Sometimes you meet people that positively impact you when you’re least expecting it. That’s how I feel about the writer of this piece.
When we first met, it felt easy from the start to share intimate details about each other. I told her about my family, and my fears, and my aspirations as if I had known her for years.
When she told me that she was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, I actually felt more comfortable talking to her. Is that weird? For those of you who don’t know, my dad also has Borderline Personality Disorder.
Getting to know this writer, in turn, helped me get to know my dad and for that I can’t thank her enough.
Needless to say, her words are cool AF and I’m very lucky to share them here:
Living with Borderline Personality Disorder is not beautiful.
Every day, it is fighting a battle every that I’m not sure I’m ever going to win.
Rewind seven years ago to when I was age 15. When I was first diagnosed. I was in a relationship with a male who physically and mentally abused me. One broken arm, scratched cornea, and a couple hospital visits later – I felt that I deserved it. I apologized for his mistakes, like the 6 times that he cheated on me. However, I was cheating on him as well… with multiple people both men and women. Living with borderline personality disorder is living with unstable relationships including the relationship that you have
with yourself.
For 8 years, I self-harmed. Attempting and thinking about suicide occurred very frequently. I felt that this was “normal” and when someone tried to tell me otherwise… it did not end well. My temper was out of control – one minute I would be cheerful and then the next, for whatever reason, I would be punching holes in walls and screaming things that never made
any sense. I have lost many friends due to my mental illness. Looking back on it now, I can understand why. I wasn’t a good friend and I wouldn’t have wanted to be my friend either. I was using the people around me for my own selfish reasons and I didn’t care. I was manipulating every single person in my life. When I was a senior in high school, one of my better friends committed suicide. As usual, no one saw it coming. I remember getting the news and feeling my heart break for the first time. This was a sadness I didn’t recognize. Being in a major depressive state was a constant in my life, but when this happened – it
was a sadness mixed with jealousy and confusion. I did not attend school for roughly 2 weeks after that. I wasn’t able to move. I remember my mom lied to my school and told them I was absent because I had mono. It was easier than explaining to them that I have BPD.
One of the biggest things that I personally face with BPD is dissociation. When I’m faced with certain situations in my life that trigger me to feel sad or nervous, I pretend like they don’t exist. I literally stop feeling and thinking about things entirely. I can’t control this and in turn, it has caused me to have an awful memory of even the good things that have
happened in my life. After I come out of a dissociative state, I often feel like I’ve grown into new skin. When I dissociate I leave everything about my life behind. I don’t talk to my friends, family, and I don’t leave my house. I don’t do anything. I’m just there physically but not mentally. Though my BPD is not as bad now as it used to be, every now and then I will dissociate. This has caused tremendous frustration with my college friends and it’s taken a lot of time to explain to them why I do this in order to help them better understand. If
there is one thing I have learned, it’s that BPD is a very confusing disease. You can never genuinely understand it unless you’re living with it. My family has supported me as best they can. However, I have an older brother who suffers from Bipolar 1 Disorder. He is also a heroin addict. Their focus has more so been on helping him throughout my life and in a twisted way, it’s actually helped me understand myself better.
College was my turning point. Freshman year I wasn’t necessarily in a good place because I didn’t have any friends and I dissociated a lot. Sophomore year, I decided to be an RA. I gained all these amazing and positive new people in my life. I also got into the nursing program at school because I realized that I wanted to help adolescents with mental illness. I wanted to be that person who was there for someone who felt alone – I wanted to help them understand that they are never alone no matte how alone they feel. Although I don’t know how it feels to be them, I want to try and understand. I know all too well how it feels to be misunderstood constantly. Junior year I was doing well. I stopped cutting and I dumped my loser abusive boyfriend (woohoo!) I had friends, true and genuine friends, for the first time in my entire life. I felt like I belonged somewhere. I fell in love with a woman. For the first time, I was in love…. and then senior year had its ups and downs. I got broken up with. That sent me into a depressive dissociative state. I started fucking around with a lot of people. Drinking too much. Almost… almost self-harmed again. I got to a really low point. Then I realized something: I have come so far since the beginning. I just recently graduated with my BSN in nursing. I have grown tremendously since I was that out of control 15-year-old girl. When I was at a low point… I wrote a poem:
That Unlovable Girl
I wonder when I will stop being “that girl”
That girl who had the bones in her wrists
severed by a boy with a thick temper
That girl who is into girls
That girl who is into guys
That girl who only fucks guys
That girl who is there,
palms open, ready to feed your loneliness
That girl who you have no intention of keeping,
but you still kiss her goodbye
That girl who fucked you as hard as she hated herself
That girl who swam on her back
through your bloodstream and decided to call it home
“A day will come” my mother sighs,
“when you will find someone who knows how to love you”
That girl wonders how they know this,
where did they learn how to love her
Who taught them how to stitch every broken
piece of diamond back together
Where did they learn to dance with the chaos
that fills her raging and empathetic heart
Her quick wit and swollen fist full of apologies
“I promise you,” my mother says,
“every atom in your being will be enough.”
My BPD has often caused me to feel unlovable. But I know that the only person who believes I am unlovable is myself. I now know that I am stronger than my mental illness. I will have days that totally suck, but I’m alive. Through everything, I am still fucking alive. My journey is to be cherished. Dark days are only dark if you believe they have to be. Paint your own fucking picture, write your own story, and know that whatever society tells
you is “wrong” with you – only makes you a whole lot brighter. Mental illness needs to be talked about more and the stigma needs to be broken. We are all compromised and we all have our own shit. I would be terribly boring without my mental illness. Who knows, I might wake up tomorrow and have a really shitty day; I might fall into a spiral. That’s okay though. I know the future is out here.
Krump Writes 