For a while when I marriage with my ex-wife with BPD, I thought I was ''Normal''. Yes there was the bout of depression, loneliness that comes with a fail marriage. But I thought I was ok, that I left unscarred and clean of fleas. F*** I was wrong. Started dating recently and this is when I realize I have a gazillions of them to take care of.
I have had the opposite problem. I don't ever recall thinking that I was normal. I grew up in a dysfunctional home. In my FOO, I don't recall anybody ever pretending to be normal. Sure, some stuff was kept quiet by not putting it all out there for the whole world to see. There was some dysfunction that the whole world saw whether we wanted them to see it or not. My FOO is one of the dysfunctional kind that put the FUN in dysfunctional. I am not trying to make light of it but acknowledge that I have pretty much always known that I came from a messed up family. I spent most of my marriage thinking that my husband was the normal one and I was the messed up one. As a result, I allowed him to define my reality for me. Before being married to him, I knew I had fleas but I also knew how to pick them off and deal with them if that makes any sense.
Yes, I have fleas but I feel like most of them come from my husband rather than my FOO. My siblings and I have been rehashing our family fleas for years.
The point is that at least, you and I and many others here are lucid about our issues and we want to deal with them. Nobody is perfect, there is always room for improvement. So see it as ways to ''improve yourself'' and one by one, you will get them all I am certain.
I question whether or not I am truly lucid about my issues. I say that because I keep coming across things that I didn't even realize were issues. It is a new adventure in self awareness.
