Apr 12

 Sister came up yesterday, it was nice.

I think her plan was to drive up, drop off the ninja she was giving up ( and giving to Hazel ), then drive back home again.

Seemed pretty miserable to me.

But I know what me and my siblings are like. Self sacrifice and suffering is in our DNA and is Situation Normal.

Also. Fuck that shit.

So I was able to do two things, hobbling around on my crutches.

The first was to pick up a new slow cooker for her to take back with her - because to me, if she was going to give me a ninja, she had sadly noted both her slow cooker and bread maker had gone tits up, so, I would get her something new as a "trade" which meant that her "misfortune" of buying a ninja and then deciding to give it up was not a misfortune at all, and she could just swap it for something she did want. Which. Is nice. If you ask me.

The second was to take her out for a nice slow lunch by the river a mile or so down from my place.

Thus a nicer afternoon.

So that's what we did.

She squirmed a bit with it.

Because also, thats what me and my siblings do. Squirm when something nice is done for you. Get an anxiety kick that we are being troublesome. A pain. Why would you do this. I am not worthy.

This is how we were brought up. To have no self worth. We were unimportant. And around at sufferance.

My sister is 61. And still has this ingrained into her. My brother has it. I have it. It's hard to kick. We are all very very slowly healing and trying to do better. But. Hard And slow work. And to be honest I think we will always be that way.

In any case.

I can see the squirm.

Stop. You will have a nice thing done for you.

And it turned out to be a nice day.

Hazel came along for the day too. I did ask her if she wanted to come, but she said no, she would stay with the dogs. 

She has been increasingly volatile of late. That scratching at the walls of the borderline has become harder for her to keep in line and many things have become a snarl. A continual source of rage and arrogance. Tricky.

The ins and outs are laborious and not worth going into. It's tracking the blow by blow state of a crazy state of mind. But. A very small example. As my sister was coming up, Hazel grumpily asked if I had parking permits. Yeah I said, should be in the drawer. No she stated in a very firm hostile manner. They are out of date she said confidently. I. Was an idiot. No I said, I did get a new set, it's possible they may have expired by now, but I think they should be in there. No she said again. She opened the drawer.

Oh. They're good til June.

Uh huh.

This is often what it's like. You get hostility and aggro over the most inconsequential things. And she confidently bounces around between wrong opinion and assumption continually. If you push back you get a very quickly escalating rage. If you're lucky, she discovers her own errors - without you pointing them out ( god forbid ) - and it keeps a lid on her rage. No apologies. No regrets. But no explosions either.

Challenging.

Given how increasingly volatile she has been of late, I asked very gently and nicely in the morning if she wanted to do something today ( outside of my sister visiting ). She shrugged in surly manner. Then accused me of being weird. And talking "nicely" to her. And I didn't have to do that like she would explode or be angry. She said this in a very angry way. The irony was lost on her.

I asked again if she would like to do something nice today.

She shrugged in a sulky way again.

I was nice. I didn't react. Didn't get angry. Or even a smidge of frustrated.

I had tried.

In the end, as I got ready to leave with my sister, she put her boots on, and asked my sister if it was ok to come along.

I didn't react. But. It was a surprise.

She ended up enjoying herself at lunch. Had nice food. Got to feed the ducks her leftover peas. See some dogs.

Towards the end of the outing I said to her.

See. You did do something nice after all.

She made a face at me.

Always with the push back. Always that traumatic ragey response. Never, ever, a genuine smile and acknowledgement something was nice.

Ho hum.

Hazel has stated she is going to start to go home a few days at a time. Ostensibly because she hasn't been to her place since... November... and she doesn't want to get kicked out because she's not living there.

Which makes sense.

However.

I also suspect that she is a little aware of how her borderline is creeping up on her hardcore. And. She's looking for a basic step to mitigate it, by making herself scarce, rather than it blowing up and her destroying Yet Another Relationship. She would be on her third this year. Which would be, even for her, a very bad rate of failure.

As the kids say.

She needs to touch grass a bit. Or a lot.

When you step back and look at it. Yesterday was really all about Hazel. No fuss was made about it. No expectations. But my sister drove nearly two hours to gift hazel an expensive useful kitchen gadget that would be really useful to her. I then repaid my sister on her behalf. And then she got took along for a lovely dinner and relaxed chill out at the river. No cash required or expected. No demands put on her.

And yet she still struggled with not being a complete asshole. At best she got to, surly.

It's at points like this you can see why she got outright kicked out of her dads place and labelled a "shitty person".

It's not a wrong assessment.

There are reasons for it. Complicated twisty gnarly mental health reasons for it.

But it's not wrong.

I think Hazel very very much undervalues people really trying hard with her to be nice in spite of the shit she throws out. In her world. She is aces. And everyone else is an ass.

She has to learn to better mitigate her pain displacement. Whilst intellectually she 100% agrees with the adage of Do No Harm even if you are Fucked Up, and regularly ( of course ) lambasts everyone else for doing so, emotionally she does this in spades herself, is arguably the poster child for beating everyone else up to assuage her own inner pain.

She has a long path ahead of her. And she is still, mostly, in that stubborn, fuck you, I don't need to do anything about myself. Even though, again, intellectually, she realises she does.

Sometimes a little trickle will eke out. Sometimes a little squeak of implied apology ( but never an actual apology). And sometimes a burst of self loathing at her own behaviour.

Yesterday, I couldn't find my asthma inhaler that Hazel had ( of course ) taken off me in an annoyed huff ( because I was "too slow" at putting it down ) and put somewhere. I didn't see where she put it. On me fumbling around trying to find it the day after she became annoyed that I couldn't find it, and annoyed that it was up to her to remember that for me. At this point I said in a good humoured way that I was not psychic - I could not read her mind to tell where she had put my inhaler. How am I supposed to know stuff that only she knows ? Not psychic. At least. I didn't think so.

She heatedly said I couldn't be psychic. Because if I was. I would never have got into a relationship with her.

Oof.

There is an element of truth to that. Also a large element of self awareness of how shitty she has been to me.

A few days before that she also in passing noted that "she used to be a nightmare" and how extremely hard it was for me to cope with her and that I was very likely glad to have gotten her medicated.

This is I think one of the first times she has acknowledged how difficult she was. ( And this was years and years ago that she was talking about. It takes her that long to acknowledge it. ).

I downplayed it.

She said she was a lot better now on medication right ?

I didn't lie to her. Nor did I ram it down her throat. I just looked at her. Hmmm.

I said I needed to be very careful at many times of what I said around her.

But I'm better she repeated.

I repeated my statement again. Needed to be very careful.

It didn't even get mentioned that she had blown up two relationships this year in quick succession.

Demonstrably not better.

Difficult.

She has got better. And improved. And showed tiny signs of being self aware. But it is baby steps. And by and large the monster, the Mr Hyde to her Dr Jekyll is still very much there and still very potent.

She cannot be honest with herself about stuff. Still.

She pushes her terrible behaviour away. Avoids talking about it. Or even acknowledging it. Like it happened some place far away. To someone else. She focuses on negativity - imagined or real - that she gets back. And uses that to paint herself as the victim. A good example is with the blowup at Christmas with her dad.

Her pattern sometimes is - behave in the most monstrous way. Come out with the most brutal and unhinged insults and probes into what she thinks someones weakness is. When that person - typically - reacts badly to her. With anger. Outrage. Counter insults. She then only remembers they were "mean to her". And that its their fault. And she is the victim.

The bit where she instigated the whole thing in the first place, and the only reason she gets reactions like that is because she's horrible gets ignored. And with a little time. So deeply ignored and buried that she rewrites history and doesn't admit she was anything other than sweetness and light.

It is. Bonkers.

But then.

Yes. She is. She has the diagnosis. Bonkers. Officially.

Borderline personality disorder is one of the most challenging mental health problems to deal with. Up there with severe paranoia and delusions.

So very challenging to try and help. To deal with. To stick with that person and endure and be a positive influence in their life.

Ah well.

Long story short.

Hazel is going to probably bounce back and forth back home for a while.

My foot continues to improve.

I had to hobble around on crutches yesterday, but by the evening I was able to shuffle around at home for a while without any aid.

It was, in the end, a bit of a mistake.

I made my foot worse again.

But it is getting better. Despite me being a stubborn idiot with it and not letting it rest properly.