Sad to say I have given up

BPDgirl
Sun, 31 Jul 2011 15:21:57 +0000

momma-three:

Did you always know that something was different in the way you saw things?



I always was a particularly sad and yet also sneaky child. I felt that by doing things I wasn’t supposed to, I was merely righting the wrong of people’s arbitrary rules. I seemed, however, quite the ideal daughter. I did well in school, I never misbehaved in any way that ended with me getting caught, and I was bright. Also, despite the fact that I didn’t believe the rules were truly meant for me, I was quite kind. I remember when I was five, a little girl I knew saw a new present my mom had bought for me. Her mom never bought her new things, so I gave her one of my toys. I was prone to bursting into tears when I contemplated the pain of others because I felt it very acutely. Even now I cry a bit whenever I hear anything sad.

As far as being a sad child, I would say I always experienced what is called dysphoria, one of the symptoms of borderline. I remember feeling it from my earliest memories. It is not simply sadness or anxiety though. It has always been, for me, more of a feeling of something gnawing on my soul or whatever you want to call the inner thing that a person is. It is somewhat akin to a situation where there’s something you really really need to get done, but you simply can’t remember what it is, and it eats away at you until you remember. But there was nothing to remember. The feeling was just there.

As a teenager is when things really took a turn though. I started engaging in outright dangerous or odd behaviors. When I was thirteen, I found out a family friend had been molesting his little sister. My mom had gotten a call from someone who knew this, and she then told me. She went to bed crying shortly after. I, meanwhile, felt completely numb. A few minutes after she went to bed, I put on sneakers (aside from that I was wearing pajama shorts and a t-shirt) and went out in the snow. I walked over to a park nearby and simply wandered around it for several hours like that. I don’t think I thought about anything much. Eventually I went home around 2 in the morning.

When I was fifteen, I started cutting myself. When I was sixteen, I slept with that BPD guy, who was 24. A few months later I got involved with a married man, though we never had sex. The list goes on and on.

I felt for many years, until recently, that I had no center. No solid Me. That I was really a bundle of various unreliable traits that could change at the drop of a hat. I switched religious beliefs a lot. I did various activities and tried to make the activities my identities. I did some good things as part of that, too. I did serious volunteer work with one organization for about two years because that made me feel like I was a particular sort of person.

I don’t remember when I started feeling unpresent, as if the world was a movie I was watching. It’s like there’s a thin film between you and the rest of existence. There were many moments in which I felt as though my actions were happening TO me rather than being done BY me. When I would start sobbing uncontrollably and yelling and storm off and start cutting myself, it seemed as inevitable as gravity, and yet afterwards I always felt very confused as to how it had happened.

I had a severe sense of abandonment starting from a young age. For various reasons, starting at around 9, I lived with a lot of different people who seemed to promptly forget about me as soon as I didn’t live with them anymore. Maybe that contributed. Anyway, by the time I was fifteen it was at the OH MY GOD I SHOULD DIE level if someone wasn’t into me anymore. I would leave dozens and dozens of messages on their phones and so forth.



momma-three:

This behavior all started when she entered college and was away for the first time.

Late adolescence and early twenties is definitely a time when mental illness tends to really grasp people. Maybe it was the upheaval that really did her in.



momma-three:

makes up lies to anyone who will still look at her and believe what she is saying. I have received messages from some people who know her and it is clear that she has blamed me for everything including “throwing” her out of the house.



I don’t know if this makes it better or worse, but it’s possible she believes some or all of what she is saying. It could be outright delusional psychosis, or it could be that interprets things in the most sensitive manner possible. I don’t know what the situation of her leaving was, but I can imagine someone with borderline interpreting, say, “You are not behaving the way you should in this house, maybe it would be best if you found your own place,” as “I HATE YOU, GET OUT, GET OUT!”

I am a genius at interpreting perfectly harmless things in the worst way possible. I am MUCH better about it now, but let me give you an example from my first semester of college. I got an A on my first major paper. At first I felt good… but then… I started wondering how many As the teacher had given. Was mine really that special? Probably not. She probably gave lots of As. And if she lined up all the A papers from favorite to least favorite – surely some As are better than other As – where would mine fall? Surely it would be her least favorite of all the papers she gave As. Anyway, I ended up a sobbing mess after this line of thought, feeling that the professor had hated my paper.



momma-three:

I am just wondering at what point you sought help for yourself



I sought help in a completely inept way soon after I turned eighteen. I had previously always thought that that my issues were clearly caused by my mother, and then being under the thumb of whoever else I’d been living with. I thought when I was FREEEEE I’d feel fine. But I didn’t feel fine. And the fact that I didn’t suddenly feel fine made me feel even worse than before. The realization struck me that, though it was possible my mother had influenced my problems, they were now a part of me. And it blew my mind.