Story #55

My name is Mary and I am 15 years old.  I have just been diagnosed with BPD and now as I look back it all fits in.  Finally after many years I know what is different inside my head.

Well, I guess you could say I had a pretty average childhood.  I was never physically abused but my parents fought constantly.  My house always assembled a war zone, full of broken glass.  My dad is chronically depressed and my mom is ADHD.  Not making such a good combination.  My mom would always scream "I'm gonna kill myself" and hit herself or my dad.  And my dad would shield himself and hide away.

I have always been shy and I have hated myself and wanted to die for as long as I can remember.  I've always only had one or two good friends, and the rest are people to mingle with.  Whenever a friend would leave, I would push myself away until I convinced myself it didn't matter.  And then I would
race to find a new best friend.  This because friends have always been the only people I care about.  In elementary school I was quiet and never spoke up.  And when I did I always made a mistake that I would beat myself up forever about.  Both mentally and physically.  I would hit myself with rocks or dig my nails into my skin.  Then I had rages where I would scream at my parents for not punishing me because I was bad.  But I hadn't done anything. So I punished myself some more.

Then when I was in 3rd grade my parents finally got divorced.  I was relieved but unemotional.  At least the fighting would stop and everything would be okay.  My dad moved out and I turned against him.  And I had always been a daddy's girl.  My parents blamed my resentment on the fact that he moved out, I didn't believe that and still don't.  And If I was upset I was amazing at hiding it to myself and them. 

In middle school I hid myself even better.  I put on a whole new persona.  I tried my hardest to be excepted.  But there was always something different about me and others sensed it too.  I didn’t have any true friends then, tho I fooled myself into thinking I did.  All they did was walk on me.  And I couldn't even get a boy to like me.

Then came High school.  9th grade changed my life.  And I'm sure this all seems so petty to all of you.  I met a boy I liked and he liked me. I thought I felt a connection with him. Then he moved to Florida.  He said he would call and he would come up to visit sometimes.  He called once when he first got down there.  Then I never heard from him again.  I waited around for him for months.  Living, I mean only living off the hope that he would come back.  After a year I accepted that he was gone forever.  And with that exception all my hope was lost.  My world spiraled further into darkness than I ever imagined it would.  With any chance of love or sex gone, life was gone.  I have no clue how I've made it this far.

And continually in 10th grade things got worse.  I started therapy which did no good.  By winter I was self medicating myself on strong pain killers and tranquilizers.  I smoked pot and drank a lot.  I plotted suicide.  Then in the spring I began cutting.  It scared me at first but it was a good scare. 
It brought me back to reality.  It eased the pain for just a minute.  For that minute the world shut down and I could feel my heart beat without the pain in my chest.

Then I was put on Prozac.  Prozac was a horrible experience.  It thru me into a full on mania first thing.  I had wild dreams and ranted about them, and they became part of reality.  Then I had mixed episodes where I would cry and scream and punch walls until my hand swelled.  And they were cycling within hours.  So I stopped taking the Prozac and went into a bad depression.   But then I still had no clue what was going on.  So we tried Paxil.  And it started all over again.  But first when I was on the Paxil I went numb.  I was dazed.  I took lots of pills.  A combination of 50 aspirin and Benadryl before I went to bed.  And I woke up at 5am crying and confused so I screamed.  My mom took me to the hospital to get me checked out, the doctors treated me like a rat.  And the only reason I didn't get checked in is because I begged and begged.  So I had to promise everyone in the entire world (psychiatrist, social worker, therapist, psychologist) that I would not do this again.  And if I felt I was going to I would tell someone.  Ha.  I lied.

So the cutting continued.  And grew consistently worse. Although no one knew about it.  Till finally Bipolar came into question of diagnosis.  So I was put on Depakote and things did get better.  1000 mg a day and I could go thru some days without thinking about killing myself.  And then it just decreased its worth.  I fell into a numbness and then into a depression.  I still don't understand.  And the Depakote was making me eat so much so I started puking up my meals and starving myself.  But my will is so weak its so hard.  So I have one big meal a day.  And just the other day I began to confess all this dirt to my therapist.  And he concluded the symptoms sound a lot like BPD.  And then my P doc agreed.  So its on my diagnosis along with rapid cycling Bipolar disorder.  So here I am.  Who knows where I’ll go from here.