Unable to Leave

I got pregnant at 16 just so I could make my mother sign the permission forms to get married. He was 20 and I was scared I would lose him if I didn't marry him. By the time I was 20, I had 2 children and, I had made his life a living hell. One rage attack after another not to mention nightmares remembering things I had forgotten....... I left him at 20 because he wouldn't 'let' me go to college.......

The next 5 years were a series of men all of whom I was head over heels in love with until they dumped me or another turned my head. Friends would tell me it was like something was chasing me, but all I wanted was to be loved I thought. The joke about me was I changed boyfriends as often as I did my underwear.... Many of them called me a leach... My taste in men was always the forbidden fruit. If Mama would like them I didn't want them, I wanted men she would hate and then I found the one whom really set her off.....

Fresh out of prison, 6' 4", Indian, very long hair, black belt in ty, as country as country got, looked like a hard core biker, and he was possessive, which in those days I thought meant he cared. Thrilled me beyond words....... Mama wouldn't allow him to even pull in the driveway to pick me up or bring me home, just my kind of man. We dated off and on for 3 years, he hit me a couple of times but hitting me would bring on a new kind of rage attack and I would give him a bruise for every one he put on me, we were amazed at my strength during a rage attack. He quit that real quick.... Then we got married and this lead to years of fights, I actually convinced myself it was normal and that if you didn't fight it was unhealthy. 4 years into our marriage we heard about BPD and we started reading about it, things started to click into place, what we used to call panic attacks now we call rage attacks because it is so much more accurate.

His family were all BP, but they thought I was the one who was truly crazy, because I never seemed depressed. I was depressed but I took it as a personality flaw and I hide it, beating myself up inside for how I felt......

Well we have been married 18 years now and been though the ringer and back, he has liver disease and I am the only one working now. People who don't know me well, think I am such a saint because I have 'endured' so much with him, but what they don't know is I don't have the guts to leave. I left one time for 5 days and I was such a basket case that I had to go back. I read what you all have posted and I hate myself for not being as strong and not leaving but then I ask myself what would I do next, I don't know if I could ever live alone, and considering the kind of men I am attracted to what is the point it would probably just be worse...... I truly believe I love him, but considering my disease I doubt myself and my ability to separate fear of abandonment from love.

I look back over the past 40 years of my life (I can't remember anything before 5....) and I wish I could tell the young girls I see today, what a tormented existence it is to go through it without help and support.... I wish I could save a few I know from themselves, but I can barely save myself and I have to just accept what I can not change....

Anonymous BPD