To the Borderline Personality Disorder Playing Games With My Brain

I understand where you are coming from. I know why you are here. I know you sprouted from my mother leaving me and my father failing to understand me. I know you opened the doors to let dependent disorder in. I know you helped anxiety take a hold of my brain.

I get it. You are what you are. I don’t have a choice to change you. I know life tells you who to afflict and like a brainwashed soldier you march. I know like a parasite, you fed off any self-esteem I had when I turned 10. You told me how I was only good for caring for my sisters, and I should have never been born. Then, my parents would have split earlier, sparing my sisters’ lives. You told me I was not worth love.

When I was born, I was already more sensitive to others’ emotions and had a greater ability to empathize with other creatures, human or not. So at age 9, when my mother began disappearing, life ordered you here and since then you haven’t left. You have been feasting on my self-esteem, shaking my emotions and playing games with my brain, as I desperately tried to understand what was going on.

I know you don’t seem to care, but I trust that, somewhere, you actually do though. If you didn’t, then you would have shaken my magic emotion ball again when I met Nate. You would have done like you did with my ex date-mates. You would have let me fall and then shake me up so I would get angry when they didn’t catch me, like you did with date-mates one through five.

Yet, you didn’t. You let me stay happy for two years. I still experienced the mood swings. I was still shaky at times, but I was truly, utterly happy. Then, like an explosion, you came back. The self-esteem I gained while you were quiet plummeted. You did what you were born to do. You shook the ball and ate the self-esteem. You even broke the four years I was clean. Clean from one of the biggest tortures I did to myself. I self-harmed again and again, desperate for you to disappear.

Since I was 10, I had never been hospitalized because of you or any of your mental illness friends that have called my head your home. Yet, this resurfacing, it broke me. I ended up in the hospital because I was keen on suicide. Yet, the ambulance workers, who brought me to this unit said I seemed fine. That made me laugh to myself because they couldn’t see the visions of me ripping my skin off until my disorders went into hibernation.

I wanted this to end because nothing helped anymore. The self-harm didn’t help like it did when I was 11 through 15 years old. You broke me at 19 and with the help of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) flashbacks, you made my emotions scream, helped anxiety twisted my insides, aided bipolar disorder in making me too tired for anything and fed depression my smile. You, borderline personality disorder (BPD), smiled as you began shaking your dooming magic ball.

In the unit, I sat there with my insides burning and twisting, while outside I was just staring at walls. During meal times, I ate slowly and vacantly watched as the summer brushed its lips against trees and grass, causing the flora to dance. I ceased to process things that brought me joy.

I think back now and despite my world being in color, in reality that unit was gray, except for the psychology doctors. They are red. They hurt me just as much as you. There were too many people for them to even take time to get to know any of us at all. They listened for a moment. Then, they wrote down a problem, suggested a medication and then on to the next patient they went. It was like an assembly line of people and doctors. Patient, prescription, pill, patient, prescription, pill.

I felt like I was in a nightmare with no way out because no one would help me, while BPD and its friends tore at me inside.This unit was not beneficial. If it wasn’t for the fact I noticed one patient fill out a menu and leave before lunch time that day, then I wouldn’t have even known how to leave this place. If I wasn’t born with the ability to observe, the people there wouldn’t have even let me know I was capable of leaving. My anxiety held my tongue. Unless I was told something, I wouldn’t have been able to ask at the time.

Thanks to you BPD, I didn’t understand how to feel. While my brain had no logic to hold it to reality, you enjoyed shaking your ball like a baby enjoys a rattle. I was confused and yet calm. I was terrified and happy. Yet, I could barely muster up the energy to even eat. I would stare off and wait for my visitors. Nate, best friends, close friends and a friend’s mother.

Why no family? Well, the last time I had a bad mental breakdown, I was yelled at. I was told if I wanted to be “crazy,” then maybe my father should send me to an asylum. Screaming he asked if I wanted to be seen as “crazy.” Now, if I could go back, then I would tell my father, “Yes because at least then, maybe, I wouldn’t get to this point.”

Sitting here, I am 20 years old now, and as of this moment, I have over 3,500 scars and around 17 suicide attempts under my mental illness belt. If I had gotten help earlier, learned the skills of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and learned healthy coping skills, then maybe my count would probably be around 90 scars and two attempts.

BPD you have driven me to try and claim my life, while letting me scar my skin. So I say this now: If you are given more names for who to inflict BPD on, I will find them. I will hug them because no one deserves to not have anyone there when they go through this. No one deserves to be alone.

So I say this to you BPD and you better remember it well. No matter what you say to me or how you shake my emotions, I am valid. I am worth it. Even though you are part of me, you are not me.

Sincerely,
Chris,
A BPD survivor