Getting my diagnosis was, in equal parts, terrifying and liberating. I had been vindicated! I wasn’t nuts, it wasn’t a figment of my imagination. There was actually something wrong with me. It felt like for the first time, someone had actually listened to me and didn’t write me off as being dramatic or exaggerating everything. But it was terrifying because this wasn’t an understood illness. There is no cure, no set treatment plan, they’re still working out what therapy is best to treat this. I could be unstable for the rest of my life.
No matter what I did, everything felt wildly out of control. And I began to feel so out of place, like I didn’t belong. At first I was scared to do anything, then I started doing too much. I tried anything and everything to feel even relatively normal. I won’t lie, I made some horrible decisions. I effectively ruined my own life after getting my diagnosis. I freaked, I panicked, and I lashed out in every direction. I don’t think I deserved quite what I got, but I do accept responsibility for digging that hole in the first place.
But somewhere along the way, I decided I needed to do this on my own. I knew that losing more people along the way would just hurt, even if it was my fault they left in the first place. I couldn’t depend on those around me forever. Essentially, I knew no one was gonna just come and take care of me for the rest of my life, so I decided to not let anyone else in. To anyone without BPD, that doesn’t make any sense right?
When I lose someone I care about, even just from a falling out, it feels like they stabbed me in the back, betrayed me in the worst way possible, and then died before anything could be fixed. Or at least that’s the closest range of emotions. The pain and sorrow of being left behind with BPD is excruciating. I will never pretend to understand how others process emotions or events. I’m just showcasing my own experience.
Personally, in order to protect myself against emotional damage, I decided to limit who I talked to, and about what. I haven’t been honest about how things are with my family in almost a year. Even when I have a therapist, there are some parts of me I never talk about if I can help it. Not because it’s not important, or doesn’t matter. But because I can’t expose myself to pain and loss again.
I don’t know about the friends ya’ll make, but mine weren’t ever the checking in types. So once I was no longer playing an active role in their narrative, the friendship kind of ended there. It was painful going from feeling like I had some community, to having none at all. But I was, and still am, convinced that this is what’s best for my resiliency in the future. If I am comfortable being on my own, and having no one at all, then it’ll hurt less when those I do let in leave. Because I’ll know how to be on my own. I’ll know how to return to just me.
I came up with a list of things I wanted to do. Things I didn’t need another person to do. Sure, it would be nice to have some company. But I won’t always have someone around me I trust like that.
I started this list in the darkest point of my life. It was a list of things I could do that didn’t require mastery of a skill. Or didn’t require me to be insanely fit or rich. Things that could distract me from how miserable I was. Or at least mask it properly for the rest of the world. I knew that while none of it would make me feel normal and sane, it would at least make it appear that way to everyone else.
There’s some things on this list I should have completed long before now, but I’m lazy and unmotivated most of the time. I’m still in the process of figuring out who I am and what I like.