I was recently diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) after spending two weeks in a mental hospital following two failed suicide attempts. While anything with the phrase “disorder” naturally sounds terrifying at first, it was more than a little bit relieving to have the answer to the one question I had asked all my life: “why am I the way that I am?”

What exactly is BPD? Trying to explain it to someone who has never experienced it can be quite a daunting task. My psychiatrist describes borderline personality disorder as having an “emotional sunburn.” Imagine touching the skin of a person without a sunburn as opposed to touching the skin of someone with a horrible, blistering burn. While the person without a sunburn will be fine, the one with a sunburn will be in excruciating pain. Having BPD is like always having a bad sunburn but instead of covering my skin, it covers my emotions, making it so every negative thing I feel is magnified.