NOSTIGMAS ALLY BLOG
Documenting the lives of the NoStigmas community through stories, creative works & advocacy related to mental illness and suicide.
Whether you are living with a mental illness or not, connection is vital for sustaining life. As Brene Brown states in Daring Greatly, “..connection is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives”. We as humans are interactive creatures with a disposition to create relationships and meaning, we are not meant to go through life alone. Feeling connected to a cause, a practice, other people, it all creates a significant relationship and without it we truly suffer.
I was 15 years old when I started dating my first boyfriend. Everything went really great for the first few months. Then he swiftly changed.
He was physically, mentally, emotionally and sexually abusive. One of the ways he controlled me was by informing me that I wasn’t allowed to eat. He said I was a disgusting cow. I began to binge eat but I would feel so guilty I would vomit or if he caught me eating without his permission he would force me to be sick, all the while reminding me how repulsive I was to look at and that I had to look good enough for him. I started to believe him. I would live off of sunflower seeds and water. When I did finally break and eat, my body rejected it. I didn’t have to make myself sick, my body did it for me.
After I finally had enough and left him, his messages stayed in my head. Away from him I finally stabilized to being able to eat every day, but only eating once and never being over a certain weight. I finally became pregnant after 4 years of trying and a diagnosis of endometriosis. I was so healthy and happy while I was pregnant. I felt great and my daughter was healthy. But unfortunately after she was born I slowly relapsed to lose the baby weight. But my goal weight was dangerously low; I hated having a triple digit weight.
My husband was never mean or said anything about my weight but I couldn’t get my ex’s voice out of my head. I dropped to a dangerously low weight before I finally snapped out of it. I realized I don’t want my kids to see their mommy slowly wither away into skin and bones. It’s still a daily struggle to eat but I’m staying healthy. Every day I hear my ex’s voice in my head but I know I am just fine the way that I am. And my kids need their mommy, not the skeleton she was.
What the hell is Borderline Personality Disorder? I posed this question many times to several therapists, only to leave their offices feeling guilty. Guilty for being “bad”. Guilty for feeling misunderstood.
Like most other mentally ill adults, I had been exhibiting symptoms since early childhood. My mom thought I acted out for attention. Somehow, she nor anyone else never connected the dots between unusually high hyperactive moods and severe anxiety. Even as I aged, I would cry at the drop of a hat and stuttered beyond comprehension. I wet the bed ‘til age 12 and got caught masturbating a few times. I wonder if she ever knew there were a few times on many days.
My absentee father left a hole in my heart when his wife found out about my existence. He stopped coming around after my tenth birthday, but agreed to see my oldest brother anytime he travelled back to New York. Here’s where I never connected the dots. My story is peppered with the usual shameful tales of promiscuity and relationship fails. It combines academic highs with irrational lows. Some days my low moods would cause me to cry all day and sleep. Other days I barreled through doors and cursed some unsuspecting soul out up one way and down another. On many days I questioned whether or not God would sequester me to hell if I attempted suicide. There were times I stole my coworkers’ food after my last job termination left me broke and desperate. I spent many years angry, confused, and depressed. What the hell is Borderline Personality Disorder? And why did it choose to mess with me?
We all know what the DSM says. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment? Check! A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation? Check! Impulsivity? Check! I wish none of these applied to me, but it seems as if I develop a new symptom each year. I was diagnosed at age 34 and have undergone numerous medication trials. I hear that DBT therapy is the only sure fire “cure” for BPD and that supports groups should complement well. There’s just one problem. I have ADHD and can’t sit still long enough to last four minutes, much less an hour in a group setting. I can’t focus long enough to make any real progress. Well, maybe I’ve made some progress.
It’s been five years since my initial diagnosis and I’m happy to report that I’m now on two medications instead of five. I see my outpatient therapist every three weeks instead of twice per week, like before. I’ve actually maintained celibacy, and by the grace of God, I no longer cut or contemplate suicide. So what the hell is Borderline Personality Disorder? It’s a raging war that’s more like my tolerable step-child, and less like my nemesis.
I’d like to say that faith is a catalyst to change and believing you can heal is the first step to recovery.
I want to share my recovery journey to inspire other people and show them how powerful their personal story is. There will always be struggles, but they don’t have to define you or hold you back from being someone great! :)
There is more to life than just surviving. You can overcome mental illness.
The same phrase has been circling around in my mind for quite some time. A wise person once told me that you can’t get better if you don’t want to. This seems to be a reoccurring issue within my short 18 years on this Earth.
Where shall I start? So my childhood wasn’t the worst. My dad was semi-abusive, my mother went back and forth from a clingy psychopath to the perfect mother. I was I guess considered intelligent, I was in gifted. As a strange child, I didn’t have many friends but the ones I had were pretty good. I was decently bullied, not to extremes but I didn’t get off scotch free either.
I had my first experience with depression and anxiety attacks in eighth grade. Got in some bad fights with friends and my parents were in the midst of a divorce due to my father’s affair.
I had my first and worst panic attack at school. I started my day at the high school where I took a few courses before I was bussed back to the middle school for my normal classes. Two years earlier a friend of my brother had attacked us both, beat us badly and threated to kill us. He had also in the past threatened to rape me. It’s obvious that I was terrified of him. I saw him for the first time in two years and froze. Being a small girl in the middle of a narrow stairwell in our old high school building, I had to get away from him. I felt like I was stuck with the air caught in my chest. I ran as fast as I could to my next class, not really being present in my own body the rest of the day. I don’t remember much about that day other than the horrible feeling of my heart racing, and not being able to breathe or move.
The next year I started high school and found amazing friends through NJROTC. I met my first love through that program. I told him all of my secrets and he told me his. In the end he cheated on me and left me for a close friend, causing me to relive our break up over and over again for the next 2 years.
I fell into a dark depression after that, dragging all of those around me into the dark hole. My current boyfriend who treats me like a princess has sure been my knight in shinning armor. He’s probably one of the only reasons I am still alive. He helped me through my depression from the start, and loved me when I couldn’t love myself.
I fell into a self destructive pattern of alcohol, cigarettes, and self harm. The truth is that I didn’t want to die but I truly didn’t care what might happen to me. I was numb and hated myself for not being good enough to keep the ones I loved around me.
It took a while of arguments about how my life means more to others around me than to myself, how I should love myself and how I am not only hurting myself but I am hurting others as well. I can’t admit I am fully recovered but I have come to terms with my family status, and my past relationship. Everyday I am learning to love myself and gaining the courage I need to talk to others in my life and let them know what I have struggled with.
Honestly I didn’t really want to get better because even though I was numb, at least I wasn’t feeling direct pain. Having overcome that fear and on the path of recovery, I would like to share that the happy times are worth the little amounts of pain.
I still struggle with depression and anxiety but I have found an amazing support group of friends and I can say that one day I will be recovered and it will most definitely be worth the struggle it took to get there.
Don’t be afraid to tell those around you how you feel. I promise you that none of the people I told treated me differently in any negative way, most of them actually opened up their feelings to me as well.
You are not alone. You are loved and you are priceless.
