Following the night out last week, I really struggled. Usually, I don’t have a problem with dealing with the aftermath – I feel a bit tired and rubbish and I curl up with Lily on the sofa. This weekend, however, was horrible. I suspect that this has a lot to do with all of the angst, stress and guilt (oh look, there’s that word again) that had been building up in me over the preceding week.

When I woke up, I felt awful. Everything was an effort, and I felt pathetic and hopeless. I left Lily in bed whilst I went for a bath. I took a pair of tweezers with me. Looking back, I don’t remember exactly what prompted me to do this, but I knew as I did it that I wanted to hurt. As I lay in the bath, I thought about the events of the night before and my guilt grew. Why couldn’t I give her what she wanted? If I had just carried on that little bit longer, would she have suffered less? Perhaps I should have stopped it before it all started? At the heart of all of these questions was one core belief – that I didn’t deserve her affection. Then I started thinking about all of the other people in my life, how I have hurt them or let them down, how, by going out instead of going to training, I was a failure. So why does anyone love me? I felt like a big con, asking people to care about me when I couldn’t live up to my expectations of what I should be for them.

I wanted to hurt. I wanted to be punished for being such a let down. Initially, I started gauging at my leg with the tweezers. It gave me something to focus on that wasn’t my own pathetic anguish – it gave me a goal. But then I realised what I was doing. I realised how I feel when Lily self harms, and how worried it made me when I learnt that my sister was doing it. I got out of the bath and put the tweezers in another room. But then the thoughts came back. I tried to think about all of the reasons why people might love me, and I was reminded of my Grandpa. In his last few months, when he was in the final throws of dementia, he looked at me and told me that I had hair exactly like his granddaughter and that she was so stunningly beautiful that he couldn’t believe how lucky he was. I know that Lily loves my hair too – I remembered how upset she was when I decided to cut it short during the first few months of our relationship. My hair was now a physical embodiment of people’s love for me. The love that I felt I didn’t deserve. So, slowly and methodically, I began grabbing chunks of it and hacking at them with a razor. Somehow, this action allowed me to cry.

When I got out of the bath, Lily was awake. It suddenly dawned on me that, due to the mess that I had made of both my leg and my hair, I had to tell her what had just happened. I didn’t want to, because I didn’t want to show her that I was struggling. I knew that she would need caring for that day, and I didn’t want her to worry about me. In hindsight, this was really stupid – I really wanted her help. But I already felt guilty about not being able to do the right thing for her the previous evening, and this was going to make it worse.

As I told her, I felt that I could see the anguish and – I hate to admit – resentment on her face growing as she realised that she was going to have to look after me. However, there was something else there too. There was a reluctant hint that she fully intended to look after me, however difficult it was for her. And that she was determined to make sure that I got over this blip. She talked me through the whole thing. She assured me that I had done exactly the right thing the previous night by giving her a safe place to cry. She gave me a confidence boost in myself. She held me tight and let me cry. She let me let my rage out. She made me feel safe and secure.

Looking back, the whole thing was ridiculous. I still feel that I should have been able to cope, that I shouldn’t have reacted the way that I did. However, I now recognise that I too am likely to have some form of depression, and Lily is reassuring me that this means that it is okay to crack sometimes. It is not a sign of weakness, but one of strength. It is a sign of beginning to confront demons. By following her lead (and, lets face it, she is a bit of a reluctant expert in mental health issues) I can help myself. We can help each other. I am not a carer and I never have been; we are equal partners in an ever so slightly unconventional relationship.

On Friday, Lily wanted to go out to a sex club. I said earlier in the week that I needed a blow-out, so I went along with her. It has been a long time since we went out together, and I have been starting to get jealous that she has been having all of the fun.

After work, we both went to the gym together. We were both feeling incredibly balshy, and pushed ourselves far harder than we should have done. I had a lot of pent up aggression from the week that I had just had, and felt that I wanted to go somewhere where I could have fun and forget all of the things that I was worrying about. I felt that I had been neglecting Lily, who had been becoming more manic all week but was unable to let it out because she was caring for me. We both agreed that it wasn’t sensible to go out, but that we were determined to anyway. I wonder how much of this was due to our feeding off of each others’ behaviors.

A night out with Lily usually follows a very predictable pattern, and this was no exception. When we got to the club, we took some drugs. This usually encourages Lily’s multiple personalities to split. I have not yet worked out for certain whether she has any control over this or not, but I believe that she does and intentionally chooses to split. I spent the first part of the evening having a very deep conversation with John. He told me that he believes that he created Joss, and that she is a fabrication that allows him to let out parts of him that his social restraint and empathy with others prevents him from revealing. Specifically, he told me that, by creating Joss, he felt able to do whatever he needed – including potentially harming others – without any guilt.

John soon realised that he had split away from Lily as a whole, and decided to bring her back. I’m not sure that he succeeded, because what happened was that John and Joss were both present simultaneously, but as two separate characters. Joss told me how deeply John loves me, but that she really doesn’t love me at all and doesn’t want John to. John then wrapped his arms around me and told me how much he did love me. This sounds very confusing, but the different facets of Lily’s personality and their different feelings towards me are something that I came to terms with a while ago.

At this point in the evening, Joss usually takes over. On this occasion, she seemed to be mediated slightly by John, who seemed to be being very careful to make sure that Joss didn’t do anything too risky. He could see that the drugs were kicking in for me, and decided that it was time to go and get fucked. My priority was to give Lily what she wanted – for me, this kind of sex is really good, and I enjoy it, but I do not crave it in quite the same way that Lily does. The problem is that, when Lily is high, she is extremely specific about what she wants. There is always ‘just one more thing’ that will get her to the special place that she craves, and, whatever happens, something isn’t quite right. I tried to create the right scenario for her, but the combination of men and my inability to get things exactly right meant that she didn’t get what she wanted. John seemed to have his sensible head on, and was telling Joss not to worry too much about it and not to expect to reach that perfect place. Instead, Lily put a lot of effort into giving me my fun, and, despite it not being the thing that I deeply crave, I really enjoyed it.

We did find a couple of particularly dominant men, and Lily invited them home with us. By this time, Joss was well and truly on her own and out in force. I sat and watched while the men played with her for 3 hours or so, and tried to guide them as to what she wanted. She said that she came very close to getting to that special place that she craves, but wasn’t quite there.

At about 6.30 am, the men went home and the drugs were starting to wear off. As she felt the comedown building, Lily became more and more desperate to get to her special place before the effects of the drugs wore off completely.  When she gets to this stage, what she really wants is to dissociate and have sex as a little boy. She asked me to help her to do this – she wanted to masturbate while I acted as ‘Mummy’ by looking after her. I have done this for her before, but it always makes me incredibly uncomfortable because, in my mind, ‘Mummy’ should be loving and caring, and not associated with sex. However, when she gets to this desperate stage, refusing to help her would be tantamount to abandoning Chris when he needs help. I have witnessed the effects of someone else refusing to help her at this stage, and they are not nice; she feels betrayed, loses trust and tries to hurt herself.

By about 8am, she realised that our joint efforts were not going to get her to ‘that place’. She asked if she could lay in my lap and if I could ask her to be Chris. I held her in my arms and told her that only she could decide who she could be, she shouldn’t let other people control it, but that both Chris and Katie were welcome at any time and it was safe for them to come out now. She didn’t dissociate. This made her angry with me. She told me that she was jealous because I had got what I needed earlier in the evening (this made me particularly cross because I didn’t, and haven’t had what I crave for a very long time, but I kept this to myself) and that she was incredibly upset that I couldn’t do a simple thing that would allow her to get to where she wanted to go. Perhaps that one more thing would have got her there, but it had been ‘just one more thing’ all night, and with each failed attempt, the anger and resentment in her visibly grew. I have always said that I will never dominate her, and that is where the boundary has to lie.

Suddenly, she became very detached from me and didn’t want to touch me. She started looking at her leg, then at the pair of scissors on the table, then at her leg again. It was as though she was challenging me to challenge her. Somehow, I knew that this would be a bad idea – I felt that she was challenging me to stop her getting what she wanted yet again, asking me to make her even angrier with me. I was ready for it when she did jump for the scissors, and I grabbed them. After one scratch, she let go of them and instantly burst into tears. She didn’t know it, but this was what she really needed. She needed to curl up in my arms and cry. She needed to know that she was loved, whatever happened. That, however far she pushed, she would not be abandoned. From the outside, it is easy to see that that is what she needs right from the start, but it is incredibly difficult to find a way that allows her to do it without going through the whole painful process. And it is an incredibly painful process to watch. I just don’t know any other way.

It was 9am by the time we got to sleep. This is about right for a night out with Lily. There was one key difference this time to previous occasions though – she recognised my feelings. She acknowledged that I was also coming down from a high and feeling like shit. And she acknowledged that, regardless of this, I wanted to stay with her. I wanted to make sure that she was okay. Looking back on the whole thing, I feel much more positive than I have in the past.

Following my last post, I seem to have been going even more nuts. I spent most of the following day worrying about the weekend, and found myself trying to hurt myself so that I had an excuse not to go away. I couldn’t stop crying, and I felt like I was cracking around the edges. I told Lily this, and she held me in her arms and talked me through it. She suggested that, given recent events, I should see a psychiatrist. She also insisted that I stay at home this weekend. I told her that I felt like a failure – the ‘work’ that I referred to in the last post was a training session with an international sports team for whom I play – and that I felt that I was making excuses not to go and do something just because it felt a little bit difficult. She insisted that I stay home.

She then said something that really did mean the world to me, particularly coming from her. She told me that, regardless of what happened, however mad I went, she would still want to be with me. I know that the fact that I am a strong person is incredibly important to her, because she knows that she can let her vulnerable side out to me without fear of rejection or guilt. I also know that my status as an athlete is also very important to her, because it is one of the things that makes her feel that I am worth her affection. To hear her say that she wouldn’t mind me potentially pulling back from my sport and embarking on therapy that could make me vulnerable and that she would still be there for me bought a tear to my eye.

A characteristic of borderlines is that they tend to idolise people, particularly those whom they are in a relationship with. I know that Lily has done this in the past. Admitting weakness to her is incredibly difficult for this reason – I am afraid that she idolises me for my inner strength and my achievements, and that she will leave me if I lose these things. Hearing her say with so much feeling that she won’t was a major step in our relationship. When she really means something, she brings herself down to my level, looks me directly in the eye and makes a conscious effort to use John’s voice. I know that, in that moment, she really meant it. Unfortunately, it is the ‘in that moment’ part of that sentence that is key. Because of her tendency to change from day to day, there is very little that she can do to persuade me that she will mean the same thing tomorrow.

One day, I hope to believe that she really means it.

Lily seems to have a cyclic pattern. She goes through phases of increasing mania (by which I mean intense activity, not resting and an ever-increasing short temper) until she crashes, usually via dissociation and sometimes assisted by drugs, self harm and risky sex. These crashes never seem to ‘reset’ the cycle completely, and therefore the intervals between cycles gets shorter and the extent of the ‘crash’ gets larger until eventually she realises that she can’t go on with the cycle and ends up having a fairly major ‘crash’ incident.

This week, things have been thrown on their head slightly. We both love our jobs, and we have both been working ourselves into the ground of late. Lily seems to be in control, and has not been exhibiting her usual signs of mania to quite the same degree as usual. I, on the other hand, have been getting more and more stressed, and have started experiencing panic attacks, convulsions and insomnia. Lily has been fantastic at looking after me, but in some ways this makes me more stressed as I feel incapable of returning her caring actions with my own. I am beginning to get short tempered with her for this reason – I am feeling inadequate, and am afraid that she will see this as an unforgivable weakness in me. I desperately want to go seeking the kind of thing that she usually goes for – a big, risky blowout that will allow me to clear my mind of all of the things that are buzzing around in there. This weekend, she will get one. I won’t, as I have to work. I have to admit, I am jealous. I’m jealous to the point that I am experiencing some pretty extreme rage.

I am also stuck in a self-proliferating circle of worry. I know that I am going to have a stressful weekend. When I go away and Lily decides to go out and party alone, I worry about her. I have no guarantee that she will be safe. I usually have a sleepless night when I am away from her and she is out on the town, often interspersed with mild panic attacks. This lack of sleep then makes me more stressed about all of the other, work related things that I am stressed about.

Since knowing Lily, I have become more psychologically unstable myself. I do not believe that this is due to her condition. I have had some pretty awful relationships in the past, including both physically and financially abusive partners. I also have a history of never allowing myself to exhibit emotional weakness – something which I now acknowledge may have been detrimental to me over a long time period.

Lily is incredibly easy to be in a relationship with and, because of her BPD, she has an enhanced understanding of her own psychological behaviors. This understanding has encouraged me to examine mine more closely too. Lily encourages me to do this, and provides a sense of security within which I can explore myself. In doing so, she allows me to uncover uncomfortable truths about myself. This week has bought home just how unstable I can be. It has also highlighted how astute she is with relation to herself. I am slowly learning just how vulnerable I am myself, and I suddenly feel incredibly hypocritical for writing this blog. But I am as changeable as Lily, and I expect things to be very different this time next week.

Earlier this week, I had to go away for a few days for work. Coming back always feels a little strange, as I never know quite what I will find when I get home – will Lily be calm and subdued? Manic? Introverted? Extroverted? Short tempered? Understanding? This time she was feeling quiet, calm and a little bit poorly.

We had agreed earlier in the week that we would go out the evening that I got home. It was fairly clear when she picked me up from the airport that she didn’t want to, and that was just fine with me because I was feeling quite tired myself. I asked her how she was feeling. She said, ‘A bit tired and headachey’ so I asked if she still wanted to go out and made it clear that we didn’t have to. It took her quite a long time to get around to saying that she would prefer not to. It emerged that she would feel incredibly guilty if we didn’t go because she knew that I wanted to. She felt that I would be angry and upset. Of course, being tired myself, I wouldn’t be angry and upset, but she seemed to doubt whether I really meant that or not.

This has happened in the past too, but this week was a vast improvement on previous occasions. There have been incidents where we have ended up going out when she didn’t really want to, and the night has ended with her getting incredibly frustrated, upset, angry and eventually hurting herself. I am really glad that she is able to communicate her needs to me even when she is feeling guilty about them – I know that it isn’t always easy.

The problem for me comes with my own guilt. I feel guilty about making her feel guilty. This is particularly true in situations like the above, when I acknowledge that what she most likely needs is cuddles herself rather than to be worrying about me. I am slowly starting to realise that this is a bit ridiculous, but am not sure of the best strategy to stop myself feeling like this. This time, I tried to ignore my guilt completely. I ended up curled up in her lap in front of a film, and falling asleep in a blissfully happy, relaxed state (an evening that I far preferred to a night out under the circumstances).

Had I not ignored my guilt, I would have tried to convince her to curl up on my lap instead. And that would have broken a deal that I made with myself a few weeks ago: I should never try to be the ‘big spoon’ out of guilt, only out of an honest desire to do so. I made this deal for two reasons. Firstly, I need to protect myself from myself. Feeling guilt all of the time is not good, and will make me resentful. Secondly, I would like her to know that I care about her and honestly do like looking after her so that she doesn’t need to feel guilty about my doing so. As it turns out, I have the urge to be ‘big spoon’ much more often this way because I have absolved myself of my own guilt, and hopefully removed some of hers too.

Perhaps curling up on Lily’s lap and letting her look after me was a good thing. It certainly felt it at the time. Perhaps, by allowing her to do so, it made her feel less guilty about not wanting to go out. Perhaps she just wanted to be ‘big spoon’. Perhaps I should stop over-analysing and accept that I shouldn’t try to take responsibility all of the time. Lily is Lily, and she will look after herself when she needs to. She is much better at it than she thinks she is.