Day Three. Becoming the Captain of my Voyage.

     There are an infinite number of things we experience in a day that can lead to an a-ha moment. Sometimes they are big and change us dramatically. Sometimes they are small and just change our perspective on a specific situation. Today I experienced a small one. As a huge fan of Star Trek I was watching an episode of Voyager that I had taped. In the episode the captain is involved in an accident and dies. An alien, taking the form of her dead father in order to deceive her, comes to take her into the" afterlife". Not being ready to go she stays for her funeral and decides she will not move on but stay with the crew and the ship. In response the alien says to her, "It's a horrible existence Catherine. As time wears on, you begin to see how potent, how destructive, loneliness is. You'll see the people you love going on with their lives. Doing all the things you used to share with them, but you won't be a part of it anymore. You'll be forever shut out of their existence. It becomes agonizing." Now I know this was about death. And I know we aren't really shut out of people's existence unless we or they make that decision. But I could relate to the words.
     When I left Emmanuel I was distraught. I missed my girlfriends who hadn't come back and I missed my boyfriend at home. I didn't want to, and couldn't be, at college without my girls. Yes, I had my guy friends but they couldn't take the place of my girls. I was so lonely. Emotionally exhausted I called up my mom and said I needed to come home. I figured my best friend was there along with my boyfriend and things would get better. They didn't. I lost all focus. I was so consumed with missing all my friends from college. It was the one place in life that I had ever been happy. A year later my boyfriend and I broke up. I thought we'd be together forever. Then my best friend got married and started popping out little ones. It went this way with everyone. Moving on, growing apart.  And all I felt was forgotten and left behind. Discarded as a memory. Everyone was going forward in their lives and I didn't want to. I couldn't. Eventually, I became crushed with the pain and cut off all ties. Again, I thought that by doing this it would make things better. And again, it didn't. It took about eight to ten years but in the last two I have made some progress.
     As I sit here writing this I realize that I had contracted BPD by then, making it impossible to process all the changes and losses. It makes me weep. So that brings up the question of whether a "normal" person would be weeping or if my BPD is exacerbating my sadness. Hell if I know. It's so complicated.
     I'm trying to remember exactly when the blind men with their dodge balls showed up. I spent a week in the psych ward at a local hospital in 96. My depression had gotten out of control. That was the first time I was diagnosed with BPD. I ignored it. Or rather, I was so caught up in my explosive emotional mind that it got lost in there somewhere. I was recently reminded, to my mortification, of a beach trip in 95 where let's say, a very unfriendly and apparently strong , um, presence took over my being. I remember very little and would rather forget it ever happened but it now raises the question of whether that was related to the BPD. I feel all illnesses are from the Enemy and can emerge in many different ways. Was that the physical manifestation? I don't know.
     So what does this have to do with the Star Trek quote? Well, I have faced and continue to face that potent, destructive, and agonizing loneliness. I get paralyzed with it and the fear comes and then I just want to give up because the emotions are so overwhelming. But when the captain was faced with that reality she persevered. She didn't give up. She didn't turn her back on her loved ones and run away. She said her friends may move on and she may not be a part of that but she can be happy for them and enjoy their achievements from afar. She wasn't just the captain of Voyager anymore. She was the captain of her own personal voyage into the new unknown. I want to be the captain of my voyage. The elephant has been at the helm for far too long and I need to refresh my navigational skills. Besides, my feet aren't nearly as big as an elephants' and therefore they shall have less of a dreadful stench.
  By the way, the captain was really having a near death experience and comes to the realization that the alien created the hallucinations in hopes of making her give up her life and nourish him with it. It occurs to me the irony of that ending. Because isn't that just what the Enemy wants at our end?