BPDFamily.com

So, dear friends on this board. I've had a strange few days. An attack of premenstrual depression and a split with my short term boyfriend (still a friend) brought back all the intense rage, loneliness and misery of being deceived and abandoned by uBPD/npd ex in June after three years of nightmarish abuse and recycling.

I have to take the responsibility for a lot of it; I kept going back. I really realise now that all his accusations are bullhit. He changes like the wind. I should  have stopped trying to listen to and change for him and bloody well looked after myself! I matter! Me and my kids. He can look after himself.

I'm struggling with how I neglected myself for years. I treated myself like hit and allowed him to do the same.

My book deadline just passed. I got a reminder from the publishers     I realised I have spent the whole year I could have been writing my book, ruminating and grieving and panicking over him, mainly. What a waste.

I feel sad because I allowed this human vortex to suck me in. And I am left feeling empty and a failure after three years where the result has been a painful nothingness. I don't want him back. I just wish profoundly that I had never met him.

Human vortex!  Very nice, some people suck like that.

I can relate delusional; I quit drinking caffeine about a week and a half ago, and after a decades-long caffeine addiction it has been hell, headaches, flu-like symptoms, yuck, and my mind has gone to some ugly places, some about her and some about other stuff, but amazing how our mental state is so tied to how we feel physically.

I refuse to consider time spent in it and getting over it a waste though.  The gift my borderline bestowed on me was an education I didn't know I needed, but now that I've detached all of life seems different, my priorities have all changed, and things I couldn't 'figure out' before have become clear to me, like what I need to do to live the life of my dreams, no small accomplishment, borne out of the pain of a dysfunctional relationship we created together.

So challenge: what was good about that year you spent getting over him?  Find something, it will help.

Fromheel, hi again :D I know there is a lot that was and is good. It is good to be free of him.

The best thing is, that when that guy said jump, I used to say jump... . I even briefly went back to him in September for a 48 hour recycle from hell   ... . but after I found out that weekend, how he had lied, cheated, abandoned me and projected all the lies and cheating and abandonment onto me... . I didn't feel sorry for him any more. And I refused to take the blame any more, even just to keep the peace as I used to. I woke up.

I used to be on a plane to Italy when he snapped his fingers. Not any more. I told him that... . but said that if he would take some responsibility, we could talk and be friends, and that I was sorry for what I have done that hurt him... . I offered him closure and calm forgiveness, and he disappeared. He didn't care about me one bit... . he just wanted his possession back.

I have myself back, but very much wounded and in a lot of pain and still ashamed and angry. I've been so, so depressed and still am. Very sad about my work and my book. I've held myself back, all for him. That I need to forgive myself for.

Yep, asking a borderline to take responsibility is a good way to make them disappear, or get blamed.

I was depressed too, for maybe 6 months, got physically sick during it; the good news is that is part of the purging and it will pass.  For me, I started getting excited about little things and thinking about my future more, little steps, but noticeable.  Some more good news is acceptance followed depression, and another level of calmness as a result.

I'm going with this experience will inform your book and it will be better as a result; publishers will be fighting over it... .

Sadly from heel, it's an academic book, not likely to be a bidding war :D It's very 'niche'

But I want to write the BPD survivors psychological horror  novel! That would sell! One day I'll do it!    :)

I look forward to the Hollywood adaptation and your screenplay riches!  For now I'll have to settle for Body Heat and Fatal Attraction. 

Dysfunction can be a vortex. Like an event horizon-not even light can escape.

These kind of relationships can come with really hard lessons.

What's the plan?

ah greenmango... . I am in the phase of writing it all down right now.

now that I am out of the bargaining phase it is really hitting me, how deeply I've been abused. I don't say that from a 'victim' point of view, far from it... . I kept going back... but I realise how I normalised abuse.

I was so desperate to keep him in my life somehow, that I even apologised to HIM in tears last week! When I am the one who was used to the tune of £13k, cheated on and abandoned with incredible cruelty. The apology combined with a refusal to come back to him led to him blocking me, because I am 'sick and dangerous'... .   .

I know it was all bullhit and dangerous bullhit at that. But I stayed. I didn't take care of myself. I put a big baby first and myself last.

I just don't know where to start getting over this. I wrote to him today (he won't get it as I am totally blocked, so it's a sort of diary exercise), how to find a light at the end of the tunnel when at the end of the tunnel is a vortex that sucks light back into it? What am I to learn from this?

I guess plenty once this horrible crippling black depression is a bit better 

Work on your book or this time next year you're going to be feeling the same way.

I'm going to relabel that as the fog you're in as the result of being in a relationship with a disordered person, and how your own stuff meshed with his.  You've spoken to him recently, a week is no time at all, and my experience is once I left her I felt immediate relief, but it took a couple of months out to even start to get my feet on the ground and start focusing on my stuff.  Although I have areas that need work, a whole lot of the strife resolved itself just by removing her from my life and doing time on my own.  Recommended.

Santa, if it was as easy as that, the book would be written already, believe me.

Writing an academic book requires immense drive, clarity and energy, things a severely depressed person does not have especially when they have been stupid enough to get involved with a BPD/narc vortex in human form.

But thanks anyway for the understanding! Sheesh, I don't often get pissed off with people on these boards, but really... .

fromheel, attitudes like Santa's there don't help... . the 'just pull yourself together and do it' 'advice'... .   yeah, because it is really that easy.

I do also have a full time teaching job and a one and  a half hour commute... . and the way I feel now, I'm pretty proud I manage that... . oh, and I'm a single parent too.

I wasted too much time on ex, now I've got to move on, but I'm stuck atm, in anger, pain and resentment so strong it feels like a big black lead coating over my life, I can't describe it any other way.

I know it's not easy. It's incredibly difficult.

The show must go on though.

I get it.  The first week out from her I left my home and the phone, cell phone, computers, any way to contact her and went to a hotel by the beach, drank a whole lot with friendly drunks, just avoided life.  That worked for a week, but I got back and got back to work, was committed to not communicating with her or stalking her on Facebook and Twitter, and didn't, but I still felt completely out of it for months.  I understand.  It wasn't until I found these boards and started consciously focusing on me several months later that life started to make a little sense again, and I started to focus on the past less and the future more.  These relationships do a number on our psyche, and the only way to stop the bleeding is to sever the connection for good, at least for me.

Hey you, I can totally relate - not just on the fact that it is SO difficult to get over someone you feel you've given more to than you could ever possibly imagine giving to someone, but also on the academic level… I am about to finish my PhD! Can you imagine? Just the introduction away. And I have not been able to do this ever since he broke up with me before Christmas, it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to write those damn 5000 words on chapter outline etc.  Now I have to pay a penalty for taking longer than I should have (and I should have submitted 1 week after the dumped me, that week was planned around writing that introduction - didn't work out, obviously).

Big hugs to you. I am now in a state of apathy and calm, I think the depression is slowly subsiding, and funny enough - being only one day on this forum has made me feel SO much better! I am now in some sort of lucid, emotionally detached state that I hope will lead to acceptance and forgiveness. And I wish you this too!  

Santa, the show is going on, I am turning up to work, setting exam papers, updating the syllabus, teaching, cleaning my house, looking after my kids. Trying to do research even though my head feels full of heavy cotton wool. I am just not achieving at the top end any more, I am  not able to be creative. That's depression. And it makes me mad because I haven't looked after myself or my life, I've looked after him, only to have him comprehensively ___ me over when I didn't deserve it. Except for being stupid, maybe... .

:'(

Yeah fromheel, I guess him cutting me off is a very good thing. He is too toxic to be friends with. My crazy bargaining stage just went on too long and seems to have taken a few bits of my soul with it!

I got completely screwed over at the end of my relationship too. It totally sucks. Believe me, I feel for you. BPD people are the worst.

All I am saying is that he's taken enough from you already. Don't let him take any more. Your life is what's important. Not his. Don't cheat yourself out of your own life because you're thinking about him. He's not worth it.

oh lord tabular I so feel for you!

Finishing my PhD with a baby aged then 3 months old was nothing LIKE as difficult as writing has been these last years. Bpd ex following on from a horrible and still incomplete divorce (from a non) seems to have eaten up all my creative power and self belief.

I'm paying penalties in terms of no promotion and 'inadequate' research output. That is in spite of working a full 35 hour week doing all the other stuff we have to do. Academic life is hard and gruelling enough eh?

my summer was meant to be for finishing the book. As it was it all went down the big black BPD rabbithole!  :) I still feel like I'm at the bottom of it. I'm furious at how he has b*ggered off yet again with a few patronising words of blame and 'forgiveness' (yes, he forgives me for FORCING him to have an affair and dump me pregnant... .  lol). God, it is ridiculous isn't it. Life just seems like a bad cosmic joke atm.

Oh I know santa. I know.

I want my life back. Just not sure how to take it back atm.

I have a big pile of books in front of me ready to work  :) better at least start. A sentence a day is better than none at all... .

https://bpdfamily.com/bpdresources/nk_a112.htm

https://bpdfamily.com/bpdresources/nk_a115.htm

Hi D,

You mentioned feeling depressed - you definitely aren't the only person feeling depressed on the tails of relationship with a person with BPD.

Some of the stats suggests a high percentage of members here experiencing it.  No shame there.

One of the things to take care of you could be seeing the doctor about it.  Depression can be serious and debilitating... . and it tends to get worse without help.   You have a lot  on your plate from work to kids to just daily life.

Sometimes talking to the doctor and getting a rx  to get through the hump and bring those depression chemicals in check can help.  Do you have a doctor?  Can you talk to him or her?

I popped a couple of the bpdfamily.com resources on depression at the top.  One is a website called Mood Gym - it's a free cbt website to work through depression.

Take good care of you. One step at a time. One sentence at a time.

Courage, my friend. My ex used to ask me in the past few weeks on the rare occasion that he'd inquire about my life 'How's the PhD going?' and when I told him it is not going very well, he replied 'Oh, it's like a never ending project for you, isn't it?' I thought I would kill him!

I know it is so hard, but let's just leave those manipulative losers behind (and I am telling this to myself now as well). No more of this nonsense. We are strong, creative, smart people. Someone else's f'ed up brain should not stand in our way to achieve grandness! RIGHT? 

This is damn good advice man... . I did the same.  Turned off my facebook completely for a while.  I too spent a lot of time at the beach and just enjoying the freedom of being single and not worrying about her so much.  Hung out with people that I normally wouldn't hang out with to avoid any type of contact... . because inadvertently someone would bring her the f#ck up... . and I did NOT wanna talk about it!  I too have had ups and downs... . Last November I was feeling really good and having it together, then later on in December I started falling apart again.  That cycle repeated about 4 times or so... . Eventually though I cared less and less about it each time... . When you're in the throws of it, it is often hard to see through the fog... . but you will get better.  It takes time.  For me about a year and a half.  It won't be forever.  Promise.