Borderline Personality Disorder Almost Ruined My Life

It was as though someone had switched a light on in my head and said, “Stop bothering about other people and come look at this mess here.”

(TW: Self Harm, Mental Health)

Photo by Timothy L Brock on Unsplash

My experience with this fascinating and mysterious illness.

First published on Medium (May 24, 2020)

I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder almost three years ago. I can’t say I was shocked, but it was still something of a gut punch.

2017 hadn’t been a great year so far. I’d spent the previous year working a thankless, low-paid job. Long hours, sacrificed weekends, fighting gender discrimination at the workplace, the works. When the appraisal came around, I was given a pittance of a raise. So I quit.

Finding a new job wasn’t too difficult, but as it turned out, keeping it was. Being fired for the first time ever was… interesting. I went into shock and stayed there for a good few months. I relied on my parents to pay my bills. I tried to focus on the exams I was supposed to write.

And in the distance, ex-boyfriend troubles were brewing.

In hindsight, it was the perfect storm. At the time, I called it my own personal slice of hell.

In hindsight, it’s obvious how twisted my perspective on relationships had gotten. How blind and self-indulgent I was being. At the time, however, all I could feel were emotions. I was being blindsided, gaslit, and attacked on social media. I was going deeper into shock, and on some level, I knew it.

That’s why I scheduled my first appointment with my psychiatrist and found a new therapist just one week before The Incident.

I saw my doctor again yesterday, and asked him for a diagnosis. What he gave me seemed right out of an episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

I’d been seeing this doctor on-and-off for three years already. He’d seen me at the height of my college-era depression, and through my dropping out of college after six years of trying to make the impossible happen.

But as it turns out, I’d been wrong every single time I’d thought I’d hit rock bottom before that. So neither my doctor nor I saw The Incident coming.

The farther I moved away from my first job. the denser the fog inside my head got. And as events piled on, it got to the point where I could barely see out of my own mind, except through a haze of gin, lemon juice, and iced water.

All things are vague outlines from that perspective.

I bought the knife after a stranger messaged me, full of hate and lies she’d heard about me from someone I had loved with all my heart. I spent an entire day subtly drunk-slicing into my arms under a blanket, even as I made conversation with an unsuspecting friend. So I was already primed for the rage when she returned in the wee hours of the morning with worse words. Words made darker by the fact that they were unmistakeably his words, even if it was her fingers that typed them.

I was face to face with the worst of him — and the worst of myself.

So when the wrath boiled over and found it could not reach him, it turned on the next best person. Me.

I dissociated that night, and watched from outside my body as I attacked myself, trying to inflict as much damage as I could before the clock ran out and sanity returned.

When I was allowed back into my own body, the first thing I did was call my friends. The second thing I did, as soon as it was light outside, was call my doctor. Everything that had happened poured out of me as I presented my ruined arms to him for inspection.

He said little as he examined my arms and let me talk. Then he got straight to the point. I needed mood stabilizers, and I needed them now. And I needed regular psychotherapy — at least thrice a week to start with.

I didn’t know this at the time — my doctor hadn’t even mentioned BPD to me yet — but the key to treating borderline personality disorder doesn’t lie in the mood stabilizers or anti-depressants. Sure, they’re a big part of it — especially when you’re coming off a major meltdown and your brain needs the chemical support to stabilize itself. But the only real, long-term treatment for BPD that consistently shows results is structured therapy .

Horrified by what I had done, I committed to all of it. I was filled with a grim determination to do whatever it took to fix this.

I wish I could say that it has been a linear journey of self-improvement from that day to this. Unfortunately, treating your mental health doesn’t work that way. There were days when I found myself backsliding. There were days when my mood swings went on roller coasters by themselves, leaving me miserable and frustrated. There were days when the anger boiled up and out of me again, and the sound of my voice shook the rafters of the homes I lived in. It took me a full year to be completely rid of the temptation to self-harm again.

But with the help of a great therapist, I chipped away at these things. Took it a step at a time. And then a day at a time. And life improved. Colour leached back into it. The shock receded, and I began, slowly but surely, to reclaim the ground I’d steadily been losing for over a decade.

It was as though someone had switched a light on in my head and said, “Stop bothering about other people and come look at this mess here.” And that thought, and the urgency it brought with it, made all the difference to me.

Starter Resources for Borderline Personality Disorder:

1. Overcoming Trauma and PTSD is a great workbook by Sheela Raja that I have personally found very helpful. While it is on the more expensive side of things, if you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free.
2. This article can point you to a few good books on this largely stigmatized condition, although I have heard mixed reviews of I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me from the BPD community.
3. Knowing that you’re not alone is a big part of starting to feel better. Follow #BPDChat and other related hashtags to find other people who have similar experiences.