A Goodbye Letter to My Borderline Personality Disorder

This isn’t going to be easy to type, considering the amount of time we have spent together the last six years, two months and five days. The day you came into my life you were dressed to perfection with your confidence and influencing ways. You spoke to me so subtly, though I could relate immensely to you. It was a conversation I had never experienced before in my life. Something so authentic and personal and you were there and you listened to me and I fit into you so perfectly like you were made for me; but, the thing is, you were made from me.

For so long I have thought that who I was, was you, borderline personality disorder,or BPD. You convinced me I was so much like you that night I first heard your name. You were spoken through the mouths of Wynona Ryder and Angelina Jolie starring in “Girl Interrupted.” I knew I belonged with you the moment my fingers went straight for my phone to type in your definition in the DSM5. You were laid out so vulnerably on the table, like a buffet, each dish representing a different part of you. I laid there thinking about trying each bite of you out. Starting with the unstable relationships and moving my way through the self-destructive behaviors. I wanted a big ole whoppin scoop of fearing abandonment and for desert I wanted to try out the explosive anger. It was like each bite I took, I was eating my own flesh. It was me, it was my body laid out there. You were so beautiful and you made sense, which for me in this world is all I need to happen. For something to make sense. I felt like I made sense.

You had me at hello. But you drove me to goodbye. We spent countless relationships self-destructing it. Not you, I mean me. Accusing you of unimaginable things, out of this world things, so fucked up I have seen it things. I was irrational but I feared losing you. Without you I could not exist. You gave my life meaning and purpose. As long as I acted how I was written, then I was a piece to the puzzle. I wasn’t a piece, I was the whole puzzle.

You had me believing I was the whole puzzle. I wasn’t even a piece to you. I was that lonesome vacant hole right in the middle. A hole surrounded by 999 people, supposedly just like me. It was a cult, really. We all worshiped you and looked up to you for guidance, but all you ever did for me was push the people who were closest to me away and filled me with a lifetime supply of anger and jealousy. You restrained me and held me hostage against myself, I couldn’t be myself because you were strict on how I had to act. My chameleon personality I soon began to think was what triggered the light in me.

I am leaving you, BPD. You and I are not the same. You have no more control over my life. The cutting has got to stop because I am so beautiful, why am I ruining my skin? My outer shell, I tattoo to hide the scars but they are still there, underneath, peaking through and staring at me reminding me of what you influenced me to do. I will admit, I had the choice… You were so convincing though. My communication with my loved ones will no longer be a tangled phone chord from the 70s. A true and genuine connection will hopefully be received on both ends. I am tired of hurting people and to be honest, I don’t need another roommate. Pack your behaviors and jump off a cliff.

The only reason I am leaving you this letter is so I can put you in the past and consider you a “learning experience.” I will never truly be healed from the scars you left, but that is OK because when I see them, I will no longer feel your guilt. No more games, BPD, please stay away.