random topics

My friend's dog is being put to sleep today. It's hard to see and remember. She's a sweet dog too, and I've known her since they got her when we were seven or so. It makes you remember how extinguishable life is. It just takes a few drips of fluid to shut a brain down. Why are we so transient?
I am depressed today, over a lot of things, and over nothing. It will pass though. It's a medicated depression. I know that life will go on.
I'm having a hard time with the way I think about Josh. He did some things two nights ago that I wish he hadn't done. I don't know how to deal with it so I just... don't. It happens to me. I realize that in the midst of his psuedo BPD diagnosis, if he really does have the symptoms, I can relate to them. I don't have BPD, but I do have a lot of the characteristics, and maybe it will help to understand them. The book I have says that the diagnostic criteria are:
1. Unstable and intense interpersonal relaitoships, with marked shifts in attitude towards others. This is Josh's main characteristic, but I think it's characteristic of me too, with my friends mostly though, not with boys. However, I do do that splitting thing, without realizing it, separating the good and bad parts of people, and it makes looking at the world hard. Until today I didn't really think about it, but it's me doing the splitting, not the people being split.
2. Impulsiveness in at least two areas that are potentially self-destructive. I fit this two, my two areas being some chemical abuse and bulimia.
3. Radical mood shifts. This is hard to discern because I have bipolar disorder, but Josh definitely has these.
4. Inappropriate, intense anger. My parents insist that I had this my entire childhood. But it happens rarely these days. There are times when I am inappropriately, intensely angry. But it is mostly not in public places. Josh also doesn't fit this criterion.
5. Recurrent suicidal threats, attempts, or self-mutilating behaviors. I don't threaten suicide. I think that's manipulative. But I do do the other two.
6. Marked and persistent identity disturbance. This one is odd to me, as I believe everyone has it. But I guess it's just this super-ambivalence and confusion over identity, and changing depending on who you're with. I do the changing depending on who I'm with thing, and am unsure of my identity, but don't really think it's a BPD thing, just a normal teenage thing.
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom. Yes I have those.
8. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Yes I do that.
9. not established, but considered- psychotic experiences. Yes I've had those.

I guess I can see why my parents think that I have this disorder. But I think that that diagnostic criteria is very ambiguous. It can be present in a lot of problems, like my DID, anxiety, OCD, and bipolar.
My mom also thinks that she has BPD, which I could believe. But although BPD is fairly common, more common than my bipolar disorder anyway, I don't think I have it.

And I know it's bipolar and not BPD because off meds the mood swings are long.

I wrote this last night at my writing class when I was sitting at a pottery kiln:
"It smells like cows out here, and wet grass, and I feel at peace. I wonder if this is because nature is soothing, or because I am away from the world, or because I am truly existing at my maximum capacity. I have been questioning a lot of philosophy and religion and, essentially, my own existence, but I am at peace, somehow, despite the questioning.
I have always assumed that peace and contentment required answers, but perhaps it is not so.