I am Clareprunellpoetry. I write raw and brutally honest poetry and prose on living with BPD and OCD, derealisation, dissociation and emotional detachment. I have lived with these conditions since I was a child. I both appreciate them and despair of them. Read my unfiltered poetry on life with comorbid conditions.
I grew up in a home where my father was a violent alcoholic who beat my mother. She was emotionally detached—something I can’t blame her for, given what she was going through herself. But I was sent to a childminder on weekdays from eighteen months old, and she was physically and mentally abusive. No one ever saw what was happening to me, and that is what I can blame her for.
I grew up thinking this was normal. I had no other baseline. To keep me quiet and prevent me from telling others how we lived, I was told repeatedly that our family was normal, that all families were like ours, and that I simply wasn’t there to see it.
As I grew, my mind did clever things to help me survive. It started with counting and praying, to create some kind of control in a chaotic childhood with none (magical thinking), it split, it compartmentalised, it dissociated, it caused emotional detachment, and I ended up with OCD and then BPD. This is my story, put honestly straight onto the page. If you prefer arty, flowery poems then this is probably not for you…
