My story and how it affected me

[Hammerhead]

Introduction
This is going to be a very long story and my first post here.   This post is mainly written to get the things of my chest as I'm currently going through a rough time for the first time in a couple months.

Let me start of by telling that I am not a 100% sure that this is BPD related and never will be, though there are definitely a lot of traits that made me believe so (only a few are mentioned in this post, otherwise it's going to be way too long for this board). Nonetheless, it may also be completely unrelated to BPD, I'm not here to judge or put a label on anyone, I'm just here to share my story and hopefully get some feedback as I'm still struggling from time to time moving forward. This is the story from my own point of view and I'm fully aware that I can and probably will be wrong in one or more areas as I only see the things from my own perspective, mostly. Feel free to criticize.

Now... sit back and enjoy

My youth
So, first things first. My youth was pretty awful. I have an amazing dad who I believe is codependent and... .well, a less amazing mom. She was always about herself and only herself (NPD probably and definitely OCD with regard to cleaning, she would just keep cleaning stuff for no apparent reason). Her background is an extremely abusive family, including physical, spiritual and lots of emotional abuse. Let's just say that she wasn't that much different than her parents when it came down to raising us.

My reaction to that trauma was to fawn, for many, many years. Pretty sure that got me severe CPTSD, even to the point where the anger I felt towards her would come up when someone pushed me or touched me by accident, together with a lot of powerlessness. It also gave me toxic shame to the point where I couldn’t do anything she ever forbid me or threatened to punish for without feeling extremely bad.

My brother's response was fight, and that made it even worse for me and my dad. I was always waiting for the outbursts to start and the hitting to begin, the yelling... .God, it was horrible. I remember my dad fainting during a fight between the both of them. And then there was my mom, telling us that we were putting my dad to an early grave by not behaving.

I myself wasn't assertive to any degree at all. I was also forced to obey and believe in God, go to church and not do anything God had forbidden (which apparently is pretty much everything that includes joy). I was miserable throughout my youth and due to social anxiety pretty much spent all day by myself, went home straight from school and didn't have any social activities (I couldn't invite someone at our house anyway, because of mom. And besides that, if I did anything that didn’t live up to her expectations, she’d start yelling and I didn’t want that to happen, I guess I just felt sorry for my dad at that point. I was isolated.). That's just a few things but I guess that's enough to get an idea on how my youth was. No single youth is perfect, I admit and understand that, but I definitely believe that this was just more than “not perfect”. It was abuse and it was trauma that I still suffer from today.

To add on that, I do have and show emotions, which is something rare in the family apparently. And thus I was called "weak" my entire life. So I ended up hiding my emotions and thoughts entirely and just do whatever was expected of me.
I was planning on moving out as soon as I legally could but then my dad got cancer and I just wanted to be there for him as I felt so bad for him. Those years were awful, but he survived and that's what counts. Well, he survived cancer, and my mom then used cancer as an excuse to isolate the family even more. But that's a whole other story, that's not that I'm here for.

Nonetheless, I didn't move out and my self-esteem and respect was simply non-existent. Combined with social anxiety I just kept up the image of being a really cool guy to colleagues that was always busy to avoid any social activity. Meanwhile, I just sat there by myself all day long, being miserable, spending time on a computer. Really, really miserable. But, I truly believed that I wasn't capable of socializing and doing fun things like other people do, as I tended to have a lot of headaches and get tired a lot (which is a normal response to abuse). Combined with anxiety and being called weak, I always truly believed that I was an extremely weak person that simply wasn't capable of doing things and thus I didn't even attempt them. A girlfriend? I never, ever thought that I was worthy of one. What would they get off a weak and ugly person like me after all?

Meeting a girl
Fast forward to an internship where I met a girl. She seemed to be extremely nice, had a really good education, was well-spoken and well, I simply looked up to her like I did with everyone else. At some point I finally got the courage to tell her that I liked her, we went for a few date and well... .things escalated quickly. Both of us had severe low self-esteem I guess. I caught her on several lies during the second date, but still, I didn't trust my guts and just went ahead.

The first months of the relationship
The first months of the relationship were amazing, she was so like me, it was as if we shared the same goals, dreams and reality. Though honestly, I didn't have any goals or dreams myself, I just copied them of other people, I was that easy to influence. Honestly, at that point, I had no idea what I had to do with my life. Moving out to live by myself was something I never expect I could ever do, because well, I was weak. Weak people can’t do things by themselves, especially not take care of themselves. I was filled with depression and anxiety.

[Hammerhead]

The second phase of the relationship
Fast forward again, this time by 4-5 months. We were still doing great as a couple, though I came to notice that some things were off. But I was is in love, so I just ignored things. Especially me, I've been ignoring things that I felt were not right since pretty much birth. It became kind of a survival instinct. She made me buy nice clothes, got me perfume and pretty much got me a bit out of isolation. I never wanted to wear nice clothes and wear perfume, hell I didn’t even want to share a public opinion at that point, as I simply wanted to go against the standard, that’s what I got my ‘self-esteem’ from.

During a few arguments I did notice that she never, ever gave in and that I wasn’t allowed to have a different opinion on quite a few things. It was her experience and opinion that mattered, mine didn’t. But since this was not unusual for me, I didn’t think too much of it.

Around Christmas she got into an argument with her brother where she blamed everything on him and called him names. Though I understood both sides of the story, I obviously went with hers. But really, that was a huge red flag, the way she treated him and the way she blamed him without admitting any fault herself.

The third phase of the relationship
Fast forward again, this time by 3 months. Valentines day! We both decided officially not to do anything, but ended up giving each other a small present anyway. She wrote me a really sweet letter where she told me that she wanted to marry me, have children together, etc. I was so happy, she was so good for me, I didn't deserve her for sure.

Fast forward two weeks. We were asked to join colleagues to travel to Germany for some snowboarding. I told her I wasn't up to that, considering I had a birthday coming up the day after and didn't feel like working, driving to Germany and back, drop her of at home, drive to the birthday and then drive back home (roughly 900 kilometers). But... well, we started an argument and let's just say I gave in, like I always did. The snowboarding was pretty fun, but then we went to the bar. She started drinking, drinking and well... .drinking. I took her outside the bar two times to tell her that she was getting drunk and she might want to stop drinking. She nodded and told me that she knew her limit and that she’d act accordingly.

Fast forward an hour or so, she started binge drinking. I noticed, but was angry and turned my back on her. When she was finished, she came to me, completely wasted. I managed to drag her outside, then outside of the bar she passed out. We went outside and we stood there, for more than an hour with her being unconscious and constantly puking everywhere. I was supporting her so I couldn’t go and get help, so after an hour someone finally arrived to help us out. Phoned an ambulance, had to pick whether or not to have her admit in the hospital. The alternative was to sit next to her for the night to make sure she wouldn’t dehydrate or stop breathing.

And so I did, I sat beside her all night long, crying for the first time in many years (as I didn’t allow myself to cry), feeling angry but especially feeling worried. After all, I loved her and I was afraid she wouldn’t wake up. But, she did wake up thankfully.

After she woke up I comforted her, gave her a hug, but nodded my head. She told me sorry a million times and as there was no point in being angry with her, I wasn’t. I took her home the next day and told her that I loved her. At first, she told me that she suspected someone to have put something in her drink that made her pass out, I just nodded and then she told me that she must have reacted poorly to the beer.
A couple weeks later, the abuse increased (or I started to notice). I was yelled at in front of co-workers that if I didn’t have anything to add to the conversation, I’d just have to shut up. I also was criticized for every single thing I did not do right in her eyes, from the way I shaved myself up to the point of not being capable of washing my hands, according to her. I started fawning again and began to be terribly afraid of her, I was walking on egg shells and wouldn’t dare anything.

The end of the relationship
I’ll fill in the details on this later.

The relationship was ended in a text message of about 300 words where I was criticized to the very bone. I was not the “supportive, giving and strong man that a woman needs in her life”. I lived up to my mother’s critique that I am a weak person (yeah, my mom called me that in front of her too, so she knew). I was holding her back in life and was too critical towards her. She didn’t see a loving, caring future for us. She ended the text with the accusation that I was the one that put her down. She accused me of tons of other things as well that either didn't happen at all or happened in a whole different way.

With regard to the drinking incident, she mentioned the following: “I can laugh about that now. I would never do such a thing. I wasn’t happy at that time either”. I had and still have the feeling she blamed me for that too. And it hurts me to this day.

Basically, she projected everything she did onto me.

8 months out
So… I’m 8 months out of this relationship that only lasted for a year. In the first few months I cried, cried and…. cried. As we were co-workers, we had to work together for a few more months and she didn’t show any compassion or emotion at all. In fact, she appeared to be way more happy after breaking up with me than she was while we were in a relationship. And God, that hurt. I truly believed that I was an awful person and that she was better off without me, so I left her alone and tried to get in her way at least as possible.

She did talk nonsense about me to colleagues and told them stories that were simply not true about me and our relationship together. At some point I overheard conversations where she would say the complete opposite about things as she did when we were in a relationship and also a conversation about the drinking.
Apparently, former colleagues of mine had challenged her to participate in binge drinking with them after she told them that she has never puked from alcohol to that day. I looked away and she laughed, knowing that I was there.

[Hammerhead]

What happened since then
I finally started to listen to myself and began to figure out what the hell happened to me throughout my life. I started to study psychology and a lot of things started to make sense, mainly the cluster B, social anxiety, CPTSD, codependency, toxic shame, self-esteem and sensitivity.

I started to build a sense of self a couple months ago after moving out that I never did during my childhood and began to express my emotions as well as things that I want out of life. I’m working on overcoming social anxiety as well as managing the CPTSD and toxic shame. With that, the codependency and self-esteem are resolving as well. I can now talk to people without feeling afraid that they don’t ike me, I can tell people to back off if they do things that are not right and can manage the CPTSD in loud environments where it would usually give me goosebumps. I also started creating and maintaining friendships.

Basically, I started to enjoy and live life the way I never did before and would probably have never been doing if it wasn’t for this relationship. I’m me now, the person I always wanted to be but was afraid to become.

These relationships don’t just happen without a reason. We can learn a lot from them about ourselves and we really, really should. What she did was horrible, but to this day I still don’t hate her. I realize everything that happened to me and hopefully will be able to manage the anxiety and CPTSD someday. She doesn’t realize what she did nor will be capable of changing her behavior. And really, that’s so sad.