I wasn’t always like this. I’m fairly certain if you asked my parents they’d tell you I was like any other little girl growing up. I liked New Kids on the Block, Slap Bracelets, and She-ra. I had enough Pog skills to get me through recess, and the courage to steal the hats of the boys I had crushes on. Nothing to indicate a mental breakdown of epic proportions was hiding deep in my psyche, waiting for the perfect moment to rear its ugly head, right? ( for more on the perfect moment, a.k.a. the moment my life went from “Hey, this isn’t so bad!” to ” Sweet Mother of Fuck, how did I ever have the energy to shower?!”, keep reading). To truly understand where I am today, you need to understand where I came from. Let’s all hop in the Way Back Machine and travel back to 1983, shall we?

Like pretty much everyone these days, I come from a family of divorce. Insert sad trumpet noise here. My mother and my biological father got hitched and had me very young, and were split by the time I was 11 months old. I don’t remember my biological father at all. After he divorced my mother, I saw him once again when I was 5. Or 3. Who knows. I remember he brought me to Sears, bought me a Barbie ( which, to be fair, is a solid move. What says ” Sorry for the abandonment issues honey!”better than a Barbie?) and brought me home. I remember the whole visit taking maybe an hour, tops. And that was it. I never saw him again. He’d periodically send me a post card every few years whenever he found Jesus, but stopped when I was about 16. I guess he and the Big Guy were no longer friends. Bummer.My mother started dating and eventually married the man who now gets the prestigious title of Father in my life by the time I was 5. I always understood that he wasn’t my Dad in a biological sense, at least I think I did. I never called him Step Dad, though. He was the only Father I knew, so that’s what I called him. I remember the wedding confusing me a bit…”Why are you marrying Daddy if he’s already my Daddy?”, but I was really more concerned about walking down the isle without running or peeing my pants. For the record, I nailed it.

A few years later, my sister was born. POWER SHIFT! Actually I don’t remember this being too big of a problem. Sure, she was the new adorable face on the block, but I still got plenty of attention. Growing up in my family wasn’t easy. My mother is an incredible woman who would move mountains for her children if she was over 5 ft was tall enough to do so. Fiercely protective, giving, and warm. Unfortunately she wasn’t always consistent with how she expressed her love for me. My mom believes in being 100% honest, no matter what. This led to a lot of unwanted, unappreciated negative feedback. To a child who doesn’t share the “honesty is ALWAYS the best policy” mentality, the perceived constant criticism and the overwhelming feeling like I could never cut it was hard. Really hard. I strived for my parents approval as much as the next kid. But when you run in from school and hold up your latest Art project beaming like an idiot cause you’re so proud of yourself, ” You’ve done better” can really leave a lasting scar

. My mom was also a strict disciplinarian. It was very, very common for me to be grounded. If I was due home at 7:00 and arrived at 7:01, grounded. If I said Id call home from a sleepover at 8:30 and called at 9, grounded. If I didn’t eat my peas at dinner, grounded. If I raised my voice, grounded. If I talked back ( which, granted, was ALL THE TIME, ’cause nobody puts baby in the corner!), grounded. Now, it’s important you get rid of your traditional definition of Grounded and come to terms with my Moms definition, as it differs greatly from the norm. When I was grounded there was no phone, no T.V., no radio, no computer, no friends, nothing. All I was allowed to do was play outside, read, and draw. Being cut off like that so often was very isolating. My creative side really blossomed during this time, so, it wasn’t all bad I suppose. My pencil crayons were all I had. Now, this probably doesn’t sound TOO bad for a few hours or an afternoon here and there. Unfortunately, drawing and reading can get real old after a week. Or 3. Or a month. Or an entire summer. My mom often grounded me for months at a time, and even an entire summer once. That happened. I won’t say I wasn’t a difficult child, because I could be. And I definitely did stuff that warranted being grounded every once in a while. But growing up it felt that no matter what I did, no matter how small the infraction, I was going to wind up grounded anyways. There were plenty of times when Id be running late from a friends house, know that showing up 5 minutes late would result in a week’s grounding, so I in turn adopted a ” Fuck it” attitude. I’m already going to be grounded, might as well stay another hour. Mayhem ensued.

My relationship with my Mother was awful when I was growing up. We would yell and scream at each other more often than talk. We would say horrible, hateful things to each other. There were times I felt my Mother truly hated me. And Im sure she felt the same. Verbal and emotional abuse was common. It was the norm. That’s how I learned to deal with my emotions and to relate to others, because it was all I knew. By the time I was in high school, things were unbearable at home. When I was home I hid in my room. Anytime I came out of my dungeon for food or to use the phone, and argument ensued. The other members of the family felt it, too. My Mom and Dad’s relationship had deteriorated. They barely spoke, and when they did, it was a fight. My dad worked long hours at work, and when he was home he spent most of his time working on his car, and staying out of the line of fire. Things escalated. My mother kicked me out at the age of 16, what I did to deserve it? To this day she can’t even remember. We had an argument, and she told me to leave. I remember she wouldn’t even let me use the phone to try and find a place to stay for the night. I was forced to ICQ ( UH-OH! The 90’s kids will get that reference) a random stranger online, give them a friends phone number, and ask them to call on my behalf to see if it was okay to spend the night. My sister was 11 at the time, and was really upset and crying. She didn’t understand why her big sister was leaving. She tried to help the only way she could think of, and went into her Piggy Bank, got a $5 bill, and tried to slip it under my door for me without my Mom seeing. My mom caught her and made her take it back. I will never forget that. I ended up living with my boyfriend for 3 months ( which may sound like a teenaged dream, but I assure you, it was not. There was only room for like, 5 of my Backstreet Boys posters in his room. Worst.), and it was a full week before my mom started calling around to see where I was. For an entire week my own Mother did not know where I was, and for all I knew, didn’t care. That’s hard to forget.

My parents divorced soon after. While the divorce was very painful for my Mother, and no doubt my Father, I’m a little ashamed to say I was glad it happened. Their relationship was so unhealthy, it wasn’t hard to see that they would both be happier apart. And in the end, they were. My Mom and Dad both moved on to find truly wonderful people who make them happier than they’ve ever been. Hooray! My Dad moved to St. Thomas and I didn’t see him very often after that. For those keeping score at home, the Lost Father Figure count is up to 2. To be fair, he was always up for seeing me. But it was a strange time in all of our lives, and I wasn’t used to seeing him a lot, anyways.

I’m going to pause and say for the record that I’m not playing the Blame Game. It may sound as though I am blaming my parents, primarily my Mother, for my mental illness. Not so. She did the best she could with the skillset she had. While we are all a product of our upbringing, we also have a choice in who we become, and the kind of person we want to be. The responsibility for who I am today falls on me, and no one else. Unfortunately Borderline Personality Disorder robs us of the tools and skills we need to become the people we want to be. It is my responsibility to understand my illness, and start on the path to recovery. In doing so, I have learned that environmental factors, such a how someone is raised, plays a big part in whether or not someone develops BPD. So, I feel it is just as important to share my childhood with you as it is the symptoms of my illness. So no one’s being thrown under the bus, okay Mom and Dad?

During high school is when people started to notice I was difficult to deal with. I took everything very personally, and had impossible standards and expectations of people that no one could live up to. A major symptom of Borderline Personality Disorder is an intense fear of abandonment. The relationships I had meant the world to me, and I would do anything to maintain them. I was always very loving and giving and would do just about anything for my friends. It wasn’t just to keep them around, I truly loved the people in my life. Unfortunately another symptom of BPD is black and white thinking. So, in my brain, it made sense that if you were always awesome to your friends and would do anything for them, you’d get the same back. The harsh reality is that’s not always true. People have very different ways of expressing appreciation and love, and I interpreted receiving anything less than what I gave my friends as a major betrayal. Major. This lead to me spending most of my high school years giving the silent treatment, holding grudges, and alienating people who once meant a lot to me. I always felt so betrayed and disappointed in people. I went through friend after friend, hoping the next one would be the one to finally understand, to finally treat me the way I treated them. It was never to be, and the constant roller coaster of emotion was effecting my quality of life in ways I couldn’t yet understand.

I moved out at the age of 19 and shacked up with my boyfriend at the time. He was a great guy and we had fun playing house for a while, but at this point in my life I could only maintain a healthy relationship, friendship or otherwise, for a few months before my extreme emotions began to push people away. We had a 2 year long relationship that was the exact opposite of healthy. Screaming, fighting, swearing, crying fits, throwing things…….we do what we know, right? This was the only way I knew to express myself. BPD robs us of the ability to control our emotions. So, in the heat of the moment, it was always “React first, think later”. I always knew how I was behaving was absolutely ridiculous and destructive at the time. Always. But I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t stop it. No matter how hard I tried. It’s like being stuck inside an Army tank on auto pilot, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t stop the bloodshed. You watch helplessly as it hurts the people you love most. It’s an awful, awful feeling. So, we broke up.

Another wonderful symptom of BPD is how long and intensely we feel emotional pain. A break up can be one of the hardest things for anyone to go through. Lucky for me, my Borderline Brain is wired in a way that the neurons that fire when I feel sad, mad, angry, hurt, etc. fire up to 10x longer, and 10x more intense than neurons of a Non-Borderline Brain. I now understand why break ups always felt like my life was literally over, but at the time it was very confusing for me and those around me. No one could understand why I was SO upset, weeks, months later. Suck it up, Get over it, Move on……people couldn’t understand what my problem was. And after a while, the compassion starts to run out and people no longer feel sorry for you. They get annoyed. You bring them down. They’re tired of hearing about it. The support dwindles, and you’re left alone with your emotions and the inability to get out from under them. In these bouts of extreme sadness, Depression makes its way to the stage and does a 20 act show with 3 encores and no intermission. Depression can be unbelievably debilitating. Fun Fact: Did you know that the Brain actually gets smaller when someone is depressed? True story, look it up. I was depressed because I lost the guy. I lost the guy because of my illness. I lost my job because I called in sick too many times because I couldn’t stop crying long enough to get dressed. I lost my apartment because I lost my job. I lost my friends because they couldn’t deal with me. Borderline Personality Disorder can rob your life of everything that matters to you. The only thing worse than all of this happening, was that I still didn’t know why.

After a few years things slowly started to turn around for me. I got a new job. I got a great new apartment. I started dating again, and eventually met someone new. I was making new friends, going out, and enjoying life in a way I hadn’t in a very long time. I started my own cake decorating business, lost over 50 pounds, and saw a long and lasting happiness in my new relationship. It started as a low rumble at first. Every now and then I could see flashes of my former emotional self break through. Before long, my illness was a deafening roar, and it was stealing everything out from under me all over again. This time, It was worse. My emotional breakdowns lasted longer and were more severe than ever before. I was so terrified that like everyone else, my new love would leave me. This created an irrational sense of paranoia and self esteem so awful an anorexic teen would say ” Damn girl, love yourself!”. I ended up driving him away, and this time ruining him in the process. I could see the damage my verbal assaults and irrational behaviour did to him. I’ve spent most of my life looking back on the casualties I’ve left in my wake, and the guilt haunts me every day.

And so it continued like this. Another job. Another apartment. Another set of friends. Burning bridge after bridge, and not understanding why. My relationship with my Mother was all but gone at this point. We had begun to ignore each other for months on end. Silent treatments so severe birthdays were missed, and although we even worked together, we still refused to acknowledge each others existence. It’s hard enough to go through life like this, but it’s even harder without your Mom to support you.

It wasn’t until about a year ago that I realized I had a serious problem. It was truly one of the best times of my life. I was living in a great apartment in a neighbourhood I had always wanted to live in. I had a great job, and loved the people I worked with. I had an amazing best friend, a lot of other fantastic friends, a blossoming business doing something I loved, and I was enjoying life. And then, I met him. After 4 long years of online dating, I met a man who was so wonderful I literally felt honored to know him. We fell in love, and we fell hard. We talked about spending our lives together, and I believed him when he said he wanted to marry me one day. Because he meant it. And then it all fell apart. It was only a few months before I started showing symptoms again, and day by day destroying the relationship I held so dear. We broke up and got back together more times than I can count. The fucked up thing about BPD is that you’ll say and do some of the most horrible, hideous, reckless things you could ever imagine, and you don’t mean them. I know I don’t mean them because I’m in my brain and I know I’m just saying things in the heat of the moment because I lack the tools to control my emotions, but the people around me don’t know that. They think I mean it. And just like when I was young, that shit stays with you. In my clearer moments when I’ve calmed down, I’m able to say the things I truly mean and try to take back all the horror I caused, but when this happens again and again, you begin to lose all credibility. I always knew what I felt in my heart, that he was truly, the absolute love of my life, you can only hear ” I never want to see you again” so many times before you start to believe it. I became the Girl Who Cried Wolf. Any little thing he did, I ended it. I cried and screamed all the time, so he stopped taking that seriously. So I upped the ante. We were stuck in this song and dance where I’d get pissed off, end it, he’d get upset and distant, id get upset because that’s NOT what I wanted ( even though that’s what I said I wanted), and so on and so on. The dance continued until he finally had enough and ended it.

They say when it rains it pours, but no umbrella could have kept me from the shit storm of suck that was waiting for me. Within a week of losing him, I lost my job of 8 years. I knew the lay off was coming ( this one wasn’t my fault, hooray!), but being unemployed and not knowing what came next hit me harder than I had anticipated. So, no job, no boyfriend. You still with me? It get’s worse. In the weeks leading up to the lay off, I was having some strange symptoms. I was tired and dizzy a lot. I was very irritable ( even for me), and had a few fainting spells. I’ve always been someone who get’s sick when I’m stressed, so I chalked it up to the stress of the impending lay off. I went to the Doctor just to be sure. It was then that I found out that I was 7 weeks pregnant and was in the process of miscarrying my first child. I broke. I felt myself fall apart. Everything went white and fuzzy and soft and nothing made sense. I had never wanted children. My relationship with him had made me reconsider. And even though he was gone, there had been a little part of him inside of me, and now it was gone, too. The grief was surprising. I wasn’t prepared for it. The sense of loss was so powerful it ripped what little bit of my sanity I had left to shreds. I was a shell. A mere shape of who I was, who used to live here.

He was supportive. Amazing. Incredible. He was there for me night and day, and stayed with me for weeks. We were still broken up, but he gave me whatever love and affection I needed in order to get through my days. Weeks on end where I couldn’t even get off the couch or out of bed to shower, he was there. I cried and cried and cried and cried. And he was there. Which was no easy feat, because I was falling a part at the seams. With no job, I had nothing to do all day but sit around with my grief of both the relationship and the miscarriage, and let it wash over me. I couldn’t fight any longer to catch my breath. I wanted to drown in it.

He worked in the Mental Health field, and had mentioned a few times how I may benefit from therapy. This wasn’t the first time someone had suggested that, but his education made it more of a loving concern than a “Bitch, you crazy!” insult as it had felt in the past coming from others. I had always considered it during low points, but when the good times came, I always thought I didn’t need it. After spending an entire summer indoors hidden away from my friends and family, he suggested that I may have a mental illness. It’s a testament to his thoughtfulness and they way he communicates that I didn’t slap him. He cautiously started to explain that he had suspected I may have a Mental Illness for a while, and had been researching it on his own for months. He had reached out to people for advice, and had even gone to see a counsellor himself to deal with how I had been treating him. I was disgusted with myself. I was so ashamed and horrified that I had driven someone I love so dearly to such extremes. That I had broken him so badly. It was a difficult conversation. I appreciated his honesty, but It’s a hard thing to hear. I always knew on a somewhat detached level what my emotional instability did to people. But never before was it so apparent. I couldn’t ignore it. He went on to explain that he knew how unhappy I was, and that it may be a Mental Illness preventing me from being happy and living the life I wanted for myself. He explained that based on his research, he thought I may have Borderline Personality Disorder, or Histrionic Personality Disorder. I tried to listen with an open mind, when really all that was going through my mind was ” I am crazy. He thinks I’m crazy. He knows his shit, so if he thinks I’m crazy, I’m crazy. Oh my god, I’m crazy”.

I did some research online and the moment I first read the symptoms of BPD, I felt like I had an identity for the first time in my entire life. I have always been different from everyone else. I feel and perceive things differently, I react differently, no one has ever understood me. You can’t imagine how alone that can make you feel. I never felt like I could relate to anyone. No one ever had the same problems I did. It’s a strange thing to say, but I was EXCITED to find out about Borderline Personality Disorder. One after another, the symptoms made sense to me. It was like looking in a mirror and for the first time in my life seeing ME. Most importantly, there was a feeling of hope. I learned that Borderline Personality Disorder, just like any Mental Illness, is just that, an illness. It’s real. Just as real as asthma or diabetes. It’s an illness that can’t be prevented, and the symptoms were not my fault. Sorry? Not my fault? How do you tell a 30 year old woman who’s been told all her life that she’s difficult, an emotional vampire, a bitch, a slut, a snob, bossy, mean, cruel, manipulative, heartless, controlling, crazy, sensitive, jealous, overbearing and psycho that it’s not actually her fault? It’s been an illness all along calling the shots for me. AND…..there are actually other people like me?! HOT DOG!

Things didn’t get better right away. I was still having symptoms, the knowledge of what they were didn’t make them go away. I lost a lot of friends during this time in my life. Almost all of them. I was still grieving and I wasn’t ready to talk about the miscarriage or my new found illness, so I isolated myself from almost everyone. Only those who pried their way in with a crow bar managed to stay in my life. You guys are reading this, and I want you to know that I love you. Like whoa. Those who understandably took me not returning calls or texts for weeks on end personally have since cut me from their lives. I have lost a lot of wonderful people, really important people who were instrumental in me becoming the person I am today. I miss them all dearly, although they’d never believe me ( that whole credibility thing, remember?). The most devastating loss during this time was my best friend. I was supposed to be her Maid of Honor, but when I isolated myself she kicked me out of the wedding, and out of her life. I miss her terribly.

Mental Health is nothing to Web MD yourself over, so my next step was to get diagnosed. I got myself a referral to see a psychiatrist and patiently waited for my appointment. I was scared SHITLESS the morning of. Walking down the halls of the hospital I was aware that my life was about to change forever. I’ve never known anyone with a Mental Illness before. And I was about to be given the label that would be with my the rest of my life. I paused for a moment and cried before I opened the office door. I can’t explain why, but I cried. I spoke first with an intern who was very warm, and soothing, and she gently eased all of my concerns and struggled out of me. Opening up was easier than I had thought. After a while, she went and got the psychiatrist. He made me want to collapse into myself like a dying star. He was a subscriber of the Tough Love newsletter, and basically said I was Borderline and needed help. He threw out the acronym DBT, said he’d put me on a waiting list and hurried me out the door. Boo. Very boo, indeed.

I went home and looked up this mysterious DBT. Dialectical Behaviour Therapy is a group therapy designed to treat people with Borderline Personality Disorder and other Personality Disorders. As I read about it, I couldn’t believe how perfect it was going to be for me! It was as if it was designed specifically for me! YES! It teaches BPD sufferers skills and techniques to deal with their emotions. To effectively communicate. It teaches distress tolerance and emotion regulation. It places a heavy emphasis on mindfulness and being able to properly identify your emotions. Since BPD is caused by an imbalance in the brain, medication rarely works. DBT doesn’t attempt to change the way those with BPD think, but rather how we react and handle the feelings and thoughts we have. Ummm hello, I need help with ALL OF THOSE THINGS! This pretty much sounded like a group workshop on how to be Friggin’ Awesome. And I was on the list:)

I started taking an anti depressant to help with the mood swings while waiting for treatment. There can be a lot of serious side effects associated, but thankfully I haven’t experience any and they are working wonders for me. I’m still suffering, though, and so are those close to me. During the 8 months I’ve been on the waiting list, I’ve continued to have symptoms. I have good days. Not many, though. Waiting has been hard, like treading water. I get tired. I try to do what I can while I wait. I’ve joined online forums for those with BPD. I practice meditation to work on my mindfulness so I’ll be a head of the game once treatment starts. I bake, I crochet, I try to do things that make me happy, or at least the things that used to. It’s lonely in this Borderline world of mine.

I am happy to say that I finally got the call. I start Dialectical Behaviour Therapy on December 3rd, which I will be renaming in all future calendars ” The Day I Started Living The Life I Wanted”. I am so excited to start, and am very hopeful for what treatment brings. I know I have a long, hard road ahead of me. I know things may get worse before they get better. I’ve been through a lot, but my struggles do not define me. I am more than an illness. I am a mother, a daughter, a sister, a lover and a friend. I will beat this thing. I encourage you to stick around and watch.