Thinking about adding
some old boyfriends
on facebook

I'm curious if they're fatter
smarter or balder than they were before

I wonder if they care to see
if I am fatter, saner, or pretty than before

Do they ever enter my name into search engines
just to see what comes up?
Do they ever wonder what happened to me
on slow and rainy Sunday afternoons?

Every psychic I have ever been to
said I would fall in love with and marry a friend
That someone in my life would come back
That my future husband would catch a glance of me
standing in a pool of sunlight
and realize his past mistakes

Then we'd live happily ever after

As much as I want men to follow me
to search for strands of my hair in the grass
I can't help but not trust in fate
and leave a trail of breadcrumbs
wherever I go, just in case

Maybe I'm Not As Bad As I Thought

I'm reading a memoir right now about Borderline Personality Disorder. Or should I say, about a woman who has BPD. It's the second such book I've read and there's one thing I keep hearing myself mumble as I turn the pages -- "this doesn't really sound like me."

I also have started going on BPD support websites and again and again I keep finding myself doubting the diagnosis. In therapy I stop my counselor often and say, "no I haven't done that in years. Not since I was 23 or so." She folds her hands and says slowly, "well maybe you're further in recovery than you think."

I don't know what to think of that, of any of this. I read about women who can't work, who are unable to get out of bed, who are unable to deal with the tiniest tasks in life. And sure, I've had periods like that but they've been abbreviated. A day here, a weekend there. But still I get up on Monday mornings and go to work and I still pay my own bills and take care of myself. I don't fall apart if my counselor isn't around to answer my calls (in fact, I've never felt the need to speak to them outside of session.) I just don't know. I feel almost bad even saying the words but... I just don't seem as fucked up as other people.

It's not meant as a judgment and the very fact of it confuses me. When I was diagnosed with BPD, I was in a mental hospital after my fifth suicide attempt. I was twenty-three. It was eight years ago, almost to the day. Does the shoe still fit?

My friend called me the poster child of BPD but yet after attending the BPD conference at Yale, he said to me "you're not really that fucked up." Maybe my skin is thicker than I thought. I don't fly into blind rages, I rarely truly act on crazy impulses, and I've learned to temper my needs. I have periods of depression and I certainly am triggers often but yet... even as much as I can fall to pieces.... it's just not as bad as other people I see.

What do I do with this? Do I feel superior? Do I throw away the entire diagnosis? So many characteristics still apply. But now with the ADD diagnosis, I have to wonder. With ADD, I'm unable to focus on thoughts and be productive --- is BPD just a form of ADD but.... with emotion?? The same way thoughts can storm in my mind and cloud rationale I also feel about feelings. Is it all related? All just about.... not being able to untangle clutter in my brain?

I want to strip away diagnoses and look at actual behavior and thought patterns. I don't think I want to say I'm a borderline anymore. It doesn't feel right anymore. I don't know. There's some sort of change in the air, in my veins, in my brain... and I'm jsut waiting to see where I land.

a friend writes of butterflies
wielding chainsaws
husqvarnas tearing at stomach walls

texas massacre
on the backs of loggers
winged insects
hummingbirds bring up the rear

stampeding, but on wings
those butterflies
and their chainsaws
armies of fluttering
confused with softness

you make me hard
as the fall comes
you make me hard
as the love leaves
the trees scream
they all turn red

and those butterflies
wielding those chainsaws

make paper, bleed into pens
punk rock my punctuation

hummingbirds giving blow jobs
in the backseat
of rented saabs

those fucking butterflies
with those fucking chain saws

leather faced, cocaine fueled
monarched yellow and orange
cocoons split

pupas desolated
you are no longer
benign excitement
you are no longer
malignant anxiety
you are those mother fucking

butterflies
wielding those chain saws

running out of gas
breaking your chains
tossed to the side
metal clank
they wield them well
but they cannot

juggle

they keep telling me
that i should sing

shaking hands with strangers
just stepped from the stage

they keep telling me
that i should sing

i remind them of beth ditto
of janis herself
of pink
of a screaming banshee

they keep telling me
that i should sing

i don't think i have the right
til I understand the music

Sped up
just to slow down

I pass the days
pressed against
the inside of capsules
tripping on microbeads

15 hours
15 hours of sleep

running in my dreams
falling to my knees

I wake
just past three
hands empty
arms bruised

attention
deficit
amphetamine
flawed