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No new letters will be added to this section at this time.
I have been married and divorced from the same man two times and I am currently married to a crack cocaine addict that I left my husband for. I have two girls 5 and 11 that I love very much but that I feel I am ruining emotionally. I drink even though I have a disease of the liver. I feel terrible most of the time, angry almost all of the time, spiteful and resentful much of the time. I have had more affairs than I can count trying to find "Mr. Perfect", like he'd want me if he was all that! I am attractive and outgoing and fairly intelligent but I never measure up on the inside of myself. I don't cut (but I have) and I have taken pills on several occasions which is how I came to be diagnosed. When I saw the criteria for BPD I fit it to a tee. At least it was better knowing I wasn't alone in this insanity that we call life. I have many, many days where I feel like I want to die. I have been on every medication out there but have probably never given it enough time. I am looking for that quick fix that doesn't exist. My first experience with a therapist (before diagnosis) was with a female (I am female, 36 yr. old) when I told her about the affairs her answer was that my ego was too big! Yeah, I love myself so much I want to spread myself around!! I am not in therapy now and have never given that much of a shot either. I had a terrible weekend where I punched my husband repeatedly in the face with my fists and he finally did the same thing back, problem is he weighs about 215 lbs., but when he hit me it didn't hurt, I just wanted to kill him. I hope one day I will find some kind of peace. If I didn't feel so guilty about my kids maybe I could find the "courage" to die or maybe I'd find some reason not to want to. Good luck to everyone else, if you're like me you will certainly need it. Thanks for listening. Joyous
Event bpd has got to be one of the most readily handed out and most speculated diagnoses I�m aware of.. I was first given this label when I was 17.. I want people to know that it's NOT the end of the world.. many pshrinks label you as borderline because they think you're untreatable..you're a social failure.. you'll never get anywhere in life.. I'm in my 2nd year of university doing a double major honors program and I work full-time.. 2 years ago my doctor's would have thought there was no hope for me.. and that I would spend my adult life in failed relationships or in the hospital. I still fit the dsm criteria, I've been on dozens of medications...several hospitalizations.. the label follows you everywhere.. I read somewhere .. it was a joke type thing.. if your pshrink diagnosis you as bipolar, you're interesting; unipolar, you're boring; borderline, they hate you. and it really does feel this way. You're acting this way because you're borderline this reflects your borderline tendencies. "We can't change you, you're borderline".. well I don't want to be changed.. I might not be the epitome of normalcy.. but I am getting somewhere in life despite this black fog.. one day I will go visit my old doctors, the ones who said there was no hope, and maybe I'll teach them something. "Poor Richard" Have you ever felt so sad, That you don't know what to say, Have you ever felt so sad, That you wish your life away. Have you ever tried to explain, Then found you just can't speak, Have you ever lived with pain, When each minute lasts a week? Well, I have felt that sorrow, And there's nothing I can do, Each night I curse tomorrow, As I curse my love for you. I wish I was a bird, And could fly away from here, Not having to face, Another painful day, Nothing seems to matter, Anymore, anyway, So please let me have some wings, So I can fly away. I don't want to go through another day, Feeling as I do, So empty and so low, Not knowing what to do, Wanting to say how I really feel, But my words fail and panic overwhelms, So please let me be able to say, How I really feel.
I wish I could disappear for a while, And get right out of here, Feeling trapped by the daily routines, Of home and work and life, All I want is to be happy, Is that so much to ask, Something has got to happen, As I can't take much more. Life at the Border Happy
one minute Soon
I'm in tears This
life that I live Those
around me I
didn't intend My
head is in my hands I
need some direction The Master Electrician I prefer to not consider myself "mentally ill" or one who has "borderline personality disorder" or any of the DSM labels placed after my name for insurance purposes. I prefer to consider myself, perhaps, "personality challenged" and I accept that challenge entirely. For in the word challenge comes strength to my brain, vibrancy to my soul, and hope for my life. I never have backed down from a challenge, yet I have backed down from a label or disorder. From what I have read, discovered, and most important have FELT is that many of my problems are accompanied by sensations in my own brain. The times of confusion I have felt my brain fall backward and move. I have felt the misfiring of my own brain and related functioning. Part of my brain says, "don't do it" and the other part says "I have taken over.. back off" To explain this to any professional who has not felt this before would just add another DSM criteria to the craziness. So I explore and experience this in solitude. I have felt and sensed each misfiring in my own mind that proceeds self-destruction, self-loathing, and self-suffering. I have felt the electrical wiring go astray deep within my own mind. Depression creates colorful dots that take me away...only visualized by me in the depths of despair. I know when the depression is lifting... it is at the points that these dots (or balloons as I called them in childhood) grow scant and eventually disappear. In times of stress, I feel my brain pulsate. Sending message upon message to the rest of my body - to shake, to fear, to panic and to flee. A danger no longer exists around me, it exists only in my brain and I am trying hard to retrain each misfiring and to put the wires in the proper order to function as all of you seem to do. There is truth in psychosis and there are answers when the wiring connects - one wire and electrical charge at a time. I am the master electrician then. I have found that with each awareness, each internal discovery and each option I select to change past behaviors - that the circuits in my mind are finally letting current flow. Example... before any compulsion which I would have acted upon...I can feel the surge of power agitating the compulsion. Repeating it in my head and having in the past to fulfill the desire in order to quiet the mind and put the connection to a stop. I was not retraining my mind back then, I was simple capping off the exposed wire for a short time. Now, today, I still get the surge of compulsion and desire to act borderline. I can still feel the warning sign of the brain waves falling backwards, getting jumbled in internal messages and the currents inside my brain still run wild. Yet. Yet.... I stop. I view the undercurrents of these wires. I explore them...their reason, their cause, their destiny. I become aware. The threat to any fantasy is that of awareness and the threat to any brain misfiring is that of rewiring and reprogramming. Today I can feel the currents in my brain, yet I am able to attach them to the proper exposed wire or the proper connection in the brain. Now, for example, the compulsion to act is followed by a pause. A re-examination of the compulsion, the location of the wire that is sending out dysfunctional behavior and I am able too connect it to the central part of the brain...the part of the brain that sees clearly and says "there is no need to act out, simply place your sparking wire here and the connection will come and the surge will calm and disappear. I am the master electrician of my own self, my own life, and my own future. If you'd like to give Meri feed back on the above article or many of her other writings found on page 2; email them to her. Meri BEST FRIENDS An
enchanted tale from long ago The
story is a magical fantasy She
eventually finds her land of dreams She
had to follow the road ahead She
met three friends along the way A
powerful Wizard is what they sought Instead
they find to their dismay Dorothy
found her way back home Thus
this magical fantasy So
as you pursue you lifelong dreams All
of us go through life on our own There's
still a way to rely on these three "tunnel of madness" it
was a tunnel of madness a
lot of anger they
got more hope than she does she
knows you won't understand to
understand simplicity the
next time she sits on that stump I just confessed to my therapist a few months ago that I think I have BPD. Her only comment was, "I've suspected that myself for quite a while." But it's nice to know she doesn't believe in labels, just looking for solutions. I'm a very angry person, sometimes, I wouldn't be surprised if rage has shortened my life span. I love to write poetry and short stories - it's the best thing that brings me back, even when things are black and white, I can still write- a lot of rage ceases. I always worry about abandonment. It's a constant issue with me with everyone I encounter with. I always think in a few days that person will find a reason not like me. I always know I won't be loved because I can never accept myself. My thoughts are always in constant chaos, I never can find a moment when I can sit down and take a deep breathe and just relax and say to myself that everything will be ok. I'm 23 years old now. I started cutting back when I was about 15 years old. I look back in the pictures and I just see this messed up kid trying to struggle in her own way she knew how. I stopped right before I became 21 years old. I got into this awful fight with somebody and I knew I was going to be alone forever, which I couldn't accept. I called my dad at two in the morning to tell him there was no point in life. He kept telling me to go to bed and everything would look more cheery in the morning. I was so mad at him, I hung up. My friends found me and put me into bed, it was rather unfortunate that I had been drinking because I took a razor blade and decided to cut myself so I wouldn't feel any more pain. Two hours later, I was in the hospital in a daze getting 11 stitches on my left wrist. I explain to the nurses and doctors it was just simply self- mutilation, not a suicidal act. For some reason, they believed me. I was only trying to punish myself- quite severely. I still have a scar. When it's the beginning of the year, I always celebrate by myself congratulating that I have made it through another year. I used to be really nervous. Seriously, I stayed inside during my sophomore, junior, and senior years in the summertime. My dad had to drag me out. My daily limit was getting the mail and it was time to go back inside. How I get around to places these days amaze me. I was also bulimic. During my senior year of high school, I decided cutting myself on my arms wasn't just enough and I was getting to feel fat. So, I started throwing up. Unfortunately, right in the beginning of the fall, I was cutting myself up to two times a day plus barfing. I was quite a nervous wreck. I ended up in the hospital and was quite cranky because I didn't want to be helped. I stopped throwing up two weeks before my high school graduation when my boyfriend broke up with me. I just stopped that day.... I just told myself- it wasn't worth it. I planned to end my life the week after I graduate high school. What kept me going on.... I do not know. I like to think, there was a small fraction inside me knowing I owed myself something better despite all the madness around me. I still go through a lot. Sometimes I get angry and still want to retreat to my little world. But then, as I'm majoring in Psychology, I want to help others with what I've been through. Sometimes, I just want it all to end. The daily battles of what's right and wrong.... sometimes, it's emotionally draining to be in therapy. It's just physically and mentally draining to just sit for a few minutes and rationalize things. I'm with someone right now. It's hard..... sometimes I want to blow up and yell when we fight. Sometimes I'm tempted to go back to cutting or even drugs. But I've got a lot going on right now... it's nice to know I'm not alone.... that is, when I'm feeling fine. There
is beauty all around I
have acquaintances, some passing friends I
have a family I
make new acquaintances People
say reach out, but who needs the pain? I
wonder what happiness is? God
is around somewhere We have BPD and many of us have additional diagnoses as well that we are dealing with. We have all been in the trenches and have suffered tremendously. Many of us have experienced severe depression, suicidal ideation, mood swings, psychotic episodes, and the list goes on. We have the ability to become stronger. That which does not destroy us, makes us stronger. We KNOW what it's like to suffer from what we have, on top of trying to live a "regular" life as it is. Many of us KNOW what the "dark night of the soul" is - we have been there or are there now. We have experienced emotions, fears, anxieties, etc. more intensely than most people. We may feel beaten up inside sometimes but we all are really fighters, survivors. We have become stronger people from being in these trenches. We KNOW that we can and will survive as we have been through much worse. Many of us have come not to trust Drs. or others in the mental health community. Many of us have had to suffer longer due to misinformation, lack of information and "unprofessionalism" in this mental health community. Some of us have been forced to take on the role of "Dr.", constantly learning new information about our disorder as many Drs. are so unaware of how to treat us. We have done this as we are determined to grow and to silence our suffering. There are some Drs. who even refuse to treat us as we are "difficult." Some of us have been fortunate and have found a Dr. and/or therapist who really knows what he/she is doing and we have felt relief sooner. Some of us have families who have abandoned us, saying we are "bad" or "hard to be around." Or, we may have lost relationships or jobs due to our illness. Sometimes we may have even thought to ourselves that perhaps we ARE "bad." We feel we have failed. We have learned that we are not alone - that there are many other sufferers out there like us. We have found we have many similarities and many differences, and we have found that we are not weak. We are all heroes. Heroes because, for one, we ARE HERE. We have survived. We ARE surviving. We are strong. As I said earlier, our bodies have betrayed us due to genetics and/or enduring things happening to us that we had no control over. It has been through no will of our own that we have BPD. We did not ask for it, deserve it or cause it. We are all faced with tremendous challenge and we all are fighting back. We are heroes and we deserve medals for our courage and our fortitude. What we do from here on is all that matters. I think that the BPD patients know far more about the disorder than the psychiatrists do. For far too long, far too many of them charged us with being manipulative attention-seekers, displaying melodramatic histrionic behavior and actually enjoying the attention of ER personnel. Not one of them ever asked himself: if these people are seeking attention why is their so-called 'acting out' done privately, covertly usually behind closed bathroom doors and other such places... June 1995 Something is beginning to dawn on me-only the beginning stages. Hard to explain. Since January and WAY before then, I haven't been living a full life-only surviving it. Like having extreme tunnel vision-only seeing life through the tunnel. Always obsessed with whether a man loves me or not. Today, I felt a small, gentle opening of the tunnel-enough to make me realize I've been living in this tunnel. Not living-only surviving men from being out of my life. Surviving men in my life-emotionally hurting me, not being there...Not able to get out of the tunnel and embrace life. The LEFTOVERS of this survival mode, go into my job and my friendships, cleaning my house and having other thoughts. EVERYTHING is based on this "man-thing," this need to be loved. I've been seeing, but not seeing. In the world, but not. It has OWNED me and my life-my thoughts, my feelings, my energy, my creativity. I remember feeling that I didn't know how to do life. This tunnel vision has affected every job I've ever had. It has severely affected my finances. I can't totally figure out, as yet, what it would be like to completely be out of the tunnel. Don't know if I ever have. November 1996 ...life at times is, at least for me, totally void, empty, without meaning, like time stands still, like deep within all I can see and hear and smell aren't real. These are the times I'm alone and can't find someone or something to stimulate me. It takes, at times an outer event or person, to bring the inside of me alive...I'm 40 years old and yet in some ways I am a little child wanting to be held by my mother or father and shielded by the world... ...ABANDONMENT. That is a big word for me. The monster of all monsters. That word could kill me or rather, I kill myself. Abandonment is the BIG monster that eats me alive, that makes me sick and act sick. Abandonment is what has brought me to actually feeling suicidal. Abandonment brings me way outside of reality and into a personal chaos that is so difficult to put into words. In this chaos, there is no way to climb out. No words of wisdom, no amount of insight can bring me out of it. Only the person coming back or a lot of time passing can bring this sick soul some peace. This chaos is the biggest monster I have ever faced and it seems to win over me each and every time. It's like being swallowed up. Many times it is only possible to lay my physical body down and feel the demons race inside. This is when I obsess, when I repeatedly contact the other person. Just writing that makes me cringe inside. I am desperate in my behavior to be UNabandoned, and really I am fighting to survive. I am invisible without that person. I don't exist. Nothing inside this physical body. All of me is with the other person. I guess to me this is borderline. This actually is only one part of it. It's like there is no part left in me to pull myself up. All of me is gone. My recovery has been slow and gradual, at least to me it has been. My therapist has told me how amazed she is at my growth compared to where I was years ago. She honestly never thought I would ever be able to stop self injuring. I have stopped now for 3 years. I don't think there is just one thing that has helped me heal. I have definitely got the best combination of meds for me. It is different for everybody. I take Klonopin, Tegretol, Artane , Effexor, and Risperidone. I think pretty soon I am going to talk to the doctor and go off the Risperidone and the Artane. I haven't been psychotic in along time. About 3 years ago , I was living in a group home and something clicked in me. I am not sure what it was. I was struggling with the urge to hurt myself and I just couldn't stop. I started to look at the goals I wanted to do in my life. I then began to take steps to achieve them. The one I chose was to go back to school to work as a therapist with children. I found a school that had a program in Art therapy, so I went for it. It was like the "urge" to go to school took over the "urge" to hurt myself in some way. I was a nervous wreck at first because the last time I was in a college my grade point average was 1.7. I was determined, though. I completed a whole year of school and came up with a 3.11 GPA. Isn't that cool!!! I had to drop out because of physical problems. I believe that going to school gave me the self confidence that I needed for me to make it on my own. I moved out of the group home right after the year of school. I really had a hard time at first. I was in and out of sub-acute stabilization. I learned over time how to be alone. I have learned how to feel comfortable with who I am ( I am still learning this one) . The key phrase I believe in goes like this: It is not my fault that I got where I got , but it is my fault if I stay where I am at. I have learned to let go of my mom. I was an abused child and for along time I tried real hard to make my mom be a real mom. She will never change and I have learned to let her be who she is. That is very hard to learn. I still struggle with this at times. I have to talk to myself and the adult part of me has to come in and take care of the little girl part of me. I have had to figure out other ways to comfort myself besides hurting myself. I have a teddy bear and I rock , and other things like that. The comforting type of things that I have done probably have been the biggest help in my recovery. I was sadistically abused by my grandfather. I still deal with flashbacks at times. It is those times that the adult part has to come to take care of l the little girl. I have learned how to bring myself back into the present when a flashback happens. I become like paralyzed and really can't move. I talk to myself in my head and figure out what little steps I could do to come back to now. Like , I will tell myself that I am going to lift my arm up and when I do I relax just a little. Then I do something else like that until I am all the way back and able to move. A therapist once taught me a way to stay in today. She says that when I am remembering and I get very scared, I look around the room saying the things I hear right now, saying the things that I see right now, saying the things that I smell right now.... Saying all this out loud. This always helps me. Last fall I began to look for a job. A friend at church came to me and said I could work for her at her school. She runs a school for learning disabled children. I am a tutor part-time working with these kids that have a hard time learning. I absolutely love it!!! I have always wanted to work with troubled children. Here is the opportunity I have been looking for. I believe that God is a good God and He has been with me my whole life. I know a lot of people have issues around religion. I did for along time. I was molested by my minister when I was 16. He said he would kill me if I told anyone. I have had to learn to separate the two. God had nothing to do with this person representing him hurting me. I don't push God on no one. I do believe that He has worked in my life. I am nowhere near totally recovered. I seem to be soaking in things kind of fast. I have come to believe that everyone has choices about how we act and what we do and even how we feel. I believe that a lot of people don't even realize that they have these choices. I used to get soooo mad at anyone that would tell me that I have a choice on what I feel , etc. I now realize that I didn't want to accept responsibility for changing my behaviors or feeling. I have had to learn to take the responsibility for my life. If I wanted things differently I need to take action toward changing it. I can't sit around and wait for others to take care of me. That is hard. Now I don't think that we have total control of how we feel , but I do think that we have control over how much control we let the feeling have over us. I feel sad quite a bit. I can't control having that feeling but I do have control over how much power I give to that feeling. I think that life is a journey. For a long time I was in a foggy state of being but now I am coming out of the fog. Life is good most days. I do have bad days but I think everyone does. I have been in a lot of hospitals and I have heard over and over how hopeless I am. The doctors and professionals didn't know anything about what it meant to have BPD. I felt like screaming many times but I didn't have the words to say what I felt. I now have the words. Many people thought and still think that "borderlines" do this on purpose. Self injury was never for attention for me, but that was how it was viewed. When I tried to explain it, then I was being manipulative. I did learn one thing , that I hate being a borderline. I was not treated as an individual with a mental illness, I was treated with disregard. I got out of the hospitals and I have been getting better. I have found myself and have learned a lot of coping skills. It has been 3 years since I have self injured. I have found my way with the help of my therapist. For a long time, I didn't ever think I would have a life with quality and now I have life with quality. It can happen and has happened to others too. It is important to remember to never give up , even when others, even professionals, have given up. It is important, I believe, that people with BPD that have recovered, stand up and tell those that still struggle. It is really worth all the effort. I have done a lot of healing, but for along time I was on the border of giving up. I really honestly never thought that life would ever be any good. It really does get better. I would like to stand up and say to all that it does get better with a lot of work. I have been wanting to write to someone and express the healing that I have experienced. When I was all alone and had no one, I didn't hear much from recovered borderlines. I didn't know if there were any. Most of my life I have been in and out of psychiatrist's offices and General Practitioner's offices. I knew I was different...I knew I was alone in whatever was wrong with me...I knew I was intelligent...I knew I had worth...but somehow I couldn't quite make it all click and flow. About the time I felt like I could manage, something would happen and "down the chute" I'd go. I threw fits, I got so depressed I wanted to die. I would love you but if you did me wrong you were then the object of my hatred! I lost jobs. I lost friends. I almost lost my kids! Well, now I am 52, have 2 grown children and 3 grandchildren. Finally, about 3 years ago, a very good Psychologist saw that I had a need to know. She told me all of my diagnoses, explained how the illnesses work, etc., and gave me names of books to read. In essence she trusted me with the whole truth. Truth, no matter how bad it was, was the beginning of healing. I can't say that I am healed. But I now RECOGNIZE BPD thoughts and ideas as mainly false garbage! They are programmed thoughts and actions. They were BAD coping skills. They have to be replaced by good, pleasant coping skills. Now, as adversity or whatever used to do me in, hits me in the face, I make a conscious decision to NOT think that way or react that way. Is it easy? HECK NO! BUT, it is easier than doing really stupid things, and losing my temper, and making a complete fool of myself in front of people, and hiding and all the other things I did to escape people and situations! Do I still mess up? YOU BET I DO!!!! But life is soooo much easier now. I no longer NEED my adult children to make me center of attention. Life does NOT revolve around ME! The fact that they don't call me for a few days does NOT mean they hate me. If someone yells at me, I don't have to fall apart and go into hiding and become so depressed that I want to die. I AM OK! I AM A REAL PERSON! I AM WORTHY OF LOVE! BUT IF I DON'T GET IT, I LOVE MYSELF! I don't HAVE to have a hissy fit to be heard. If they don't hear me, it is THEIR loss! Everything doesn't HAVE to be perfect! I don't have to be perfect. I CAN'T be perfect! YOU can't be perfect! NO ONE can be perfect! What my mother said is NOT true about me! What my father said is NOT true about me! I am smart! I am pretty! I am SOMEBODY going SOMEWHERE and I can stand up tall and yell it to the world! AND YOU CAN TOO! Signed....Better and Better and Better! DEMONS Afraid
to face my demons to face How
do you let go of the rock I was first diagnosed with BPD 20 years ago after a serious suicide attempt and a subsequent 8 month hospitalization (6 months as in-patient and 2 months as out-patient). It came as a relief that there was a name for the turmoil and hell I lived with, and that it wasn't "just me." I grew up with multiple messages, direct and subtle, that the only problem was "me" and lived an increasing hell as a result, so I'd already spent 10 years in and out of therapy after I'd escaped my family-of-origin at 16. I still struggle with BPD, although I've come light years in my ability to understand and deal with my "demons." I've studied it extensively, developed skills in relating, articulating and understanding what I go through. I've worked with a wonderful therapist for almost 7 years, and with her help I've been able to gradually shine a light into most of the dark corners of my inner dungeon. I'm still shining light into the darkest pit at the core of that dungeon and it is a slow, painful, terrifying journey -- even after all this time. I know I have made and continue to make progress, although when I am crippled with emotional and existential pain it sometimes feels like I've only succeeded in being painfully aware of my woundedness (kind of like coffee makes you alert but you're still drunk). My journey is currently showing me how crushingly toxic the core of my identity is, filled with an engulfing belief that I am fundamentally bad, wrong and hopelessly inadequate. I have excavated down through the layers of my dysfunction so that I now am dealing with (what I hope is) the deepest core of this inner toxicity. The healing of this condition is definitely a long term and multi-layered process, not an event. This toxic core is so painful, terrifying and overwhelming that I can deal with only a tiny amount of it at a time and even then it is easy to fall crashing into it, like falling into a volcano pit. One thing my therapist has taught me is how important it is to do this work at one's own pace, and to respect the signals that the Inner Child sends out when s/he's had enough. A little drop of this toxic waste dump inside me can send me into a state of complete emotional paralysis as I tumble down into the pain of feeling bad, wrong and ultimately crazy. My subsequent inability to work forces me to live in a constant state of poverty on social assistance, which can itself be a trigger of acute frustration, rage and abandonment. The holiday season (as I write this) is an especially difficult time of year for me because of this. I keep going. I wonder why sometimes and wonder if I'm just playing a rigged game constructed by a cruel and manipulative Universe, but I don't really believe that. (That's just Life imitating my family!) I've come far enough that I can maintain an awareness of a more positive view of the Universe, even in (most of) my dark moments. I'm learning to reach out now, to share and explore my spiritual growth with others so that I can find a place for myself in the Universe. I have a couple of friends I can turn to when things get bad (most of the time). And somehow I've never gone hungry. So things could be a lot worse. I just wish (still) that they would become better. BPD,
Tourette's Syndrome, OCD, ADHD, I was one of the "girls". Part of the "dynamic seven" that frequented the women�s issues unit at the general hospital in my city. The "girls", seven of us who suffer from BPD, were known throughout the hospital land as attention-seekers, needy individuals who took up a lot of staff time, perpetually suicidal to the point of being boring (why don't you just kill yourself already and get it over with), and yet intriguing and fascinating at the same time. Some mental health workers loved us and others saw us coming through the psychiatric emergency room and put in for a vacation. Being borderline is confusing, distressing and sometimes fun. I get to be manipulative, cunning, downright mean and brilliant, creative and interesting in the same hospitalization. Don't get me wrong, I am by no means proud of my diagnosis. I just want to get down to honesty. I want to get well now, but I don't think that I always did so that is why hospitalization after hospitalization didn't seem to help. This is perhaps a side to BPD that is not often talked about amongst suffers of the disorder themselves. How maybe we don't want to get well. I was stuck in a painful cycle. If I got well, (cured?) then maybe I wouldn't be as interesting. I certainly wouldn't get as much as attention if I wasn't constantly threatening to kill myself. More than anything in the world I was afraid to become BORING. My BPD, despite all of its heartache, kept me interesting, or at least I had come to believe that it did. Today I know differently. Today I know that I can be in recovery without having to lose my uniqueness. I don't have to be a borderline anymore to simply get my needs met. This realization happened over time and lots of therapy, almost eight years and over fifty hospitalizations. I am writing this to not only assist in my own recovery from this harrowing, largely misunderstood psychiatric illness, but to offer professionals and other sufferers of BPD, the other "girls" (and boys, too) out there in hospital land waiting for their fairy godmothers (who are often the mothers who weren't there when we were kids), the hope that there is a gray light at the end of a very black and white tunnel. Everyone can get there, I believe. Moderation is a bliss place, I hear. I want to get there someday. I just keep changing highways, but my father used to tell me that all roads lead home.
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