BPDFamily.com

Tonight I feel sad for my BPDbf and I. I've realised as I am doing more research on this horrible disorder just how much our lives together will never be normal. How he misses out of so much just breaks my heart and hurts me to the core.

I recently come across a couple of extracts from some articles I found and I believe it's the closest thing I have ever read that relates to, inside the mind of my BPD.

Can anyone relate?... .


Rage from nowhere, attached to nothing... .floating-freely from deep within me and ready in an instant to spew forth in what seem like instantaneously-effortless bursts of unbridled entitlement to give me a sense of power amidst the feelings of helplessness that are my every waking moment. If I am helpless you are too powerful, no, I will be powerful. I will take your power away so you can be helpless. I don't do helpless. I am power. I must have the power. We can't both have the power. I want what is mine. You are mine right? I am not yours though, I cannot be anybody's because I am not even my own. I gave myself to you. We are each others right? I mean, what's the difference?

Fear strikes me from all corners of my being. What, what is it that I am not seeing? Is not what I perceive what is really real? Why is it that I am the only one who sees what I see, just the way that I do? What does this mean? Surely this is what is wrong with the world right? I mean it can't be my problem. I am not afraid. I am not scared or weak or vulnerable. I need you... .NO! ... .I am strong and I don't need you. If you let me need you I won't want you anymore. And if you say I can't have you then I've got to have you. If you let me have you then I don't want you anymore. I want you when you don't want me and I need you when you won't help me. It is the biting and the pain of this cold distance that I know that somehow is familiar and is the feeling that I need to give me the illusion of safety. If I were truly safe I'd be exposed and not safe at all. Get away by coming closer and come closer by getting away. I am exposed most when I hide and hidden when I try to be who I think I am.

Feeling alone, again, abandoned as always, alone, again. I am everyone and everyone is me. Who am I again? Oh yea, that person, and that person, and what this person, and this person, want. Where does that leave me when I am alone? Who am I then? Do I cease to exist if I am not in the company of someone off of whom I can bounce my existence and from whom all of my validation must come?

What is wrong with the world? Why can't they see my pain? Don't they know how incredibly much I hurt? Can't they see that I need them to hold some of this pain for me, validate it, and take it away; for my soul runneth over with agony? Why should I have to bear my own agony? It is not my fault. I didn't do this to me. I didn't choose to hurt like this. I am beside myself with all of this pain and anger and grief as is an infant whose mother is angry with him or her. What do I do with that angry face? It is not acceptance, it is rejecting me... .but I NEED it... .what am I to do? I don't know what to do so I put it beside me. Whatever it is, I leave it to sit there... .and it builds over the course of a lifetime. It builds and it always hurts. It hurts even when I don't feel it at all. I need to get what I need. I'll die if I don't. I'll just die. I am dying to live and in my attempts to live I die.

And so I have remained trapped inside this isolated and insulated place of youth stunted in my emotional growth. I am a victim. It is not my fault. I hurt and I hurt and I hurt. Why don't you care? Why don't you care? Make it go away. Make it stop, just love me from over there. Love me, but don't you dare really care. It would hurt too much if you were to care. I wouldn't understand who you were caring for or about because I don't know who I am. I hate who I am and what I am. I hate whoever the hell I am. I have come to hate what it is that I might be, or sometimes am. I don't like the voided vacuum within which I feel like my being exists under a glass bubble. So close, yet so far away from others am I. So close, yet so far away, from whoever I am, am I. Who are you trying to care about? What does that mean, that you want to care about me? It would mean that I needed you to care. I don't need you to care but I am dying for you to care. Still, care from over there and don't act like I need you.

Rescue me, by leaving me alone... .it'll kill me. Leave me alone but rescue me. I need you to rescue me if I am to live. I am not alive. I am dead. I am dead when I try to be alive. I am alive when I act like I'm so dead I can't feel anything. There is such a sharp feel to the pain of numbness. Feeling the absence of myself like this. Where do the feelings go? Where does all of that pain hide? I dissociate from all that hurts. I give it to others. It is their fault, and their problem, not mine. Help me, while you leave me alone. Leave me alone while you help me. NOW!

I am the center of the universe. Yes I am. I am it and it is me. I will act this way too, if I feel like it. No, you can't win. I will win. I'll get you coming and I'll get you going and there will be no way that you can win. I must always win. I need to control because I feel so helplessly out of control, but you can't know that. You can't know that okay, you don't know that about me. I don't know that about me. I don't know you and cause I don't know me. You can't know me either. No, I won't let you in to a place that I have yet to gain access to. No, me first.

Who am I? I thought I knew just a minute ago. Then, suddenly nothing felt familiar anymore. Nothing felt okay anymore: nothing felt SAFE anymore - nothing felt as it had before. Why does this happen and what does it mean? What do you mean you don't know? You are supposed to know. I expect you to know. And if I expect it then I have a right to demand it from you. Don't go asking me for anything, NO, it depends how I feel, and what I believe in any given moment... .you just never can know cause I never know what I'll do or say or feel. Every moment changes and shifts from one to the next. What is real, what is truth, whether or not I think I can take care of myself or what I feel, or right or wrong, from minute to minute changes, so I really just don't know. I don't care to know. Don't bother me about it. Leave me alone, just stay here. And be quiet while you talk to me. Talk to me silently. Words can hurt. Don't be too quiet in your silence though, because silence can kill a soul. I know, it killed mine over and over again. Dead, time and time again, risen hopes, only to fall and to die, unanswered, arms outstretched, never reached for, never grasped, arms that hung outstretched while a little girl screamed in terror and fear and had more need than any infant could possibly bear to hold. Arms... .that had to hold themselves, suspended in mid air, left alone, ignored. Arms that would take another 36 years to ever dare to reach out again. So hold me, and rock me -- rock me to stillness -- gently okay, just don't touch me really, you know?

Truth, you want to talk truth? Whose truth, yours or mine? Is there a truth between? No, my truth is truth. Your idea of truth is a lie. I don't lie. If I don't lie and our truths aren't the same that makes you a liar. Does so... .just does. If I am right then you are wrong. Yes you are. No I'm not. If I am good then you are bad if you don't agree with me and or see things my way. My way isn't just right; it is the only way. What matters is what I want and need. That's my truth. And my truth is the truth. Don't you even try to lie to me, don't... .

I know things but they seem fleeting. What is real and important one minute is fragile and or gone and or misunderstood-misperceived and misinterpreted by me the next minute. I don't know why? You were here a minute ago and it mattered. But then you left. While you were gone for three minutes and fifty-four seconds (clock time -- forever in my own sense of the reality of time) I forgot that you mattered to me and now I find it incredibly impossible to believe that you could love me and leave me just like that for three minutes and fifty-four seconds... .to wait and to suffer like that, alone, isolated and afraid. Don't ever do that again. Promise me! Do you have any idea what you put me through? My parents left me like that. It's not alright for you to just be you and not be me -- while I'm being you too. I know things seem fleeting. Things keep changing. I can't hold anymore than I am whether I am holding anything or not.

You live in a "big picture." Life, so I am told unfolds in some "big picture" of reality. I live in millions of little pictures. Millions of pieces of reality. Snap shots from the whole, fragmented seconds of minutes that seem to encompass hours. I can't tell what is going on around me like you do. No, it does not make sense to me. Part of this picture lined up with part of that one... .what am I supposed to see? What can I know from these mixed up jigsaw puzzle messages? I get part of it. I don't understand the rest. First you seem to make sense, and then you don't so I get angry and frustrated. In one part of the picture I care about you but in another part of the picture I remember out of context when you said this or that and then I can't trust you anymore, or not until the next moment when two picture pieces fit briefly together. This is my experience. So one minute I want you close, from a distance and the next minute I want you distantly-close. This is what is going on inside of me. I don't want to hurt you like I do I just don't know how to make sense of all of these jumbled messages and fragmented pictures that bombard my mind constantly with images and thoughts that do not fit together, not now, not ever, hardly ever anyway. If memories are pictures of the way things were (or the way things are?)then my memories, like strewn screams, echo to a voided-abyss in a cavernous canyon. Imagine all of that sound overlapping itself. Could you hear me then, any better than I can hear you now?

I hate you. That is not true, but sometimes I think it is. I will not answer the phone when you call, even though I want to talk to you. I will not call you, even though it is all I want to do. I will not reach out to you, even though every part of me wants to. I will be mad at you, I will want to hurt you, I will drive you away because I am afraid to let you closer. I need your constant attention, your reassurances, but I will greet them with cold indifference. I will be jealous of the attention you give others, and I will get mad at you for ignoring me. I will feel close to you and care for you one day, only to be mad and want you out of my life the next.

I am an emotional amnesiac, maybe I always have been. I take each event, each day, each conversation as a seperate event, always looking for signs that you might hurt me. When I feel neglected, I will get mad and forget that the day before you told me how much you cared. I am an inconsistent mess. There is a part of me who is happy and confident and another part that is insecure and needy. These days, I never know which one it will be. Every time I think I am in control, that I know you care and I feel comfortable with our relationship, the fear and doubt will come back. Maybe with time it will go away completely, but doubt it. All it will take is another close relationship, another new friend, another day and it will be back.

You ask what you can do and I do not know what to say. The needy part of me wants your constant attention, it needs your words and thoughts, your presence. But I know that is not the answer, I must accept the limitations on our relationship. The scared part of me wants you out of my life because it would be easier. The hateful part of me wants to hurt you because it thinks you have hurt me. All I can ask you to do is to understand, to not give up. I will ignore you at times, I may be rude to you, I may try to hurt you. I may hide from you and wait for you to reach out to me, so I know you will care. It is not fair to do these things, but I will. I cannot ask you to put up with this, it is not fair and no matter how I act, I care too much to put you through this. But you asked, and this is all I have to tell you.

I do not like this. I do not like that I am needy and clinging. I do not like that I hurt people. I do not like that I am rude and sarcastic to those around me. I do not like this part of myself. For years, I have ignored this and pretended it was me, but I have realized that is wrong. This is not me, it is a false identity created to protect me from the world. This was not an easy realization, and perhaps I haven't fully accepted it yet. But I have found my path, I have realized I can change and I can accept this side of me and keep it from becoming who I am. It will not be easy and it will not be quick, but I have faith that I can do it. Perhaps one day I will see me as the person you see behind my defenses, and perhaps one day I will let others see that person as well.