Introducing Me

Alrighty. Where to start? I love writing. Now, I may not be the very best at it, but its still something I love doing. So when I came across vocal and found out I could build myself a place on this platform for my writing I got very excited. Now I have writers block for fiction and I'm honestly a little nervous at the idea of putting my real life stories out there. I've never been that hesitant to share my stories with people, I want to help people get through their own stories by sharing my experiences, but something about being judged by the entire internet, rather than just a few people, is terrifying. In this day and age of the internet one wrong word online can ruin your entire life. It can keep you from attaining your dream career or get you fired from the job you have. To be fair my dream career involves me being in the public eye anyways so I guess I have to put myself out there eventually regardless. I may as well start now.

I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Breanna Gwendolyn See, but you can call me Bree. I'm 24 years old and a single mom to a 2 year old boy with split custody between his father and I. I'm a college drop out and I long to work in the performing arts. I'm also currently a surrogate for a wonderful couple, but I can't share much for details about that out of respect for their privacy. I am a cisgender pansexual female, and a huge supporter of LGBTQIA+ rights as well as the BLM movement. I also struggle with my fair share of mental health issues. Those issues and my values are why I want to share stories and speak out. I want to help people, especially anyone who may relate to the things I've experienced.

My writing varies a lot. I love writing fiction whether that be short stories, super ambitious full length novels that I will likely never finish, plays, or even musicals. I also love sharing my real life stories. Here I plan to tell you about my experiences discovering my sexuality, my mental health struggles, what its like becoming a mom unplanned at 21, my experience in Canadian public school, and more. I'll also share my fictional writing that will usually pertain to some or all of those issues as well.

So lets get started on you getting to know me. I guess we can start with mental health. I'll later share stories of the struggles I've had because of my mental health as well as my diagnosis story, but for now I'll just share a little bit about what I'm diagnosed with. I have Borderline Personality Disorder, Anxiety, Depression, and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Jesus, I know that sounds like a hell of a lot, and sometimes it is, but I've learned to deal with it all fairly well most of the time. But for those of you who don't know what all of that means let me go over some basics of my issues.

Borderline Personality Disorder or BPD is probably the one that most people know little to nothing about. Honestly, there's still a lot of things about it that I don't understand either and I have it! Excuse me while I quote some medical journals and other reliable BPD sources. For starters a common misconception is that Borderline is the same as Bipolar. This is common because it wasn't that many years ago that they were diagnosed as one disorder! Thankfully they realized that was incorrect. There are many similarities between the two, a main one being extreme moods, but they are also very different.

A wonderful website you can use to learn more about BPD is borderlinepersonalitydisorder.org But here's a quick version of their overview. Please note here that I am paraphrasing directly from their article in many of these statements and am not in any way intending to plagiarize them. BPD centers on the inability to effectively manage emotions. This of courses ranges by person and also by the setting a person with BPD is in. Just because a person with BPD seems normal and high functioning in the setting or situation you see them in does not mean that their minds aren't truly in turmoil. People with BPD struggle to control their thoughts and emotions and impulse control and are also frequently reckless.

So how does MY BPD effect me as a person? Well, my emotions are ever changing and sometimes those emotions become more extreme than necessary. Allow me to give an example. Think of a situation that would mildly annoy you, maybe just anger you slightly. Now think of another situation that one enrage you. In the first situation I often have trouble keeping myself from being enraged the way you are in the second situation. I often realize that the extremity of my emotion is unnecessary however I still struggle to keep that emotion in check. Then in the second situation I'm likely to be completely unable to control my emotion and will act out in an uncontrollable fit of rage. When in this uncontrollable state I may resort to reckless and dangerous impulses that could hurt me or those around me. However these extremes also happen in good situations. When I'm happy I'm often overjoyed! I become hyper and excited, but my lack of impulse control can often come along in those good moods as well, and sometimes in just as negative and dangerous ways.

Its also common for people with BPD to experience other mental health issues along side it, such as anxiety and depression, as well as eating disorders and substance abuse. Substance abuse is often a problem with BPD because of the impulse control issues and their often self sabotaging and destructive behaviour. People with BPD may experience inexplicable impulses for destructive behaviour. They may frequently sabotage their own lives and relationships or exhibit self harming behaviour.

I'll share some real life stories and experiences pertaining to my BPD later. Now, I'm not going to go into such a detailed explanation of anxiety or depression, I think at this point most people have at least a general idea of what each of those are. However, I will likely in the future explain some common misconceptions about them as well as some stories of how they've effected me as everyone experiences their anxiety and depression a little differently. PTSD however, and more specifically CPTSD are very frequently misunderstood.

Now there's a hundred ways for me to try to explain this but I honestly feel like its so easy for me to misspeak on this and for there to be a misunderstanding. I'll start with a basic. Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder stems from multiple or repetitive trauma(s). mind.org.uk has great articles on CPTSD, but you can also look for some scholarly articles. healthline.com also has some good information about it.

The main reason I don't want to speak on my CPTSD here is because I feel the best way to explain it is through my stories, which I'll tell another time.

Let me also just confirm here that I am officially and professionally diagnosed with all of these things. If you think you may have a mental health problem you can do your own research but please do not claim to have a disorder until you have been properly diagnosed by a mental health professional.

So now you know a little about me. I quite hope this hasn't been horribly boring for people. There's so many more things for me to tell you, but there's time for that. Now one thing I want to put out there; when I tell many of my own stories there will be name changes. Not my own of course, but out of respect for other people involved, including those who have hurt me as I don't wish to use the past against people, I'll be changing the names of my friends in stories as well as former relationship partners and coworkers etc. I wouldn't want someone plastering my secrets publicly, although I'm basically about to do it to myself, so I wont do it to other people.

To those of you who have made it this far, thanks for reading and I hope you'll be here for the next one.

Sincerely, Bree Gwendolyn