01-20-03 @ 4:07 am EST

It's so strange, a moment ago as I backed up my journal I felt almost as if I were floating above the chair, like if I moved my legs I would find nothing beneath me. It made my head feel a bit light but still clear...like everything was soft and fuzzy, but not in the visual sense. It felt kind of relaxing and serene but now I feel heavy and earthbound again.

I didn't find this out until AFTER most of it had happened, but it's now that time of the month, and everything converged today (yesterday) to make me lose it again. Just the day before yesterday I was happily thinking about how I haven't had a major blowup with my parents in a while...just like me to go and ruin that again. Every little thing just added up and I screamed and ran to my room. I cried for over a half hour...I felt so awful that nobody came to see me. The one time I wanted somebody to come to see me, and nobody did. Then I felt awful that I had acted so horribly toward them, and angry with them that they weren't coming, and frustrated that they didn't know me well enough after my entire lifetime to KNOW that I wanted them to come see me by now. Then stupid that I had acted so childishly. And useless that here I was, a 26 year old, sitting in my room crying like a baby. And back and forth, over and over again.

As time passed and still nobody came (in his defense, as I ran to my room Coz DID come running after me until I shut the door--I know he planned on biting the anger out of me), the anger and frustration won out and I began beating my arm...then when that of course brought no response, I grew truly devastated. I was not faking this feeling for the attention...I really DID feel this awful. I slammed my hand into the headboard four, five times...immediately the veins over the knuckles rose up swollen and purple, abnormally big, and I started gasping and rubbing my hand. I felt so awful that I'd actually done something like that. What if I'd seriously hurt myself? What if I'd burst the veins or something? I honestly hadn't thought it would do that, swell up so much.

What's more is that I didn't feel a thing when I did it. Aside from a sort of initial "shock" and the thunking noise it made--which I guess is what finally drew attention--I may as well have been hitting the pillow.

I'll skip everything that came after that since it's so trivial, but now I have bruised knuckles and a large splotchy bruise on my arm. It took me ages to leave my room because I felt so stupid and awful. I know I was very pissy toward my parents yesterday evening, and it was unwarranted, for the most part. (In my own defense, I don't know why Ma offered a snarky comment when I replied to a rhetorical question of hers--I had offered to make her noodles in the hopes she would recognize it as a sign of apology, but she hadn't been hungry; and I wish Dad would know by now that I CANNOT tell when he is teasing me.) But aside from that it was my fault. And these chemicals, these hormones...I wish I could control them. Why is it that they don't seem to affect other women (I hate calling myself a woman) in the same way? I'm the only one I know of who throws screaming fits over nothing...and beats myself to bruises...when the right time of the month rolls around.

When I look back over everything that started this, if it was anything at all, I feel so much stupider. Arguing with Ma about the computer...learning that I have to wake up an hour earlier every day now when I have just started going to bed earlier because Cartoon Network changed their nighttime schedule, and now they have changed their DAYTIME schedule...losing an item on eBay at the very last minute...arguing with Ma about my hair...Ma's comment...Dad teasing me...they're all such dumb little things, taken separately. But they all came at the wrong time, in rapid-fire succession, when all the chemicals in my head are at all the wrong levels...I realize chemicals can be no excuse for me being rude, but it's like I have no idea how to control them. Like in my world, there was nothing else I could do that would be more useful than slamming my hand against wood.

And so tomorrow/today...I won't have the book I wanted from eBay (I could probably get it cheaper from Dover anyway), I'll have to get up another hour earlier (something I can't work around), my eyes and face and head are going to hurt badly (already I'm stuffed up and puffy and red and ugly, but what else is new), and I'll have these bruises to deal with.

You know what's stupider? Even while I gasped over how asinine I'd been to react the way I did, I was considering slamming my hand into furniture yet again. I swear to God. I didn't feel a thing when I did that. And even now, the bruises just fascinate me more than hurt me.

I visited a BPD forum yesterday morning, but I doubt it will be anything different from the usual. People who have been through this claim to understand how others feel, but I know better. In every self-injury forum I have ever posted in, the reaction has been the same. If you do not cut or burn yourself, you are not a self-injurer. The results of my since-deleted poll notwithstanding--if you are not the "right" kind of SIer, then you are not a part of their world. As a result, this journal is the only place I talk about this, as I may as well be invisible to other SIers. I find this extremely disappointing considering I thought they would understand the emotions I go through, but by now, seriously, I'm no longer surprised.

SIers can be ignored and shunned by even their OWN kind...and they are. Unfortunate for me that I'm the wrong kind of SIer at a time when I'm again SIing, isn't it?

Have to go now...tar...