The Song That Perfectly Describes My Life With Borderline Personality Disorder

I’m scared to get close and I hate being alone.

I long for that feeling to not feel at all.

The higher I get, the lower I’ll sink.

I can’t drown my demons they know how to swim.

Can you feel my heart?

— Bring Me to the Horizon

 I have these lyrics tattooed across my scars, because they explain perfectly the struggles I face with borderline personality disorder (BPD).

“I’m scared to get close,” describes the walls I’ve built up over time and my irrational fear of abandonment. I’m always scared people will leave because my borderline personality disorder has always been too much for people to handle, and so they always leave. It’s isolated me and made me feel so alone. But I hate being alone, especially when I’m going through a bad patch. I fear being alone, because I fear myself. I fear my own thoughts. The thoughts of self-harm and suicide, that are so constant, to me it’s normal. But sometimes I wish someone was by my side telling me everything will be OK, on the days I don’t have the strength to convince myself that these thoughts and emotions will eventually fade.

“I long for the feeling to not feel at all” describes my constant battle with unstable extreme emotions. Emotions that feel like third degree burns all over my body. That are so physically painful, I would rather hurt myself than feel them. I would rather numb myself with drugs, cutting, binging or alcohol than ever feel the intensity of them. In time and through therapy, I’ve learned to sit with them, but for a long time tearing myself to pieces was the only way I knew.

“The higher I get, the lower I’ll sink” describes the lows that always follow a high. I can’t simply have a good day, or be happy for a while without it all come crashing down around me again. I can be doing everything right. Taking my medication, sleeping eight hours a night, eating regular meals, exercising, meditating and not drinking or using drugs and yet suddenly everything will get dark again, and for a while I feel like I’m being swallowed whole again. Like there’s this monster inside that never leaves, she’s just waiting in the background to f**k shit up again. And I know it will pass, and the light will start to shine through again. I just have to ride out the storm and fight everyday for what people would consider normality.

“I can’t drown my demons, they know how to swim” describes the battle I’ve had over the years in learning to accept everything I am as a person who struggles and lives with borderline personality disorder. I no longer fight it, and sometimes I relapse, but I’ve accepted that I’m just a deeply feeling person in a somewhat shallow world. I know there’s a lot of people just like me, and they are beautiful people just like I am. These lyrics aren’t just lyrics, they are who I am and they allowed me to feel whole and not alone in something I always felt alone feeling.