6/30/2022
It’s been a year since I received my life changing diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder and so much in my life has changed because of it. I started therapy sometime around late June and I had to do a 3-hour mental health assessment in two separate sessions where my therapists asked me questions about past trauma and past patterns of behavior. It was a really, rough week emotionally for me because of that and other personal stuff going on in my life. I sat down across from my therapist as she explained how Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis ended up on my concept map.
My reaction was one of numbness and shock. And then I made the mistake of going to the internet and looking it up and well BPD gets a bad rap for good reason. After reading all the bad things about BPD, I thought “I knew I had issues and was kind of messed up, but I didn’t expect to be this fucked up, this broken”. It doesn’t help that a couple of things that stand out on the internet about BPD are “BPD is the most painful mental disorder “Or “BPD people are manipulative” or “Some people with BPD are incapable of love”. It didn’t help that at the time I was diagnosed, I was also having a mental breakdown and my relationship at the time was on the rocks. When I told my friends and family about my diagnosis, most of them were supportive and encouraging but some were in denial and didn’t fully accept it. I was told “I couldn’t have BPD because I’m not so awful” or that “it’s not a big deal”.
A couple of weeks after my diagnosis, I was broken up with. While I don’t want to go into the details about the events that led up to the demise of that relationship; I will say that the last day I saw my ex, there were a couple of things he said to me that really impacted me and made me really look at my life. I won’t say what they were, but it was useful for the next part of my journey. The breakup validated my worst fears about myself, “I’m unlovable”, I’m hard to love”, “I’m always going to be too emotionally unstable to be in a relationship” “I don’t deserve love” “I always fuck up everything good in my life” “I’m too fucked up and broken to be loved” etc., etc. Y’all have read the poetry and stories about how I don’t handle breakups well-ever. So, I’m lying-in bed crying and thinking all these things and don’t want to get up. I was on vacation when this happened so I could’ve stayed in bed all day and it would have been fine. However, something told me to keep going and getting up. The rest of the month of July is a blur to me at this point. I did document through video and journaling what I did so I know what I did, however there are parts of that month I don’t remember living.
I know I kept up with my therapy appointments and worked every day and wrote. Something I had to do for therapy was keep a daily diary card monitoring my emotions and any situations that brought out strong emotions in me. The main emotions I felt the months of July, August, and September were anger, sadness, and despair so filling out my diary card was a task but also necessary for me to get better at coping with life.
Something my current therapist said in group therapy was how grief makes one take a stock of life and how you’re living it. After the breakup, while yes, I felt this immense grief over that situation, I also felt grief and anger over other traumatic events in my life I hadn’t healed from. It was like I had this closet full of unprocessed trauma that was about to burst open at any time and in July, the door busted wide open and out came well, almost everything I kept inside of me well hidden. Shame, guilt, anger, fury, despair, sadness over past trauma were feelings I became well acquainted with for those first three months. I felt stuck at times in this emotional fog but somehow kept going. I continually asked myself what the purpose of all my hard work was and at first it was so that I don’t ever “split” on my kids like I had on other people in my past. I also had to learn a new language with my BPD diagnosis. I know that sounds weird but with all the new vocabulary words thrown at me, it’s what it felt like. In June and July, I learned real quick what dissociation, masking, and splitting was because that’s basically what I did those months. I also learned the term hypersexuality which I’ve addressed in some of my posts and poetry in this blog. Reflecting on everything that I’ve learned I can understand how my behavior can seem scary and unsafe to some people. I’ve finally had a deep understanding of how much of my erratic and impulsive behavior has greatly impacted my life.
To be continued to part two…
Resources:
BPD Terminology:
https://shitborderlinesdo.freeforums.net/thread/37/important-bpd-terminology
Here is an episode from my favorite podcast “Back From the Borderline” about breakups that resonated with me: https://open.spotify.com/episode/19fVPtpfy8bsO2qEKQueWv?si=8NWz6oVVQ52coU1g-Bcwyg&utm_source=copy-link
