Thing is, some times I can't turn my brain off. That's when I start looking for answers to questions that have no structure or even a reasonable point. That's when my brain starts replaying all the most emotionally charged moments of the past three years. That's an improvement, I guess. I don't feel the need to relive the tapes of my childhood. I don't need to revisit the things that happen in my college years. I just have a few things... I'm diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. And that means, in part, that I have this need to create outer drama to create inner peace. When the outside calms down my inside goes nutty. And I have been having a pretty good run of things this past year. The past three years, to tell the truth.

It's like a thought that comes through your head one morning. I need to go buy milk. Then you start thinking of the last time you bought milk, and the time before that, and how much milk you should buy this time around that can make your milk purchasing be more cost efficient. And all these thoughts are circling through at the same time. And then you think, what if my daughter ends up with a milk allergy? What if she gets food poisoning? You start a new trail of thought to document all the little bits of that possibility.

Somewhere in the mess of jumbled thoughts is You. Dizzy from trying to catch up, unable to calm your thoughts enough to sleep, and you feel bad because this is a sign of the disease. This is what you have condemned your loved ones to suffer because they love you, because you can't just "snap out of it", because all the therapy and medication of a decade and even the love of a good husband can't make you normal. I hate myself for thinking that, even as I'm thinking it, even as I think how silly I'm being for having this thought in the first place.

Pretty soon my brain starts functioning in run-on sentences. Pretty soon it comes back to the old coping mechanisms. Is there something strong enough to knock out the mental merry-go-round? Is there anything in this new life strong enough?

I have to go back to my therapists next week and tell them that I'm having a relapse. I'd give anything not to have this.

To be normal.