Borderline Personality Disorder and Abandonment

Suicidal Abandonment

I've got to tell ya, the worst thing about having borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder is definitely the way I respond to abandonment. One abandonment triggers me to remember all the rest in my life and it gets to the point where I don't feel I can carry any more baggage.

About 4 months ago I had the worst week of my life. It started out with me visiting my old high school - I graduated last year. I was VERY close to some of my teachers, and seeing them and talking to them just made me want to go back.

Everyone seemed to be moving on but me. This past winter I was so depressed that I didn't work or go to school. Visiting them made me feel totally lost in space. It was like I had misplaced myself... and I needed to find me, and fast.

I kept telling myself that losing my friends and my old mentors didn't matter, as long as I had one person... My high school social worker. Her name is Chris and I ranked her right up there with God. She is the most giving person I have ever known. I had talked to her all through high school... we had given each other small gifts, she had been to my house, she had given me rides home - she definitely exceeded whatever responsibility she  had to the students as a social worker. We were close.

Anyways, when I was with her I felt like a whole person. When I was self destructing in every form and feeling like I couldn't go on... she was there to remind me that I was going to make it. She has TREMENDOUS faith in me, something I rarely have myself - and I thought I would always have her to turn to. She had been talking to me the whole year after I graduated... but how long would it go on?

After I got back from my old high school, I was so depressed that I stayed in bed for 3 days without changing or showering, I hardly ate. One thought was running through my mind. Call Chris and make sure she'll always be there for you.

I called. She explained to me that we would eventually have to say goodbye. I cried. I begged. That night I wrote her a three paged letter as to why she simply HAS to stay in my life for my survival. I was up all night anxious. I slit my wrist, but when I started bleeding heavily I had a panic attack and had to wrap it. I was so very afraid.

I called her at 7:30 am, which was as soon as the school opened and she would be there. I left a message. I laid in bed all day waiting for her to return my call. When she finally did, I said - still in a state of panic - thank GOD it's you. I read her the letter. She assured me that she wasn't going to change her mind about eventually having to say goodbye. After I cried again and became totally hopeless, I screamed at her. I told her I hated her. She told me she had to go and we would talk about this later, she said goodbye. I said nothing. 

I wish I would have said something instead of hanging up. I wish I could have controlled myself at that point, but I couldn't. I clutched my stomach and I screamed. I got up, I went straight for the medicine cabinet. I couldn't take any more. My life was over. I wrote a list for my parents as a suicide letter of all the people and things that had ever abandoned me. Some friends, some mentors, some family, and even my cat. At the bottom of the list I wrote NO MORE. 

Of course, I got out of this... luckily, unscathed. You would think after washing down prescription meds and barbiturates with cough syrup my liver would at least be shot or something. But I will say this, it was pretty scary in that hospital. I felt so alone... and I was a total mess. Everyone kept looking at me and asking me stupid questions... I just wanted to scream at them to mind their business. I passed out 4 times before I worked up the guts to call the ER. I was panicking. I wanted to die, my God I did... but something in me just couldn't lay there and let it happen.

It was hell after that... getting home... crying all day and night... and then the hyper mania that followed where I couldn't sleep for some 5 days. 

It was awful. I want to learn to let go of it all... I want to learn to stand on my own and have my own faith in myself... I want to be confident... but without Chris I still feel like a piece of me is missing.

Anonymous Person with Borderline Personality Disorder