either.
GOOD TEARS
My brother came round to visit me and he made me cry with laughter recounting his messy weekend in Bristol
My care-coordinator said that she likes seeing me
An old friend who I thought I’d lost forever reached out to me
Made the most perfect jacket potato of my life
Won a court case
Tap water – access to it, taste of it, reliance on it, existence of it
TEARS
I miss Obama so fucking much
A random man described me as “a lovely bit of crumpet”; I got a craving for crumpets; the off licence doesn’t sell crumpets; walked 2 miles in a hailstorm to source a packet of crumpets; ate 4 in a row; threw them all up
Don’t like the look of the word “crumpet” in this font
Couldn’t see the cityscape from top of Muswell Hill, too cloudy
Can’t remember living in Muswell Hill, too young
Want to live in Muswell Hill, too poor
Tesco ran out of pierogi
Was scrubbing the bathroom and got pure bleach in my eye
Everybody seems to think that Fleabag is smart and funny and it’s neither
New psychologist thinks that I may have ADHD
Finished another Moleskine notebook (‘The Campbell’)
Started a new Moleskine notebook (‘The As Yet Undecided What You Shall Be Called’)
BAD TEARS
The meat cleaver incident that kicked off right next to me
The worst, most fucked-up nightmare I’ve ever had
The Guinness Six Nations rugby advert about the 3 brothers and their late mum’s Wales purse that goes everywhere with them
Can never read all of the books that I want to read
Missed a work deadline and let everyone down
Finding an old application for disability benefit written by my dad in 2005 in which he says my brother and I are the only things keeping him alive and that without us he’d have taken his own life; also the revelation that he was on the same anti-depressants that I’ve been on for years
My skin is disgusting, I want to rip it all off – ugly face :(
I don’t know where Libby Squire is
The story written on the page isn’t as good as the one in my head
Janis Joplin can’t come to my birthday party
Wrote the date as 10/03/18 on a legal document
Too afraid to go outside; can’t leave the flat in case somebody looks at me
24 Hours in Police Custody (series 8 episode 2)
Realising I wept over a potato
I asked my dad to visit me in a dream and he didn’t
Can’t afford to live
Can’t afford to die.
i’m conflicted, cos i love this post and fleabag equally. therefore, i’m not sure who i’m betraying lol.
I think you’re being a bit hard on Fleabag – after all, she portrays herself as insightful yet shallow, I think thats rather clever writing! :)
Oh I’m hard on everyone, especially myself, but I respect your point. It’s just that Fleabag has never made me laugh once (perhaps because it’s all too familiar haha). Her writing for Killing Eve is far superior though, no? xx
Oh, I never would have guessed she wrote that too! I only just found Fleabag, so I watched the whole of the first series back to back last weekend and enjoyed it – reminded me of Miranda July, I saw her film “The Future” and liked it so much, I finally got the dvd and her book “The First Bad Man” which I also enjoyed greatly – July and Waller-Bridge even look alike! Some of Fleabag makes me chuckle – did you see “Pure” recently? I got the e0reader book it was from, but oddly the TV version was better, “Sally 4 Ever” was a laugh riot! I don’t think they’ll ever put it on TV tho!! :D :D
god. this rends my heart to absolute shreds.
It’s a bloody wonder I have any tears left! Thank you for reading, Tara, your online support is much appreciated xx
Someday I would love to write just like you.