Diagnosis.

Today is Wednesday.

Wednesdays I have Therapy.

Today I had Therapy.

Today, I was mutually brave enough and frustrated enough to ask for a Diagnosis.

I sat across from her and said “Iwant a diagnosis, once and for all.”

Without blinking, without skipping a beat, she looked me straight in the eye and said:

“You have Borderline Personality Disorder.”

I immediately began sobbing uncontrollably.

No. Please, no.

This means I am my mother’s daughter.

Until now, I had thought myself ‘better’ than her, because she chose to have BPD and I, well, I had managed to be smarter than that by getting myself a therapist, journaling, becoming spiritual, being consistently self-aware, following my heart, doing all the Hard Work.

NO. Nonononononononono.

I was hoping that I was ‘normal’, ‘fine’. That yes, maybe I was more emotional, intense, passionate than most folks and oh yes maybe I had tendencies toward abandonment panic and severe rage, and it yes, WAS weird that my moods swung so often and so frequently, and that I had bouts of debilitating depression followed by bouts of frantic anxiety, but so does everyone, I thought! How human of me!

No.

My therapist has known this entire time (about 3.5 yrs) that I’ve BPD, but I am devastated by this Diagnosis.  
She said its along the same lines as having anorexia or alcoholism: the tendencies have been, are, and always will be residing within me; that I can learn to manage the symptoms and characteristics, but I’d have to fight it my whole life.

Medication may or may not help.

It will take years to master the Art of Coping with BPD.

Along the way relationships will fail and friendships will break apart.

NO.

I spent the session attempting to accept my fate but fighting every iota of it.

I went to class today (Mold Making) because I didn’t know what else to do with myself. I mean, after the Diagnosis, I spent fifteen minutes frantically searching my purse for the keys that were in my hand the whole time.

Now I am laying in bed with a glass of red wine watching Anne of Green Gables.

Current mood: defeated.

Current music: Amanda Palmer – Runs In The Family.

aspartame weekend

Friday: Not scheduled for a shift at the cafe, I did my laundry, abused the free wi-fi at my neighborhood coffee shop, and though I never had a craving for it, drank my weight in diet orange soda. Bizarre, I thought, as I mentally noted the empty cans in my trash bin.

Saturday: Yes, it was hard to get out of bed, and though I managed to get through the hair/make-up/get dressed routine, Depression was keeping me indoors, making excuses for me to NOT get to my studio today. Just then, I got an email from my dear and genuine friend Agata. She liked my blog, she said, and that I should feel free to please come hang out with her whenever I wanted to, and she wouldn't mind if Depression tried to tag along too (It can be a bit of a third wheel), she wouldn't judge. She called me 'lovely', I felt Embraced, and it sent me out the door.
         Upon my arrival to school, I whipped out my journal and wrote 3 free-writing pages of how proud of myself I was for getting there, how OKAY I felt that moment. I proceeded to play with watercolor pencils and paints and different kinds of paper.

This led to me tearing up a pieces of newspaper and writing on it, in black ink over the grayscale printed text, a letter to my ex-boyfriend, the Love of my Life. I agonized, I confronted, I lamented, I apologized, I accused. It took an entire page and by the end of it I was EXHAUSTED. I couldn't give my 'play time' another minute. With promises to myself and others that I'd be back the next day, I gathered up my purse and got on the bus. It wasn't until I was home that I noticed the paint on my hands and clothes. I must've been really 'expressing myself'.
    Even though it was Saturday night, my evening ended with comfy socks, a glass of white wine, and more Dave Eggers (AHWOSG).

Sunday: With every intention to go to my studio and do it all over again, I found myself sprawled on my couch with zero energy. Damn this Depression. Though I read and took reference notes on the entirety of Alice in Wonderland (trippy, trippy book, man. trippy.), journaled, and did research on the habits of the Victorian Era, I did it all from my couch while I watched a marathon of Say Yes To The Dress reruns.
    At least today I enjoyed myself while I did it. I didn't stay on my couch out of misery, like before. The Depression kept me indoors, but my Spirit was content.
  And watch for new sculpture ideas inspired by Alice's adventures, a Victorian aesthetic, and a wounded heart.

Sigh.
I've still not been able to go back to my Old Life, which included daily workouts and a hyper-productive schedule. I'm disappointed that I've not been to the gym in a couple weeks, and I've let my Self and my Home fall by the wayside (being so single compounds the latter).
I'm determined to pull out of this. The Desire is there, its just the Depression blocks the Motivation, blinds it, cuts it off at the knees.
Love can overcome all this, right? *please say yes* I believe Yes.


Oh also, I drank my weight in diet orange soda again.

The Depression seems to find something oddly comforting in orange-flavored carbonation.

Now I sit watching Mad Men (my first time!), with a glass of wine and a mild tummy ache, and crossing my fingers that the Universe hasn't given up on me quite just yet.



current mood: searching
current music: amanda palmer - the astronaut.

theres plaster under my fingernails. plaster and a little Hope.

Hope source #1:
A few days ago I hung out with my friend Lorissa. This is big because lately Depression has kept me as a prisoner in my own home, grimly allowing me out only for serious obligations like work or class.
Lorissa does my hair in the basement of the trendy apartment she shares with her husband and their record collection, and when I grow up I want to be just like her. She always gives me a healthy, loving dose of reality, and I left feeling Understood.

Hope source #2:

My classes have been going just okay. But after some students noticed that I seem to be just a shell of the happy and hardworking person I once was, I set up a meeting with the Chair of the Sculpture Department to discuss my new direction, considering my new Situation (clinical depression). It was incredibly enlightening, and provided me with a small dosage of artistic hope. As long as I’m trying, each day, to function like a normal human being, I might as well surrender to the Emotion. I could use it, in my art.

Hope source #3:

The next day I met with my therapist, who told me the battle is all inside of me. I don’t trust myself to not lose the love of my life again. Depression keeps me home, safely away from falling in Love again and fucking it up again and being alone and miserable again. But it’s all so futile, isn’t it? –because I’m alone and miserable now. I just have to indulge my self-destructive side in my Art, though the therapist prefers the word “channel” over “indulge”.

Hope source #4:

Then the day after that I sat and had quite a long discussion with my Ceramics teacher, a Welsh woman with blond and fushcia hair and glaze under her fingernails. I told her that I felt so lost as an artist: I’m so terrified of producing something cliché, I psych myself out before I even begin. Her advice was to allow myself to “play”; to take a day or weekend in which I make art simply for the sake of making art, devoid of any intention besides the pursuit of my own pleasure.

Hope source #5:

The world seems to be echoing the same sentiment: that I am to embrace myself, my Self; all parts of me can coexist within me, I don’t need to try to drown one in order to Not Get Hurt. If I’ve learned anything, its that Love is risky that way. But you see, I HAVE learned.

Hope source #6:

So I visited the school library and stocked up on books on Victoriana, tossed in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius on the bus ride home where I ate cheap sushi while listening to Cyndi Lauper sing the blues with Jonny Lang. This is much more like it J

This weekend, in terms of me and my Self, anything goes, everything is okay. I won’t judge myself, I will embrace myself. And I will share with you the results.

Current mood: duh. hopeful.
Current music: the black keys - tighten up

nice to meet you

Hello. My name is Kendra and I am pleased to meet you.
I am new to blogging, so please don't judge too harshly.

Why "Lady*Cakes", you may ask? Well, someone called me that once, and it just kinda stuck. An ex-boyfriend even said "You really are a ladycakes!". I did not bother to ask what he meant by that...

That being said, allow me to introduce myself.
Because my mother is Central American and my father is a trilingual French man, Spanish is my first language, and French is my second. My parents are both workaholic fashion designers in Los Angeles, who imparted on me a unique and often confusing sense of style.
I went to an all-girls Catholic High School, with girls whose parents were doctors, lawyers, housewives, and narcissists. Needless to say, it was very nearly the death of me; my bleeding heart barely made it out alive.
At 17, I moved to San Francisco and never looked back. In my decade here, I've received a degree in Music Marketing & Artist Management and worked in the local music industry for years before signing my flagship band to Bigger Management and resting on my laurels. In the process of achieving that fleeting success, I lost friends, jobs, and sadly, the love of my life.
Unable to face Reality, I retreated back to my safe haven: school, this time attempting to learn the 'family business': fashion design. Once my teachers and peers realized who my parents were (high up on the LA label ladder), they began to keep a close and judgemental eye on me. I was reduced to tears too many times before I changed my major to Sculpture. Thats right- I CHANGED MY MAJOR. IN GRADUATE SCHOOL.
What can I say? That's how I roll. Up to my ears in debt, following/chasing my heart's whims.

I feel obligated to mention here that my mother suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder, and depression and alcoholism run in my family. *I* have been running from all of it until recently, when Depression finally caught up with me. I found myself spending entire days at a time in bed and I saw no reason to even go through the motions of life.
Until I picked up Tao Te Ching. I saw that I was nothing more than a Being in this Universe, and if the Universe insists that I wake up everyday, I needed to know why. I hunted, and then....:
My heart screamed at me:
Love.
Beauty.

So those are my reasons for living. At the center of Everything, is Love. Love is Beautiful.
Love and Beauty are my Heart, my Art, my Life. I surrender to thee.

Currently, I work part-time in a cafe down the street from my assigned studio space at school. I 've since received the label of "Conceptual Mixed Media Installation Artist'.
Some more truths about me: I live in the foggy outskirts of San Francisco. I'm excellent at being decent, but I will tear your neck off if you hurt anyone I love. On almost a daily basis, I find myself thinking that the key to my domestic bliss lies in rearranging my furniture. I consistently over-tip. I'm eager to please, but in a bitter way. I wish I had the ability to weigh everything before I ate it. If you yell at me I'll always remember it. I like ice cream when its cold outside. I am sporadically affectionate, but inherently, consistently maternal. You're probably too 'scene' for me. I would love to be the reason someone woke up in the morning.
I think I have four basic emotions. One of them is 'drunk'. It is by far my favorite.

I am very VERY old-fashioned, and I've trouble adjusting to things like technology. You see, I believe myself to have been reincarnated, formerly from the Victorian Era, where lace, ruffles and repressed sexuality ran rampant. I have an exciting life, but I'd trade it all in to live in the Anne of Green Gables movie, churning my own butter and drinking raspberry cordial by the hearth with my farmer husband.

I am excruciatingly single, and I am on the constant search for Love and Beauty (theyre elusive sons of bitches).

I hope you read me and like me.

Thank you.
It was nice to meet you.



current mood: charmed, i'm sure.
current music: the bird and the bee - polite dance song.