essays - MD Luna

The Splitting Fawn: ‘I hate me—don’t leave me!’

11/19/202303/21/2024 MD Luna

If you are familiar with my non-fiction work, then it is likely that you are aware of my struggle with borderline personality disorder. For those unfamiliar, borderline is my Achilles’ heel. When I was fifteen, I endured some trauma, and I believe it was this trauma that caused my BPD. In my essay, How Borderline Personality Disorder Manifests In Me, I wrote…

I am not sure if there is much to this scientifically, but I swear I remember the day the BPD emerged. I was walking to school (probably listening to Marilyn Manson). It was a beautiful Sunny Autumn day. But I felt somehow different. I still had not yet acknowledged that I was being raped and abused. However, I had become aware of just how worthless I was feeling. As of that day, the seed of the belief that I am unloveable had sprouted.”

BPD is a mental health disorder, specifically a personality disorder, rather than a mood disorder. While people with borderline can, and typically do, experience extreme mood swings, these mood swings are not the root of the disorder, the way they are with a mood disorder such as bipolar. Rather, quick-changing moods are a symptom of borderline.

Sufferers of borderline struggle, not with a chemical imbalance, but with their cognition. Their perception of both themselves and the world are easily distorted. Perhaps the most common symptom of borderline is an intense fear of abandonment—or at least this is the case in my personal struggle with BPD. Another is to lack a sense of self, to not know who you really are. But the symptom I want to focus on today is ‘splitting’.

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Mother, Maiden, Crone: A New Perspective On Ageing

09/04/202303/21/2024 MD Luna

They do surgery in the Capitol, to make people appear younger and thinner. In District 12, looking old is something of an achievement since so many people die early. You see an elderly person, you want to congratulate them on their longevity, ask the secret of their survival. A plump person is envied because they aren’t scraping by like the majority of us. But here it is different. Wrinkles aren’t desirable. A round belly isn’t a sign of success.”
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

In our first-world culture, we equate youth with health and beauty, and we see youth as something that ought to be preserved, at all costs. Likewise, we see age as something that ought to be avoided. Women especially are encouraged to avoid ageing, for not only are we seen as less beautiful as we age, but society also tells us that the very thing we are most valuable for is our beauty, not our creativity, intelligence or strength of character. No, if you identify as a woman, forget all that, for it will not matter if you are not beautiful.

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I Attempted To Write A Short Story Everyday For Thirty Days—And This Is What The Experience Taught Me

07/27/202303/21/2024 MD Luna

Saturn Versus Jupiter

In 2020, my Saturn Return began, as did my journey cultivating discipline.

For those unfamiliar with Astrology, a Saturn Return occurs when Saturn cycles back into—or ‘returns’ to—the sign it was in on the day you were born. It takes Saturn roughly twenty-nine and a half years to transition through all twelve signs of the zodiac, so most Earthlings will experience two, maybe three, Saturn Returns in their lifetime.

Now, because Saturn rules discipline, a Saturn Return is typically a time of cultivating discipline. Specifically, a first Saturn Return is a time during which one is invited to make the journey from youth to adulthood, into true adulthood.

Speaking for myself, there are many ways in which my first Saturn Return—which only ended this past Spring—shaped me. But the one particular way Saturn influenced me that applies to this essay is how Saturn taught me to take a disciplined approach to my writing…

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