Hope

Chapter 5

──────

2024

Empathy is strong in someone with BPD. Believing that you've hurt someone you love destroys the psyche-- and when you're so young, it's hard to ever heal that, even if the person tells you you never hurt them. It burns into the surface of the brain and the parasite-- the BPD-- it feeds off of it. If it can't destroy your relationships, it will try to destroy you. DBT teaches you how to stop that from happening. How to control things ourselves and handle what we can't. It rewires the brain even if you don't think it can, or you disassociate the entire time. It is life saving. However, it does not stop the symptoms from creeping in, and there is no cohesive way to write about something so muddled and catastrophic to the system. It becomes a war between your trauma, your skills and your environment.

──────

My mom wakes me early, rustling my shoulder and whispering promises of hot breakfasts into my ear. At first, I resist her coaxing as I've done since ten, shrouding my eyes with a palm, rolling onto my side in my effort to stubbornly ignoring her.

"Hope," My mom says sternly, giving my shoulder another shake. I remain silent, still. My mom raises her voice. "Hope!"

I jolt at the sharpness, my dreams dispersing in an instant.

They felt important. Something about weeds and flowers.  Mostly blind and tired, I wash my face and teeth in the sink while attempting to comb out the snarls that the tower fan I have on every night wove into my hair, flinching at every kink, each task taking longer than it ought to before I finally make it downstairs. I groan, and my mother chuckles at my grogginess from where she dances around the kitchen collecting breakfast items and condiments.

The kitchen is decorated in streamers that are weighed down by masking tape and my feet kick about balloons that are a bit lacklustre in the cold winter morning. My moms placed waffles on the counter, giving me a small colourful bag with rich pink paper that I tear at to get to the new piercing jewellery I've been wanting before I even take a bite. I smile down at my plate, letting her press a kiss to my forehead and even muster an I love you before she's sweeping out of the house for work. James stumbles into the kitchen two waffles later, grumpy and mumbling something like a happy birthday before he heads for the coffee pot and stares existentially down the sink drain. Theres not much to do, and I feel restless, so I disappear upstairs to put a little extra effort into my makeup and outfit of the day. 

I steeple my fingers against my lips as I wait for the hair straightener to heat up, smiling as the notifications from my friends start to fill up the sunset coloured Lock Screen of my phone, stalling only at the one text message sent from a number I haven't messaged in a while. I swallow, and hum along to the music half a beat behind to try and calm myself from doing something reckless.

I force myself to be still and not flinch away from the sensation of the heat radiating on my skin even as the screen lights up, the photo of my brother taken a few Christmas' ago startling. 

I pick it up, placing the straightener down with the other hand onto its small heat mat, eyebrows furrowed.

"Hello?"

"Happy birthday loser."

I smile softly to myself at the teasing croon in my brother's voice, the one I hadn't heard in much too long.

"Thanks, Owen."

"Did you finally get that barbie you always wanted?"

I roll my eyes, "Owen, reminding you yet again - I'm sixteen, and it was polly pocket, not barbie."