15 months into Recovery – how it began.

I chose this Prince of Persia picture because a) he’s hot b) this is to me, an image of what BPD feels like in my body. I literally sometimes feel like 2 halves where one is a sane, healthy, fighting soul and the other is a deviant, raging, twisted, depressed maniac. I mean, it’s not so extreme these days but it’s there. It’s imprinted within me. It’s a little of what I am going to theorize with my Psychologist when I meet him. (More on that, later).

Anyway, I wanted to go into how the past 15 months of recovery have been like for me, so that I can see my progress and areas I am going to keep working on because, can’t stop, won’t stop, baby.

March last year, having been dumped yet again, by the ‘then’ love of my life at the time (who I now know to be a narcissistic personality douchebag) I was devastated. I was even more devastated because I had felt sparks flying from the first message, we were instantly attracted to each other and I felt we had connected on a much deeper level than I had with my ex-husband (which I now realise doesn’t take much as me and my ex-husband had never really connected before marriage at all, oh the joys of BPD/love addiction seem endless). What hurt even more was the fact that he told me I needed ‘help’ (aka. girl you crazy, and no one gonna date your ass until you get professional help). I am making light humour about it now because I can see how badly he was in need of therapy himself and how cruel that was for him to say that but at the time I blamed myself and my disorder. My BPD, my fear of abandonment, my crazy making had dropped yet again another chance for me to have a happy relationship. I was fucked up beyond repair and any guy who came close to loving me would inevitably see his way out (this also isn’t 100% true in my history, I have just as well dropped men willing to stand by me, but the BPD memory and brain is very selective when we are highly emotionally charged – we only remember and think thoughts that fit our currently jaded view of the world based on whatever event triggered us, all other facts or memories that prove otherwise are conveniently forgotten as if they never existed in the first place, it can be pretty scary stuff).

I was still hopelessly in love with him, how I hated myself for letting this not work out. How I hated him for not understanding my fear of abandonment, for not giving our ‘love’ (rolls eyes) a chance.

The next event occurred but a few days later. My sister and I share a room and she had decided to type away past midnight whilst I was trying to sleep for work. I asked her politely to take it downstairs and she refused. I did the normal person thing and kept telling her to ‘listen’ she argued back and next thing you know I’m at her laptop wacking it out of her hand, which leads to her pushing me and me slapping at her, and god knows what else happened in that frenzied fight my mum and other sister had to break up – we broke the bed in the process. My sister screamed at me telling me I’m crazy and to stay out of her life and away from her.

Shaking and in tears, I cried, and shook and cried and smoked. No matter how much my mum kept telling me it was okay as she could see the pain that my actions had caused me. No amount of reassuring was enough. The funny thing is, people hate those with BPD for their out of control anger outbursts, violent episodes, but they don’t realise that at the end of it all, we suffer the most. No one is harder on us than we are to ourselves. I felt like a monster. I hated myself. Why did I keep doing things, that no sane person would do? Why did I just attack uncontrollably? Why couldn’t I see it coming, and why couldn’t I stop once I’d started?

In a total wreck, the next day, I cut again. After a 9 month break. I cut again. Because of a guy, again. I felt shit, it felt shit watching it heal the next few days. Instead of wishing I could do it again, I just felt regret. A part of me just thought ‘this is the last time I do this because of some fucking guy again’. It never brought them back, it never made them ‘care’ that much more, hell, they would be out of my life by that time and didn’t even know I had done it. Why on earth was I here racking my arms because of someone else? Enough was enough, I had enough sliver of hope in me, and in myself, that some part of me is good, because that some part, didn’t like what I had done, some part hated hitting people, breaking things, getting in fights, and to hate that, means somewhere I have a conscience, I have a soul that realises what is right and wrong. The only thing left to do except continue suffering this way or die, was try to help myself, because after all the years of failed relationships, cutting, damaging sex, leaving jobs, breaking things, hitting people and more things and myself. I was done.

There was nowhere left to go but face this thing head on.