The Great BPD Meltdown

It was pain so unimaginable, I thought I was going to die from it.

(TW: Self-harm; mention of suicide)

Photo by Ian Espinosa on Unsplash

The meltdown comes suddenly. Without warning. It leaves you paralyzed in its grip.

To be honest, it wasn't all that sudden. It built for months, and I saw the signs. I managed the signs. I sought help, I tried band-aids, I tried longer-term solutions. But still, the meltdown came.

I desperately needed to be heard, and no one was listening.

The way the emotions start to build up feels like a slow burn. It starts with a jolt in the pit of my stomach. The taste of acid at the back of my throat. 

This is going to be a bad day, I think. But then I try to course correct. It's not that bad. This isn't news - you've known this was coming. You already processed these emotions last week. But of course, there was more processing to be done. 

I try to keep things light. After all, I did promise that I wouldn't be mad if he were to talk about this with me. 

Beneath that delusion, the rage was looking to innovate. Getting mad wasn't an option, because anger was outlawed after last week's meltdown. So the rage went for Door No. 2. It got sad. 

The sadness coalesced, taking its time, while the rest of my mind tried to go about its business as usual. While I tried to pretend like I wasn't feeling personally attacked, insulted, and humiliated by the entire conversation. 

Then came the bad ideas, one by one. Except, under those circumstances, these are the best ideas. Alcohol. Self-harm. TV. Feeling frozen, and barely focusing on what I'm watching, or who I'm screaming at over text. My messages get increasingly flippant and frantic. 

And nobody responds. 

You're all garbage, I keep telling the screen as I close tab after tab. You're garbage. And you. And you. I didn't need them to be my therapist, but I did desperately need them to respond to me, to keep me talking, to distract me. 

I desperately needed to be heard, and no one was listening. 

The Eye of the Storm

The only thing that would have made a difference was instant cessation. Find a way to stop the pain, and you got yourself an end to the meltdown.

Nothing - not all the alcohol, not all the self-harm, not all the misdirected fury in the world - was making the pain go away. It was physical pain, and yet so intangible. The knives couldn't reach it. In fact, I couldn't even feel my skin anymore. I couldn't feel anything except the pain that had taken over my brain and my entire chest.

And then there was the crying that wouldn't stop. At intervals, it would build into crescendos that had me screaming out loud. I closed the door and muffled myself with a pillow.

At first, I was crying to let out some of the tension, some of the pain. And then I was crying coz the pain had also spread to my temple in the form of a persistent migraine. My eyes were swollen. I was completely drained of energy. Too tired to even sleep.

I finally managed to scrawl a message to my friends. It was a stark message guaranteed to freak them out. But inside my mind, stringing words together was becoming increasingly more difficult, and the hints didn't seem to be working.

It worked. They talked to me until I finally relaxed. The crying stopped, though the anger remained. And I no longer felt the need to scream. 

In real life, all this took an entire day. But inside my head, it felt like infinity. Time had ceased to have meaning. There was only pain that promised never to end.

In this phase, no amount of CBT would have made a dent. The only thing that would have made a difference was an instant cessation. Find a way to stop the pain, and you got yourself an end to the meltdown.

So there you go. That's what the last great meltdown felt like - for me. Each individual experience differs. What works for one person may not work for another. But what's common is the loss of control and pain. So spare the judgement and the toxic positivity. See if empathy is available instead.