"We don't want to be doing this either."
CW/TW: Frank talk about borderline personality disorder. Can be triggering.
Did they give you love? Did they give you respect? Did they give you support?
Did they give you abuse? Did they give you disrespect? Were you on your own?
If it's both? Unpredictable? Nearly random? And constant?
Imagine being in Marine boot camp. That for no reason you can grasp, either everyone hates you or you think they do. Imagine every expression of respect or support is suspect because you know it carries conditions that can cripple you. Because there is never any knowing if a good word hides a fist or a knife.
Imagine, too, that when you screw up, you will be physically hazed for you don't know how long, how hard, and it is random. What got praise yesterday can leave you bruised today. Or scarred. Heaven help you if they should get creative.
It comes with brainwashing. Always. Being told you deserve what you get. Your self-worth being dismantled with verbal violence. Always with the voice of rage. The sound of rage. You hear it coming before it arrives now. You are powerless to stop it.
There are no rules. There are no guidelines. There are no patterns. Any time, day or night. In your sleep. While you're eating. While you're resting.
Imagine being on guard for all of this all day, every day. Your amygdala, lighting up all day and feeding you nightmares at night. The constant short breath, the constant flow of adrenaline. Always assessing your surroundings in the vain hopes you might escape.
Now imagine that Marine boot camp lasting for twenty years.
How would you come out? What kind of a broken person would you be if you went into boot camp and it didn't end? Didn't stop? Worse than you imagined? You had no idea how long it would last? Every day, hoping it's the last, hoping there'll be a break, but there isn't and no one will tell you when it's gonna end.
Waking moment to sleep, then the nightmares. Lather, rinse, repeat. Twenty years. Maybe more.
Could you do it? Could you do it without committing suicide? Could you?
Would the Geneva Conventions allow us to do that to prisoners of war? Could we stand before The Hague and escape judgment?
What would you be like if you went into the Marines as a young adult and were trapped in it, no escape, no hope, and didn't come out until you were middle-aged? Two decades of this? Can you imagine this being done by the Marines and there not being a Congressional inquiry?
Could you do this to an adult human being?
It happens to children. Every day. Every, every day. By parents. Teachers. Relatives. Schoolmates. Clergy. Youth leaders.
The results of this are, for most victims, devastating. For most of us, we end up with this thing that psychologists tagged "Borderline Personality Disorder." That's what BPD is, not bipolar disorder, if you were wondering. The pathology of it is complex. It's brutally hard to cope with.
It's emotions ratcheted up way past 11. The best word I have for it is "operatic." Every cruelty is Carmen, every battle is Ride of the Valkyries, every terror is Don Giovanni. The pain, and it is an emotional pain so severe you feel it all over your body, is excruciating enough to make you scream. (At first.) I could tell you how it usually goes, but there is no usually goes. That's the horror of it. It's devious.
It knows you better than you do, because it's fueled by your subconscious and knows all the secrets you won't consciously admit to yourself. It will not hesitate for a heartbeat to use them to crush you, because believe me, BPD is all about destroying yourself. In your mind, you're just finishing the job the world started.
You're easily triggered. It can be anything. It can be nothing. You may not know what did it. It might hit like a shot. It might build up. It might come over you like a tsunami. Once it starts, you can't stop it. Not usually.
For instance: I have been showing borderline symptoms since I was about 11. I've been like this for 49 years. Only in the last two have I made the kind of progress to where I can now either divert or resolve the episode without the usual damage.
It wasn't easy. Though I didn't realize it until just this very moment, I used it against itself. I worked hard on this, obsessively, compulsively, for close to 40 years, and my progress is phenomenal.
All the fierce concentration, the operatic fears, the delusional thinking--I've gotten very, very good at it--and I still can't always stop it. I have strategies, but they don't always work. Every time is different.
Think about that. EVERY TIME IS DIFFERENT.
If you have not gone through it, you simply cannot imagine it. And the exhaustion. Oh, holy Hera, the exhaustion. You cannot imagine the crushing weight of a lifetime of this. It affects your physical health. People who don't have this don't understand, *it's cumulative.* And like arsenic, you can't flush it out.
The best you ever do is manage it. It's a life sentence. There's no escape. Your brain was hardwired to be like this. Like John Mulaney says, "We don't want to be doing this either." With work, and it takes a LOT of work, you can make it better.
But not everyone has it. Not everyone is strong. Not everyone is brave. Not everyone can make the right decisions. Not everyone can think clearly.
Most of us don't even realize it. I didn't until I was 58 years old and a shrink diagnosed me following a suicide attempt. How can you fix it when you don't know that it's there? Shrinks don't want to deal with us. We take work, exhausting work. We're hard to live with. They'd rather just medicate us, and not all of us respond to what few meds there are.
Now allow me to blow your mind.
THERE ARE TENS OF MILLIONS OF US.
We're "the weird kid." The dork. The manic pixie dream chick. The ones who hated ourselves so much it showed. That doesn't change. It never changes. There is no therapy, no counseling, no medicine that will ever get rid of that deep, tenacious rupture that is BPD self-loathing. The best you do is come to terms with it.
The stigma must end. It's difficult. We have a long road. It's only recently becoming known and there is a lot of fear of us. It's not unwarranted, either. People get caught up in our emotional storms and get hurt. Occasionally even physically. I will tell you hard things, but I will not lie to you: we have deeds to answer for.
Mine is managed, at last, but it still can't be controlled. I just spent a week in a particularly cruel one. And went into one last night. I got out, but the shadow of it will linger a day or two.
The best you can do is come up with strategies. That is something I can help others do now, and it is going to make everything that has gone before worth it.
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