I didn't realize that there was anything really wrong with me until the end of 2014. I had destroyed yet another relationship in a spectacular, irrevocable fashion. The pain was unbearable. And familiar.
I isolated myself for the next two years.
My childhood was chaotic. My father was an alcoholic. My mother booted him out by age two, but he remained a volatile and destructive force in my life until he dropped contact with me after my fifteenth birthday.
I had step-parents and step-siblings on both sides. People came and went. I had siblings and then I didn't. I learned that relationships are unreliable.
I was verbally abused by one of my mother's men. He was a violent man. He broke down doors, shook his children, and screamed a lot. I still remember how his eyes bulged when he was angry, which seemed to be always.
I remember how he would go out of his way in the mornings to drop his kids off at school first, even though we passed by my school on the way, just so that he could scream at me in private. Everything was my fault. Always.
At age eleven, I accompanied my mother to the police station because she'd just shot my father's deranged girlfriend, who'd followed my father to our house in the middle of the night threatening to kill us. I remember how she cried. I remember writing my deposition.
The girlfriends survived but was later murdered by someone else. She had two kids. I never saw them again. I had originally thought she was a cool person.
I didn't realize any of this was abnormal or damaging. I was a child. By the time I entered adolescence and began discovering that I was gay -- in a small, rural, Christian-dominated Texas down -- I had a total breakdown. I developed symptoms of panic disorder, OCD, hypochondriasis, paranoid thinking, and depression.
My mom took me to a psychiatrist, and he didn't know what to do with me. Mostly because he didn't know any of this. I was a weird kid. I talked to him about the origins of the universe because I was entering my philosophical phase. They put me on Paxil. It turned me into a zombie.
I started drinking in my early twenties. At first it wasn't much, but it grew and grew. I got to the point where I was no longer in control. After the calamitous end of my five year relationship (one that because of me, had grown incredibly toxic) I downed half a bottle of vodka and chased it with some clonazepam. I texted my ex and he, alarmed, summoned the paramedics. I was involuntarily confined for three days.
I destroyed many relationships and hurt a lot of people.
It took a lot of pain to make me wake up.
I stopped drinking. That was extremely difficult. I'm six months sober now. I go to therapy weekly. My relationships are stable (if few in number) and I no longer experience dramatic swings in emotion. Well. I still have days where I think about shooting myself in the head, but it's so mild compared to what it used to be. I can handle that, easily.
I still feel like my identity is a construct. I'm staggeringly insightful about people; I can read them very thoroughly and very quickly. I am subtly manipulative by default. It's not something I can turn on or off.
But I decided to do no harm. I started thinking about it as a sort of superpower I have, one that must be used with great care and responsibility.
People with BPD are often extremely empathic. That is not the same thing as having empathy. Being able to assess another person's emotions and state of mind is the raw instrument; deciding what to do with that information is what defines empathy (or lack thereof).
Mindfulness and meditation have been helpful to me. So has regular exercise, therapy, and a very great deal of introspection.
I still have doubts about my ability to form meaningful relationships. I am very lonely. All the time. I worry that I will go through decades like this.
But at least I'm not causing a lot of pain and turmoil all around me.
People with BPD can change. But it takes work. And you have to acknowledge and face the pain you've caused, which can result in unbearable guilt.
And you have to learn how to be alone.