This blog is a long story, broken into jagged pieces and jumbled up.

It’s a story about three generations- and one personality disorder.

Mostly, it’s a story about my mother.

My mother can be charming and compassionate; she can be equally as vicious and cruel. She has a beautiful capacity to nurture and care for her children, catering to their needs and investing endless time and money into their intellect, their appearance, and their accomplishments. She also has the propensity to fly into a savage rage at the drop of a hat, hurling insults like knives. Within minutes, she will proceed as though nothing as happened, relegating these episodes to normalcy. She is highly intelligent, beautiful and quick-witted. She is controlling, highly sensitive to the slightest hint of disloyalty or discontent, and prone to grudges. She exists within fragile and inflexible walls that swell and strain to contain her anger and resentment. To be close to her is to be constantly aware of that strain, and to walk on eggshells lest you incur her wrath.

I was 25 years old when my mother exploded, shattering the delicate facade she had carefully wrapped herself in for most of my life. My siblings and I absorbed the shock of this explosion, hiding it from the outside world and trying in vain to dodge her emotional shrapnel and shards of hatred to get through to her. We were wildly unsuccessful, meeting nothing but unadulterated contempt for our feelings and a steadfast refusal to acknowledge the reality we were all living.

I was 25 years old when I finally realized that my mother suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder. Often characterized by over-control, rage, blame, criticism, enmeshment, and parental alienation, the Borderline Mother’s style of parenting can be crucially detrimental to her children. Borderline Personalities are nurtured; they are primarily borne of their environment. As a result, Borderline Personality Disorder and other Cluster B Personality Disorders are often inter-generational, affecting children of children in a sad, vicious cycle.

The realization that there is a concrete, documented explanation for my mother’s otherwise inexplicable behaviour has changed my life. It has changed my current perspective, my understanding of the past, and will change my future. I am a daughter, a mother, a wife, and a sister; I am determined to break the cycle for my family and for myself. My hope is that by documenting it here, I can offer the same reprieve to others that I feel when I read stories like mine. My hope is that story by story and word by word, I am breaking borderline.