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It’s 10am. I’ve already been screamed at, been threatened, and told to kill myself.

It’s 10am. I’ve already made cuts up my arms and made myself sick and sat here staring at the collection of pills I’ve got ready for when I’m ready.

It’s 10am. I’ve been awake for an hour and already fear for my safety.

But he’s smart. He knows not to lay a finger on me where it would leave a visible bruise or marking. He knows that the second he does any of that, there’s physical evidence and that means that I can get help.  He knows that he can continue as he is and there’s nothing I can do to stop him or to get away.

Because that’s the thing, emotional abuse is never treated as a serious issue, especially not when you have BPD. You probably did something to deserve it. You’re probably exaggerating for attention. You can’t reach out and ask for help because people will assume that it’s all in your head. Add to that his poor mental health and there’s no hope.

I tried to get help once before. When the abuse got physical for a while, when there were bruises in visible places, when my own family member had pinned me to the wall and gone for me with a weapon. I told a police officer. But I was foolish enough to tell one who knew them.  He dismissed it all because they’re “good people” when you meet them.

I’m trapped here by circumstance, by my inability to work, by my inability to prove the extent of the damage he’s done. Trapped living with the man who threatened his co-worker with a knife and simply got moved to work in a different department rather than facing any form of punishment. What chance then do I have of getting help when the only witness is someone who’s failed me before?

It’s 10 am.

It’s 10 am and I don’t know how to make it through the day.

There’s not a minute of my life that I don’t think about ending it. There’s not  minute of my life where I don’t dream about how good it would be to not be here anymore. I’m not actively suicidal, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know or think about how I’d do it.

I think about all the ways this life has betrayed me, about how every time I escape one abusive situation I walk straight into another, whether it’s abuse from my family, leaving me with scars and bruises I can explain to no-one so I make up excuses. Abuse from the man who claimed to love me while inviting a his friends into his room in the middle of the night where I slept for me to wake up finding someone unwanted in my bed, someone uninvited in me. Abuse from the friends who manipulate and betray me. Or the abuse I inflict upon myself even though I promised that last time would be the last.

Everywhere I look I see another way to go. Where you see a beautiful forest, all I see is trees I could hang from. I think about what it must be like for the last thing I ever see to be the light shining between the trees. Where you see the wild and unstoppable sea, I all I see is a clean death, no corpse for my family to grieve over, no blood and gore. I think how wonderful it would be to feel free and what it would be like to feel my lungs filling with water while my heart escapes into the sea, where my spirit could chase the waves for eternity.

But ultimately I’m too scared. I’m too scared to let my Grandad deal with any more loss, too scared that it would go wrong and I’d forever be that person, too scared that it would go right and I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to everyone I love.

So I sit here, and recount the 83 pills that I had hidden away, And I daydream, about some parrallel universe where I’m happy, where the strongest pain I’ve known is heartbreak.

there is nothing prettier than watching the blood as is runs, free, escaping this, escaping reality, taking itself away from me, away from the hatred and the pain and the abuse.

I feel so faint but the blood looks so pretty as its running