I still haven’t come to terms with having borderline personality disorder myself, so I know that it is hard for those around me to understand. It is a difficult situation to relay but I will do my best to help you to understand just how confusing and tough it can be for me on any given day. I don’t mean for you to take pity. I just want people to understand that, though I do mess up...a lot, I am doing my best.
Living with BPD is like waking up in a new life everyday. Every hour is different for me, my thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals. Heck, sometimes these all change within minutes of each other, making it hard for me to truly understand what I am pursuing or desire with anything in my life. I will order food that I really want and by the time it gets to my table I don’t care for it anymore. I will be excited to wear a certain style of clothes only to find out that a week later I want to go for a completely different style (and this applies to hair, makeup, and anything having to do with my image really). At the beginning of the day I aspire to be a school teacher and in the middle I think medical school might be the thing for me. But by the end of the day, I want to stop going to school and focus on horse training and competition.
Sometimes I come across as manipulative, and I hate feeling that I do that because I notice it too, but acting like that is not my intention. I struggle with my words and reactions sometimes. I have panic attacks with a lot of decisions or in certain situations simply because I have so many emotions running through my mind that I can’t decide how I truly feel or what I want. I just feel confused and conflicted with every choice that I make. And it is terribly exhausting to second guess everything I do...and then to second guess my second guess.
I also struggle with abandonment, which sort of ties in with the manipulative behavior. Sometimes I come across as manipulative because I fear how other truly see me. Like most of you, I want to be liked by my peers and have people in my life who truly love me for who I am and enjoy spending time with me. That being said, I have a lot of issues with trust (I believe that is just due to experiences I have had in my life, not BPD), so I constantly second guess the motives of everyone that I am with.
I often believe that people just pretend to be nice to me and don’t actually like me. I second guess my look, behavior, and social interactions every second. I hope that I don’t mess up and that I come across as funny and smart. I fear that people just put on a fake face when they are around me and don’t truly care. That they will leave me. That is one of the reasons I struggle with guys, I am stubborn and independent so I want me freedom, but at the same time, I fear being lied to or left. Another way my bipolar emotions make my life harder is when it comes to relationships, both with family and friends as well as those of the romantic variety.
One second I am deeply in love and ready to be married and the next I don’t even know that I like the man at all. One second I want to be surrounded and involved with people and the next I want to be by myself or vice versa. No matter how things end up, I want the opposite and I get depressed. I feel like I am constantly fighting myself and it is exhausting. When you can’t win no matter how anything turns out, you start to go a little crazy and wonder if you will ever be happy. I can say that sometimes I have good moments, but I don’t know that I can say that I can remember the last time that I was truly, really happy.
BPD also makes it hard for me to be rational sometimes, especially with myself, so I switch from one idea to the next with everything in my life from food to men to books (I can’t get through one book without getting bored or distracted with a different one). I struggle staying interested in movies, hobbies, and events because my emotions about everything are constantly changing even if I don’t want them to. If I frustrate you by being indecisive and changing my mind or viewpoint every minute, I am honestly just as confused and frustrated with my feelings as you are. That is why my thoughts often lead to tears. Because I am tired of running myself in circles about every little thing in my life and I honestly don’t know how I feel or what I want.
One minute I start liking myself and the next I am so depressed about how much I hate myself. Sometimes I eat like a normal person and other times I go hungry for days because I don’t think I am pretty enough. But all of these feelings, insecurities, emotions, and fears are never constant, so I never know how I truly feel about or want out of anything. Everything is different for me from week to hour, my world is new every day and that is a hard burden to bear.
There are days when I feel grown up and ready to go out and make a difference in the world. But then later in the day I have anxiety and fears about being attacked by a murderer or I am bawling because my mind won’t stop imagining monsters and demons coming to attack me and I start to feel like I am truly in danger. One minute I am an adult ready to be on my own, and the next, I am a child who is terrified to be alone. It is exhausting.
So next time you are angry at me for being difficult or you don’t understand why I text five times within a minute, remember that I don’t act how I do to be a bother, it is just how the world appears to me. I struggle with emotions and words sometimes and I constantly go in and out of depression and anxiety. I don’t have a lot of trust in people and I have struggled all of my life to fit in. I have a lot of social fears and abandonment issues and the world that I live in changes from hour to hour.
All of these things greatly affect my life in a negative way. I have trouble focusing on and passing school, I can’t keep or get a job, and I don’t get into healthy or long term relationships. Who I want to be, how I want to look, and what I want to pursue is a battle I wage within myself several times a day. This isn’t how I want to live the rest of my life forever, but it is how I live right now. I didn’t ask to have Borderline Personality Disorder, but it is something that I have to live with everyday.
I have a long, hard road ahead of me before I can know what it feels like to be happy or feel secure in myself and my relationships, but I know that anything is possible with the help of the Lord. There is no cure for my mental illness, only learning how to control it. So BPD and all of the chaos that comes with it is something that I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. I might need outside help from doctors but it is through turning to the Lord and staying true to His gospel that I will be able to get a better grasp on my life.
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