Dying with Borderline

The face I see in the mirror of the woman looking at me feels foreign. I look at her while I dissociate. Are we the same? Do I live inside of her, or does she control me? Every waking moment, a thought creeps up: Is she sane? Am I ruining her life? What if I merge with her? Is that even possible? We look the same, yet we have no sense of familiarity. I fail to recognize her on most days. The picture she took a week ago seems so different; is that her real smile? Does her nose crinkle up?

The ghost of me walks through the hallways of the college, smiling at people, sometimes strangers. I have lost all control over her. We are two different beings now. The third one who recognizes her shows up some days, but we don't let her stay. She dared to call me a monster while all I did was protect her. She knows she doesn't deserve love. We know it's never coming our way. Her trying to look pretty only gets her looked at, stared at, and objectified. But we know that's the closest thing to love we can hope for. That's how love is. Abusive, painful, our only dream, and our worst nightmare. If you lose yourself in love, your sense of self runs away too. We are the same. We are so different; I think I live outside her body. She thinks it's all in her head. I know I hold everything inside. The scars she has on her left arm are much deeper on my skin. I prick them every day while I bleed to death until this girl wraps me up in bandages, loving me, holding me in her arms, and whispering in my ears that everything will be fine. We have sobbed together for hours. I pity her some days; I hate her the most. I love it when she comes running to me. All I want is her attention. Why won't she kiss me until I rip my flesh apart? Do I have to kill her body to deserve love? I think we deserve to die. I think she is breathless. She breathes outside of me. Right now, when we type these words together, we have never felt so apart. This sounds fake. She sounds fake.

The more we talk, the more we dissociate. Is this an attempt at being true to ourselves or a phoney write-up trying to grasp our complexities for the world to laugh at? These words don't feel like mine; she can't think without me breathing down her neck, reminding her that everything she feels is a lie. We are not in pain; we are dying together. I wish I could strangle her. I wish I could smile at her. She wishes her brains would pop out every second of the day. I feel happy for doing that to her. We deserve the abuse that comes our way. Every failed suicide attempt is a mark of shame on our bodies. The pang of guilt sucker punches us in the gut. I sucker punch her in the gut for trying to live. How dare she? I wish I could caress her hair and sing her a lullaby so she falls asleep in my arms. I'll poison her to death then. I think she knows what I'm up to. She gives in on most days. such a good girl, she listens to every word I say. She thinks she can beat me, but we both know it's a facade we try to pull off. I'm good. I'm happy. I am grateful all the time. I am anxious when I lie. I am pretty when I cry. I am screaming internally while she writes it down with a poker face. What's wrong with this body? Why is it still sitting on the bed and not jumping off the roof? The idea of saving ourselves is so foreign, but somehow we end up trying. Maybe we love each other. We don't know what love feels like anyway. I think I need a cigarette. We think she needs to kill herself. I think we just need a hug. We pray for the pain to stop together. We can't separate each other physically, but with every sigh we take together, we pull apart. I become the air; she's the hollow flesh. The centre of our core has never existed for us. The internal locus of control is a downward spiral. As I write this down, I realize art causes you pain. We relived our journey of struggling together, fighting constantly, and begging each other to stop. I stop when she harms herself. That's what it takes—the sheer amount of physical pain—to paralyze me. The pain causes the words to flow. We are all interwoven together by threads of misery.