Security Blanket

As I'm in bed writing this, I have my newish security blanket draped over the computer so the bright computer screen doesn't disturb my sleeping husband or big puppy.  It's a fluffy blue blanket that started as a couch cover.  When I was under the weather, I brought it into the bed to cover my face at night, so I wasn't breathing in more cold air or contaminants and making myself sick.  Also, my husband sometimes wraps the blanket around his feet and twists it off me.  With the two blankets, I stay more covered through the night.

I haven't written in this blog too often, but when I do, it is in ways, my security blanket.  I can try to articulate my anxieties and feel relieved and protected.

But I know that security blankets are a myth.  When I was a child, I thought that being in bed asleep, buried in the pillows and stuffed animals under the blankets assured that I wouldn't get awakened and abused by my father.

I was wrong.  I can remember a couple times when he dragged me out of bed to yell at me for whatever horrible crime I had committed.

Anger, especially in one who displays the signs of BPD, is unstoppable.  It's a wave of fury.  It's like a tsunami washing over the land - not just once,  but maybe several times, and each time severe, leaving deep lasting scars.

My dad could have defined the term "road rage".  If he were a gun person, he could have been the first to "go postal".  Although, I don't even know if he's ever hit anyone beside my sisters and me.  Maybe he just saved all that hatred, insecurity, feelings of inadequacy, feelings of injustice in the world, paranoid delusions, and he channeled it all into our "upbringing" and punishment.

Today I was stressed.  I had left home to go to work a few minutes later than I had wanted to.  And it took way too long to turn onto the main road.  And then the interstate was closed.  There had been an accident.  I knew it was pretty bad if they blocked off the ramp completely.  So, someone in the middle lane cut me off.  And I was pissed.  Especially after seeing that there obviously had been a bad accident.  And then the car that cut me off slowed down as the light turned yellow.  That car just made it through the light.  I did not.  It turned red before I got to the intersection.  We have red light cameras all over.  So, I couldn't run the light.  Plus, I always anticipate a car waiting to turn left from the other direction at the last second, as I am often the car doing this.

So, I was pissed.  I was raging.  I screamed in my car.  And then I realized that I was screaming in my car.  And for some reason, I thought of my dad.  And how I didn't want to morph into him.  I was still stressed and angry.  But I realized, at least I wasn't involved in that accident that had closed the interstate.  Maybe if I had left when I had wanted to, I would have been involved in that accident.  Maybe I would have been dead.  That is way worse that missing a yellow light, even though sometimes, it might not feel that way.

And then tonight, I just got some long email from my father's guardian about how his caretaker doesn't ignore his abusive ways enough.  I've never been a caretaker for old people.  But maybe that's their job.  To take old people's abuse, just because they are old?  Sounds like a shitty job.  I don't think I could be paid enough to do that job.

As it is, I've paid enough of my life's blood for my dad's abuse.  Sure, I'm older, that was in the past.  The scars are there, and they have their own topography, and they are ugly and beautiful in their own way.  But they are my scars.  They are my security blanket.  Like when I get a burn, cut or bruise, and I keep touching it to feel the pain and the progress of the healing.  Or like how right now, I'm picking at the scab from the zit on my chin.  Stewing on the fact that I still gets zits at the age of 38 will not make them go away.  And picking at the scab definitely won't make it heal faster.  But it's comforting...