If you have Borderline Personality Disorder, you already know how this works. If you don’t, buckle in now, because I’m going to take you through the sudden hard spiral I took earlier this week.
How I got in
It started at a bus stop.
I was at the far end of town, a foreign country as far as I’m concerned, and the bus service there is terrible. On the way there, I got to talk to my favourite bus driver, catch up on the news, trade jokes, that sort of thing. I asked him what stop I needed to get off at for where I was going, and he told me.
To get home, I stood at the stop across the street from where I had gotten off. I waited there several minutes, in extreme cold, until I saw the bus emerge at the bottom of the hill. But as I got my bus pass ready, I noticed that the bus was in the turning lane, and not coming to pick me up. And the driver, my favourite driver, was waving at me to go to the next stop, further up the route, because he was turning left.
My assumption here (and you will see how quickly those stack up) was that I would catch the bus at that next stop, after it had gone through a mall parking lot and around through a side street back out to the main road. So I started to run. For maybe five minutes, sometimes slowing to a walk, because I don’t run very well these days, but moving as fast as I could to get to that stop. When I rounded the corner onto the main road, the bus was there, loading passengers. I kept running. I was sure he would wait for me. I kept running.
And then, when I was about three bus lengths behind him and still running, he pulled away from the curb.
“Oh, come on!” I yelled. I couldn’t believe it. Because this was my favourite driver, the one we stop and chat with when we see him and his wife at the grocery store, the one who knows us by name, the one we trust to see us safely home. I felt so… betrayed.
The spiral started within seconds. I was coughing from all the cold air I’d just sucked in, and I was crying hot tears. I was outraged. I’d been left behind. I’d been abandoned. And the next bus wasn’t coming for 30 minutes.
Pretty soon, in the space of a minute or two, I had turned that anger in on myself. Obviously, I wasn’t worth waiting for. Obviously, he didn’t care about me as much as I’d thought. Obviously, I shouldn’t even be alive, I should never even have existed on this planet. If I had something I could cut myself with, I would feel better. If I could walk in front of the next bus (if it ever showed up), I would feel even better than better.
I imagine you reading this and thinking, “But this isn’t logical.”
No, it’s not logical at all. But that’s how the spiral works, at least for me. Your spiral may vary.
The good news is that I do not have any fresh scars, and I am not dead. The other good news is that the spiral only lasted a few hours, not a few days.
How I got out
Although it took me a lot less time to pull myself out than it normally does, it was a lot more work, and I had to calm down a little before I could start. It came down to recognizing the flaws in my thinking throughout this whole scenario.
- Assumption: that the bus route on the way home would mirror the route on the way out.
- Assumption: that the bus driver would wait for me.
- Assumption: that the bus driver had the same soft spot for me that I do for him.
- Assumption: that leaving me behind was a deliberate choice on the part of the bus driver.
What really happened was probably more like this: The driver waved me ahead because he knew the next bus to stop at that stop wouldn’t be coming for another forty minutes, and was trying to help me out. Waving at me was not a promise that he would wait for me. And leaving me behind was probably a combination of two things: having a schedule to keep, and not knowing that I was running to meet him. It was not personal.
I was still angry after all of this, because my feet hurt from running, and I was still coughing, and because since the driver hadn’t waited another thirty seconds, I still didn’t get downtown any sooner than I would have if I’d just stayed at my original bus stop. I had to get over the idea that he had cost me time. But I got through it.
And now I know for next time
I need to not make assumptions. I need to not take things personally. I need to wear warmer socks when I go to the far end of town.
Maybe most importantly: I need to research the damn bus routes before I leave home.
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