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Be sure to include "BPD: My Story" in the Subject and an address to mail the book. If you already have a story in this section and would like it to be included in the book, write to me and let me know. I need your permission. These stories are highly personal. Many of us who have this disorder are in a great deal of pain and some of us are quite disabled. More research is desperately needed and the professionals who treat us have little or no knowledge of what the current research does say so we go untreated. This is not an area that I recommend for children. Please also be advised that some of these letters can be a trigger for some of you. Story # 1 My first memory was living in a two story house, we lived on the bottom. My mom was then married to my first step father. I remember feelings of abandonment, fright, feeling unwanted and unloved. The first stepfather, as the story goes, shot himself and my mother, he died, she lived. They were getting a divorce because my mom was cheating on him. She cheated on every single husband and boyfriend she had. There were a lot of boyfriends and many more husbands, we were moved from house to house, school to school. I grew up being the outcast in my family and in school. I was always told by my Mother and the stepfathers, I was ugly, stupid, retarded and a waste. One of the step fathers sexually abused me. Most of them either physically abused me and or emotionally abused me. My Mother beat me and emotionally abused me everyday of my life, even now as an adult she still reverts back to the emotional abuse. I always looked for substitute Mothers and Fathers. My Teachers, neighbors, bus drivers, you name it. If they gave me the time of day, I loved them. My whole life all I can remember is just wanting somebody, anybody to love me. And I always wanted my real Dad, because I just knew that he would love me and want me. But as an adult I have come to learn that even he to this day never really loved or wanted me either. I turned to pets for the love that I so desperately wanted. But once I would start to rely on them for my happiness and love them so with all of my being, they would die. Why does God take them all away from me? Doesn’t he realize how much I needed them and loved them? When I was old enough for a boyfriend I would have up to 3 or 4 of them at a time. I still couldn’t find the love that I so needed. I finally found my one true love, Robert, we were together for 4 yr. And as close as a couple can get, he was my first, but not my last. I let a monster come between us, he told me he was in the Mob and he would have Bobby killed if I didn’t marry him. The whole time we were in the Justice of the Peace office, I was praying for Bobby to come save me or for the Officer to see the pain and desperation in my eyes, but no one saved me, I spent the next 3 months being locked in a trailer and beaten every day, then moved to TX because I kept trying to run away. I finally was able to get away from him and start getting my life back together with my beloved Bobby which took 2 long painful years. Just when we were going to get back together he died on a motorcycle accident. I felt like I died with him, he was the first and only person to ever love me and care about me. I had nothing and nobody left. My life just went on, boyfriends, jobs, another marriage, children. But I was never happy or satisfied with my life. I just kept hoping that something would come along to make me happy. Then I turned 35 and my whole life got worse, happy one minute, anxious the next, in tears the next. As long as I can remember I have been prone to crying spells and a painful sense of loss, It would become so painful and excruciating that I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. As long as I can remember I have always and still do to this day feel my emotional pain physically. I have spent my whole life feeling unwanted, unloved, ridiculed, beaten, made fun of and now this!! Feelings and emotions all came down on me at once. I fell into a depression like I had never been in before. I was diagnosed as having BPD, and BI-polar depression. I WAS JUST GIVEN A LIFE SENTENCE!! Knowing what was wrong with me didn’t make it any better things just got worse, I started splitting and cutting myself, oh God the emotions and pain that would be running through me. It became my outlet. The pain would be so excruciating the only way out of it would be by cutting. It felt so good to be feeling pain free even for a little while. Then, I OD’d for the first time, how could I, have done this? But it happened 3 more times. The first time I was put in a P. Hospital, I thought this is it, I am in here for the rest of my life, my life has come to this! But they released me and I went back 4 more times. When my family found out about the illness, and worst the suicide attempt, oh God, they all came down on my like a ton of bricks, They kept telling me your not ill, you just want attention, buck up, pull yourself up by the bootstraps. None of that helped, but just made things worse. I have also learned that your family won’t always be there for you. I had no one to turn to for support or for strength. I started a DBT class, which helped, I had the support of others who were in the same boat as I. And I had my wonderful psychotherapist, Bryan. He would goof up a couple of times but most of the time he said the right things and listened and supported me. But even he never really understood me, oh he tried and he thought he did. But no one can ever truly understand who a Borderline is except another Borderline. Then the worst thing I could ever do happened, I had an affair on my husband, then another and another, shit, why am I all of a sudden turning into my Mother. Oh God, I would rather die than be like her. And the pain and guilt I felt after each one was unbearable, why does it have to hurt so much when all I wanted was to be loved? Through a lot of excruciating pain and very hard lessons, I learned I was still searching for that love I never received as a child. That longing to be loved and wanted. I have spent my life unhappy or afraid, unable to sustain long-lasting relationships, and I have continuously cut and mutilated myself and attempted suicide. I have experienced such unbridled rage that it even scared me. When I have attempted suicide it is to try to stop the intolerable pain that just goes on and on with no end. I am smothered by my feelings of loneliness, hopelessness, sadness and utterly deep depression. There is no light only dark. How do I get out of this?? There is no way out. I am so tired of all ways feeling empty. I am so afraid of rejection and abandonment sometimes it grips me with such a force. And my feelings of unworthiness, all someone has to do is look at me wrong or raise their voice and I truly believe that person hates me and never wants to see me again. The pain of that is so unbearable I feel it in my stomach again. How can I ever feel normal again knowing I will be experiencing all these feelings and emotions again and again? The mood swings are so intense, and unpredictable, one minute I can be happy, the next I am raging, the next I am so full of pain I just can’t stand it anymore and have to try to put and end to it all. Sometimes life is nothing but pain and I don’t want to be here anymore. How does one describe the extreme sadness when so many have never experienced it? When I hurt, I hurt worse than you could ever imagine, I want to die when I hurt, I am so unworthy of love from anyone. Most people don’t understand what it feels like to be borderline, the intense pain and the extreme depression can never be understand because they have never felt it. I have come to bluffing my way through life, I joke about how stupid and incompetent I am so that people think I can laugh about myself, and I act like I am happy and nothing is wrong anymore but they do not see the pain and the tears behind my facade. I have come to the point where I don’t know where I begin and the borderline ends, WE ARE ONE NOW. I am losing my grip on reality. Would someone please help me? I Od’d again last night, Monday Aug. 16th, I didn’t do it to kill myself only to try to stop all the confusion in my head, it was racing with thoughts so fast and so much I couldn’t think straight and the voices, I just had to shut them up. I couldn’t stand the pain any longer, I have been in constant pain and turmoil for two weeks now and it just won’t stop. I refused to go to the ER, my husband was mad at me all night telling me I was selfish and rude. I just can’t take it anymore. I have tried to protect my children from all this, but I have failed, I see the hurt in them and the signs of my mental illness. The pain of knowing what I have done to them is by far the greatest I have experienced yet. And the burden and guilt is so heavy on my shoulders. How can I live with this fact? I can’t it is to unbearable. To you who is reading this know that I love you and will always love you. Please God help me, I can’t seem to get rid of the pain, sure it does go for awhile, but it always comes back no matter how hard I try. I have no strength in me left to try anymore it is just a bottomless pit of pain, pain, pain. I have written this to you so maybe you could understand me a little better. I never wanted to hurt you, I only wanted to love you. Story #2 My first rejection happened to me on the day of my birth: I was given up for adoption. The only parents I knew, the people who adopted me, raised me, and cared for me, were good, honest, hardworking people -- and they were white. Yes, I am black, and every day I would look at them and be reminded of how unwanted I was by the person who had birthed me. My parents saw an untapped intelligence and taught me how to read at an early age: that way when I asked too many questions about too many things, they could say, "Look it up in the dictionary or the encyclopedia." So I did. But there are so many things that books can't or won't teach you -- like how much hatred there is in the world, and how that hate is directed at people who have no control over their situation or lot in life. Before I started school, life was okay -- a bit sheltered, perhaps, but it was okay. It took moving to a little town in southeastern Alaska to open the gates of Hell for me. I remember walking into the first grade classroom -- no kindergarten for this high-IQ child! -- and seeing all these white faces looking at me. When I sat in my desk, everybody on all sides moved their desks away from mine as if I had something contagious, and I don't recall if the teacher did anything about it. More rejection! I had no friends for months, always eating by myself or standing in a corner of the schoolyard watching everyone else have fun. If I tried to approach the others, they'd call me foul names and run off laughing. I did very well academically, trying to prove my worth to a bunch of bigots who would never consider me a human being. I became withdrawn and angry, hating everybody I saw and becoming a bit of a bully. I experimented sexually with my older brother's friends, becoming quite adept at oral sex by the time I was 12 -- just hoping for a little bit of acceptance, never finding it. I got angrier. I tried joining all sorts of school clubs -- photography, German club, yearbook committee, weight training, volleyball. I did well in all of those things, but was never really part of any team -- just me and two other outcasts muddling along. Social functions were nothing for me to look forward to, since I knew I'd be on the outskirts of the crowd while everybody else fit in easily. Even my two older brothers didn't want me to speak to them at school -- still more rejection! No dates, no dances: NOTHING. Just an ugly, awkward black girl, no good and good for nothing. My parents sent me to stay with some black friends of theirs that they'd met in Alaska, who had since moved to South Dakota. I don't know what they hoped to achieve; I was already socially inept and felt like the ugliest piece of crap in the world. I'd already lost my virginity to a 22-year-old guy when I was 15, and it didn't improve my attitude any; I felt a bit of satisfaction when I seduced the father. Back in Alaska after the school year, my parents sent me to get jobs at fish canneries for the rest of the summer. Combined with money I made babysitting, I soon had a nice stash of cash. I dropped out of school at the beginning of my senior year. I was 16 years old and fed up with the world, so I ran away from home, feeling unloved and misunderstood, and didn't speak to my parents for 2 years. The man I hooked up with fed my toxicity, and my bad attitude got worse. The only good things he did for me were making sure I got my G.E.D. and kept on with some form of education. Otherwise, I spent my days at a video-game parlor or just wandered around the boat docks. I was always full of rage, though -- that's the only emotion I was capable of dealing with. Joy and happiness were always fleeting, and pain and sadness were always to much to bear. But anger and rage were my companions -- pets on a leash that I could loosen on anybody who had the misfortune of getting on my bad side. Years of physical labor made me stronger than I appeared, and I had no compunction about getting in a fistfight with anybody, whether they were male or female, and they always got the worse end of the deal. I started drinking and using drugs: LSD, pot and mushrooms were the big things, and sometimes I'd take speed. I sought psychiatric help when overwhelmed by my feelings of worthlessness, getting nothing but weird diagnoses that I didn't think applied to me. Psychotic? Me? Impossible! Manic-depression? No way! Paranoid schizophrenic? I didn't have a split personality! Off and on, I went to various shrinks, labeling them as 'quick-fix quacks' who would take an hour of my time and lots of money. I became pregnant at the age of 18 and finally re-established contact with my parents, but I still felt alone and isolated. I didn't know how to make friends, and just quit trying. I had a slight 'episode' one day in June of '88, where I was convinced that one woman in town had set her sights on my husband. I got one of my guns and put it in a bag and carried it around, hoping I would see her so I could blow her away. A guy who knew my husband saw me walking past a bar they hung out at, and by fate or something, I accidentally dropped the gun. He grabbed it and told me to go home, and I started screaming at him. I finally went home and just stared at the blank television set, not wanting to hear or see anything. My husband got worried and sent me to a hospital in Seattle. I voluntarily signed in and stayed there for a week, then I left. I stayed with a girl I knew from school (one of 2 friends I made the whole time) until my husband sent me a ticket home. I just kind of existed then, not really feeling part of anything, even life. I took care of myself physically, walking every day and taking my vitamins. I didn't think that my child should suffer just because I was such a mental case. After he was born, postpartum depression hit hard. I was crying all the time over the stupidest things, and couldn't deal with all the stress anymore. I never harmed my son, but I always thought that I should give him up so he'd be with better people; of course my husband didn't want that. He had his own selfish reasons for wanting a child, and when I found out why, I left him. When I stopped breastfeeding, my OB/GYN prescribed antidepressants for me. I felt like a zombie, and I always had headaches or heart palpitations. If I missed one dose, I'd feel violently ill and just lay in bed. After almost a year of that nonsense, I weaned myself off the drugs and continued existing. I kept searching for some sort of acceptance, mainly men, and had numerous one-night stands -- I started prostituting myself a bit, figuring I shouldn't just give it away, and men were so stupid they'd pay for anything. I currently live in Seattle with my son, who is dealing with the abuse he suffered from his father. It's so tough for me to help him when I can't even help myself when it comes to dealing with our demons. He's in a residential treatment facility with other boys like him. I want to cry when I think of that innocent little boy, so sweet and loving, going through the hell his father perpetrated on him. I feel like a huge failure since nothing I've ever attempted has succeeded. I hate being stuck in a 9 to 5 job, when all I really want to do is be a hermit, living off the land, away from people, and writing stories and poems. I feel like a phony even when I label others as phony: they, because they refuse to look behind the masks that they wear; me, because I do wear a mask as well. I have to, unless I want to be ostracized more than I already am. I am a pariah, one of the walking wounded -- but my scars aren't visible. I simply exude the aura, and on some primal level others sense it and keep their distance. My body dimorphism makes me hate looking in the mirror, and I hate trying to pick out clothes to wear to work. Everything that looks good in store windows or on other women just look like burlap sacks on my pathetic figure. I try to tell myself that I should be grateful that I'm healthy, but it would sure be nice to be accepted. unconditional acceptance and non-rejection -- will I ever know what that's like? Or am I just doomed to a lonely existence, crippled by my disorder and the ineptitude I feel? I just don't seem to belong anywhere. I'm just a survivor, not even looking for acceptance anymore. Too many rules to follow and games to play if you want to belong, and the rules are always changing. I'm just so tired of the B.S. Story #3 I
never really knew why I was who I was.... My parents had to put me in state custody to keep me alive. I felt worse, I felt unwanted and abandoned. I lost who I was. I spent my high school years in and out of hospitals, group homes, and Intense Residential treatment Programs. It was there that I was diagnosed with BPD. I struggled with my sexuality and had overly intense relationships with both men and women. At the age of 18, I was placed in an independent living program. I got a job, went back to school, and tried to make something of myself. I failed of course. I ended up in the hospital again at age 19. Now, I'm almost 21. I'm getting married, I have a new apartment, new friends, a new job, and the man who abused me JUST GOT OUT OF JAIL. I was doing so well.... I just hope that I can start doing better again soon, and I hope I don't forget how hard it is to climb out of a hole that you dig for yourself... Story #4 I've always felt in the way, and apologetic for the nuisance I seemed to be. Deep down I hate myself. Halfway down I'm pretty egotistical. I expect things to go bad and they often do. But it scares me more when things go good. They're going to realize I'm a fraud and take back the praise, the friendship so I'll be nobody again, put in my place. Socially I'm young, maybe going on 13. I go from submissive to attack mode with little warning. When I think I'm justified, I'm usually in the wrong.
It is ridiculous, at 37, to be relying on kindergarten etiquette. Will you be my friend? Grow up, Sherry Jo. If you have to ask, you're too desperate. Too needy, too clingy and who needs that? Friendship hurts, love hurts and I already hurt bad enough. Most of the time I'm ashamed to be me.
I wish I was tougher and didn't care so much. When I'm angry I don't feel ashamed. I feel good. I want to fight. to be beaten, but come out triumphant. Win or lose, doesn't matter, Just to be angry and let it run like sweat or blood. Thank you, God, for blood, sweat and anger. Thank you for life in my veins. Story #5 Growing up in everyone's eyes I had everything, except in my eyes. I came from a very high class family, where I had to succeed in a very high category. In my father's eyes money was everything, and family came last. He thought if he bought everything we wanted we were happy. That was not the case. I was the only child for 6 years, then came along my sister. When she was born she was born 3 months early and very sick, my mom had to spend a lot of time at the hospital so I had to stay with my grandmother for awhile. I spent time with my grandmother, but not aloft because my father keep us so busy in the limelight of his social atmosphere. So being with her shed a new light on life. She let me play and get dirty, I didn't have to be dressed at all times and I could enjoy eating junk food and having a goodtime with her. She was more a mother and father to me than my own. When the time came to go home I was heartbroken I cried for days and called my grandmother everyday, she said if there was anything she could do she would. I started having bad dreams, I couldn't pay attention at school. I had a hard time doing anything period. My mom had no compassion. She just took care of the baby., my dad stayed angry at me and just said "how could you do this to me"? My dreams became worse, and so did everything else. I stayed in therapy for years not really knowing what was really wrong. As the years went on I went my own way still hating my father, I wasn't sure why I hated him so much except for the way I grew up. When I was 18 I was raped and beaten very bad. Through therapy I managed to get through it with still today some scars, even my life the rape and my father, there was still something wrong that I couldn't figure out. I'm married and have 3 children, a son who is 8, and 2 daughters,6,2. My life was getting better but I still had to take antidepressants, and my moods were still very moody. My marriage is ok, up and down sometimes, mainly because of my moods. My husband is excellent to deal with all of this but still doesn't understand it fully. I am 30 now and my dreams have started coming back now and there very powerful. Through many therapists and doctors I finally was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I have now with the help of a wonderful doctor, put my dreams together. I was mentally abused and physically abused. My father raped me when I was a small child and had pleasure with me at any time, because my mother never paid attention me nor him. I am still ironing out my past with my doctor's help once a week, but slowly putting my past where it needs to be and trying to get a grip with my future. It will work out with a lot of time and patience.
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