My story of living with BPD is long and complex, yet I want to try and be as brief as possible, and answer any questions that folks may have about it.
I am 38 years of age, and have suffered an immense amount of trauma throughout my life, including (but not limited to) sexual abuse (as a child), physical and emotional abuse and neglect as a child, and sexual violation as an adult.
It would stand to reason that I would obviously have a diagnosis of PTSD along with BPD, and other diagnosis (due to my history of trauma), but I am not really here to speak about my PTSD diagnosis, more so my BPD one.
I was born with a condition known as Noonan Syndrome, it's a very mild form of the condition, and I don't really have any overwhelming problems related to the diagnosis, but as a child I was quite sick a lot of the time, died a few times during very early infancy.
Regardless of how sick I had become as a child, it was at 3 years old that my sexual abuse started, and it occurred until I turned 11 (almost on a nightly basis), at the hands of my father.
My mother knew about the abuse from the beginning, she did nothing to stop it, yet everything to encourage and "join" in on it, in her own sadistic fashion.
As a child, I recall being extremely withdrawn, even from as early an age as 3, and I also recall that I was ridiculed and bullied by my family for this, which made the whole process even worse, and caused me to sink even further inside of my own self.
The isolation that occurred was almost unbearable. At the age of 7 I first had thoughts of ending my life, that I would be safer if I was not around etc.I tried self harming at 7, and was punished severely for this. No questions were asked as to why I had done this.
I moved around a lot during childhood, from New Zealand to Australia and back (due to the nature of my father’s job, so I found it incredibly hard to find and keep friends. By the age of 12 or so I had given up even trying, and ended up with just a tirade of bullies. I was bullied because I was shorter than the average student of my age, I was also bullied because I was very good at English, literacy, and writing (I am a published author nowadays).
At the age of 15, my parents finally ended their 20 yearlong abusive marriage, my mother claiming that she wanted a divorce and was going to move away from my father, to the city.
Being in a small country town, I figured it much easier and better to go with her and try my luck in the big smoke (so to speak).
My father was distraught about this – my older brother (5 years my senior) had joined the Navy, dropped out, then joined the Army, and was away from the family home also – so my father really had nobody now. I loved the idea of this – he had hurt me and caused me so much pain, yet so had my Mother, and I was moving away with her!
Within weeks, my mother had packed our stuff and moved myself and her in with her Mother in the city, until we found our own house.
My mother continued with incredibly violent threats towards me (when her family were not looking, of course). She would pinch, punch, scratch and throttle me with objects, for the slightest little thing I did/said wrong.
I was not an angry child or adolescent. Despite everything that had happened to me up until I was 15, I was a very meek, withdrawn, quiet and sullen boy.
After a few months of living with her family, my Mother could not stand it any longer, she purchased a large house with her divorce settlement money and I moved in with her just after my 16th birthday.
(Bare in mind – as a child, we were never “allowed” to celebrate birthdays or Xmas, it was never even spoken about, except the fact that I did not “deserve” to have them. My brother recurved gifts from family, and celebrated some of his birthdays as a child, but I never did. Also, photographs of me were nowhere to be seen at all during my childhood, they were locked away in a cupboard, and only my brother’s pictures displayed).
It took me a matter of weeks after moving in alone with my mother to realize what her sadistic plans were. She began drinking heavily for the first time in her life, and this aggravated her already extremely violent nature even further. Now that my father was not on the scene for her abuse, I copped it all. I received verbal and physical abuse on a regular daily basis. My withdrawal took on a whole new level of darkness, and I began writing even more about my experiences. My writing became incredibly dark and started to reflect what I truly felt deep inside. I was not allowed to express my emotions as a child, nor as a teenager, so it was all down on paper – everything.
After about three months of living with my mother, I remember one afternoon very clearly where I told her I was moving out. She called me a “Retarded mongoloid” and told me she’d help me to pack.
“Who are you going to abuse when I’m gone?” I had asked her.
This infuriated her to a new level, and I knew it would. I wanted her to know that I knew exactly what she was like though.
Before I’d even finished packing my meagre bag of belongings, I was out the door, telling her that I would never be back, that neither her nor my father were ever parents to my brother or I.
I had no idea where I was going to go. I knew nobody, this was a big city, and I was scared for my life.
Needless to say, the fear was overcome quickly by the fact that I was free from both of my abusers and that I could somehow (if I truly wanted it) try to start a new life.
At 16, people make mistakes. People are impressionable, especially if they have had nothing but abusive role models to in their life.
I ended up sleeping very rough, I “moved in” under a local bridge, beside a cemetery, which was filled with the city’s most undesirable and unwanted characters. People like me, that had been thrown away for the dogs, people who had addictions and had chosen (or been forced) to a life on the street for whatever reasons.
I craved acceptance from these people – I felt connected to their loneliness and identified with it. I made a few friends whilst I was under that bridge, but one in particular changed my life forever.
She was 26 I believe when I met her. It was perhaps my fourth night there, and I was huddled around a makeshift campfire with two other guys around my age, trying to keep warm. I had just finished reading them a journal entry of mine from one of my little black books (I had many black books).
When she approached us, it seemed as though she’d come from nowhere, as though she had just “appeared” almost.
She said hello to me, and noted that I was new down there, that she had not seen me before. She must have been a regular, I figured – someone who came and went periodically (as many people seemed to do).
We struck a connection almost immediately. I was drawn to her eyes at first, but later on I understood her heart and her mind (it was not quite different to my own).
Even though the age difference between was significant, I thought nothing of it – this woman had accepted me with all of my pain and internal anger and problems, and embraced it. She did not judge or ridicule me for my issues, she just accepted and committed to them.
Within a few days, (I will call her “X” for the sake of this post), I discovered that “X” had a very fond taste for the drug heroin. She would go away from the group under the bridge and would come back rubbing her arm, and seemingly feeling “better”.
I knew what heroin was, I’d seen plenty of films, and read books about the subject, and it was something I knew that I would like to try (really to try and remove some of the thoughts and feelings inside me).
I discussed my want to try this with “X”, and she agreed to help me fix for the first time one warm afternoon down by the water.
The feeling that the drug caused inside me was incredible – it managed to erase (for the moment) all of my sorrow, and I felt numb. I was engulfed in that feeling, and I never wanted it to go away. I felt peace for a short time, for the first time in my life. I knew it was addictive, but I thought I could handle it (famous last words!)
Within a month or so, “X” and I (both now with growing heroin addictions, but also very functioning), decided that we were going to try and find a house of our own in one of the outer suburbs of the city.
We managed to establish a beautiful 2 bedroom home, even got a dog of our own, and proceeded to start a new life.
For the first time ever, I felt protected, loved, wanted and needed. These were the feelings that I had so desperately craved as a child (but I did not consider “X” a mother figure, let’s make this clear).
Both “X” and I managed to find jobs, we cut down on our drug use (just enough to stop from getting ill), and we were very happy and content together for three and a bit years.
Our relationship was perfect, we loved each other unconditionally, and our pasts were only ever briefly talked about. I used to read to her from my journals, and she was share paintings with me that she had done (she was an incredibly artists).
One freezing cold morning, three years into our relationship, I was outside cutting wood for the fire, when I heard a tremendous noise from inside the house. I stopped what I was doing, and ran inside, thinking that perhaps she had fallen or hurt herself (she was incredibly clumsy!).
I called out for her, but heard no response. I think deep inside my own heart I knew (kind of) what had happened, I felt the despair before I walked into our bedroom and found her there. She had taken her own life violently, and I had found her body.
There was no note, there were no reasons, and there were no excuses for what she had just done.
Just like she entered my life, she had been erased from it almost as though she had never been thee in the first place.
We had almost gotten completely clean, had talked about starting our own family, our future together. We were incredibly happy.
I guess sometimes there just are never enough reasons. I will leave that part of my life there for now, it’s incredibly hard to write about.
For the next few years after her death, I wandered through life in a bit of daze. I quit heroin after trying to OD the day that she died, and vowed and declared never to touch the stuff again. Cold turkey was terrible for me, but I stuck it out, and I managed to get clean at age 19 1Ž2.
I could no longer live in our house (in our life that we had created which had ended so abruptly, so traumatically), so I moved on.
My writing once again became incredibly dark, even more than it ever had been, and I began to feel (for the first time in my life), what I can only describe as an intense feeling of LOSS, of abandonment, and of pure terror.
I had felt these feelings as a child, but never so intense and concerning.
Over the next few years, I ended up in numerous short-lived relationships, had a child (who is now 14 almost), and then finally settled a little bit with a new partner “E”.
It was during my breakup with “E”, that she had questioned my mental health. She told me that she was noticing “new behaviours” with me, and that she was concerned. Our relationship was in its final stages and she begged me to seek (for the first time in my life) mental health “help”.
I was now living with her back in that same terrible little country town where my Dad also still lived (I did not see him unless I truly had to, and he had suffered a massive stroke and was unable to speak except for a few words, yet he still managed to ride motorcycles, use drugs, and maintain his alcohol addiction along with his new partner).
When I first went to mental health services back in New Zealand, I begged them to help me. I told them about my childhood, my losses and trauma, and the Dr. immediately diagnosed me with “Complex PTSD”, Anxiety, and Severe Depression.
He offered me drugs (which I was very wary of, due to my previous history), but like a fool I took them.
Over the next three-four years (after my breakup with “E”, and another severely traumatising episode involving my daughter), I was in and out of Mental Health services like a ghost.
The whole time, I kept telling them that I did NOT have all of the requirements for PTSD. Sure, I had suffered a lot of things, and obviously that had played a part in my life, but there were other things I had struggles with – self-image, severe thoughts of ending my life, self-harm, relationship and attachment issues etc.
I begged them for a full diagnosis, but they refused me for over three years, stating that I was “just being non-compliant” and that I “Appeared Well enough”.
Without being too long-winded here, it took my last suicide attempt back in 2011 and a demand for a new diagnosis for them to take me seriously. I told them that if they did not diagnose me properly, I was going to hold them responsible for my next attempt.
They had agreed (finally) that I was “showing signs of more than just PTSD and Depression.
I was given a full psychiatric evaluation and diagnosis by a wonderful Dr. there, over a period of a few weeks, and he came back with the following:
- Borderline Personality Disorder.
- Anxiety
- Severe Social Phobia
- Severe Clinical Depression
Along with a few other (irrelevant) diagnosis.
The main diagnosis (he had said) was the Borderline Personality Disorder, and he was questioning as to why the Dr’s at Mental Health Services had not picked up on it beforehand.
I had gone through every single antidepressant known to man, along with antipsychotics, so I had no faith in those, they only ever made me feel worse!
He had told me that there were no real specialized treatments for Borderline Personality in that horrid little small country town, so I was pretty much stuck with just counselling (that I had been doing for some years on and off, and which I felt had run it’s course).
At this point, I had a new partner “S” who I am still with, she has stuck by me through everything – thick and thin really, and for that I am incredibly grateful.
We made a decision between the two of us to move to Australia for good. I never felt that I had belonged back in NZ (even though I was born there, most of my good memories of childhood and adolescence are from when I lived in Australia).
It was a very hard move for us both, and that put pressure on our relationship – but here I am.
I am involved with Spectrum Borderline Personality Service here in Melbourne, and I see them for one-on-one Schema based therapy work (which I think works like magic!), as well as a group therapy session each week (Acceptance and Commitment based therapy).
In all honesty – when I moved here in 2012, I knew that it was my last shot at beginning again. I had given up on everything else, and just wanted to have a normal life and get HELP, without the stigma and judgement attached to it all.
I found some acceptance within the group, and I found some help within the Schema therapy (which I have only recently begun, but I am learning more about myself each day, and I have met “myself” for the first time, instead of the abused “self” who I have only ever known previously).
People – I have lived a life far beyond my years. I have seen and heard things that nobody should have to – I have shared with you just a little bit of this, there is much more, but I will leave this open to you to ask questions of me.
I am here to give help, guidance, and reassurance, without judgement and without criticism. I know what it’s like to have those things imposed upon you surrounding this condition, but you’ll never receive that from me.
Please reply with any questions or comments you may like to add!
