Self-Portrait of a BPD
July 23, 2012
Borderline Personality Disorder Victim says they have no choice. Blames single mother family.
"It is often a shock when I take a restroom break and see a middle-aged man staring back at me in the mirror."
"If we can't love it's because we were never loved. If we can't have a meaningful relationship it's because we never witnessed any such thing during our childhoods.
Most of our efforts are used up trying to subsume our despair and rage so we can survive and you "normal people" can safely go about your happy lives unmolested."
by C
(henrymakow.com)
I am a 38-year-old bartender/waiter - I live on minimum wage plus tips. I've worked in over fifteen restaurants, bars, and hotels during my career and (not to toot my own horn) am pretty good at what I do. However, I have major problems with keeping track of multiple long-term tasks which has made my few forays into restaurant management untenable. I have found that I'm better at short-term tasks than long-term, and that I need to leave my work at work.
I also seem most comfortable around servers probably because they are in their late teens and early twenties (remember what Rosie said about BPD's emotional immaturity). It is often a shock when I take a restroom break and see a middle-aged man staring back at me in the mirror.
Also, as I mentioned, I have many masks. I wear my happy-go-lucky mask to work and can convince myself that I'm twenty again and that everything's fine. It's rough when I run into someone I've known for years and they say "you're still serving?"
What little savings I had went into my university degree, and I am somewhat proud of the fact that I've never collected EI or a welfare check. But I'm almost 40, I live in a bachelor's suite, and I definitely can't do this indefinitely.
The recognition of my own BPD traits came after I suspected my mother was BPD or Narcissist (she had mirrors on every wall of her apartment). I read a series of books such as Toxic Parents, Surviving the Borderline Parent, and The Borderline Mother, and identified many of those traits not only in my mother, but also in myself.
I've taken the BPD criteria from the wikipedia article and fit most of them.
WE DON'T HAVE A CHOICE
I want to give your readers some more food for thought - especially those who believe we have a "choice" in our behavior and those who naively believe "demonic forces" are at work.
Imagine you were raised in a dysfunctional home and the only adult in your life other than teachers was a batshit crazy mother. You have no father, no uncles, no aunts, and no grandparents - no relationship to pattern future relationships after, no one to rescue you from the abuse you encounter at home, and no one to validate your feelings of terror, shame, and utter helplessness.
Furthermore, your mother can't hold a job for more than a few months and you live in abject poverty up to the age of eighteen. You got your first job at 15 bussing tables at a local restaurant, but most of that money is siphoned off to pay down your mother's bills and to pay for rent and food. It's hard to get up for classes that start at 8 AM when you leave work at 2 AM. You eventually start working full time, and never graduate from high school. You remain in the restaurant industry into your late thirties.
Your mother interferes with every romantic relationship you ever have as a teenager. The more you like the girl, or the prettier she is, the more your mother makes you second-guess her.
"Besides", she says, "you should save your virginity for marriage." You remain a virgin until you're 24 - when some of your friends are starting to get married. Now, in your late thirties, the majority of those friends you had in high school are married with children and respectable careers. You, however, are alone. Terribly alone.
It is only after you move away from your home town at 27 that you start to get ideas that things were worse than you ever imagined they were - there is a correlation between not having a phone and not being depressed.
It takes you a few years to realize that every time you speak with the only adult that's been present throughout your life - your mother - you descend into a depressive spiral that can last for months. You try to sever contact many, many times until eventually, thanks to a heap of self-help book about personality disorders, you succeed.
Then, as soon as you feel you can breathe easier come God's words, "Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother", and the guilt sets in, followed by another lengthy depression. You have abandoned your poor old mother. Catch 22. Thanks to your mother and almighty God.
You return to University to attempt to attain a respectable career. You have a fairly high GPA, and your profs compliment you on your writing ability and your insightful essays. You volunteer, and feel more rewarded by your free labor than that which you're paid for.
However, your profs notice that you only attend about a third of the classes. Of course, that's because some days you can barely get out of bed because of the guilt, the depression, and the shame of what you are. You promise to volunteer, and then you don't show. You're bright, you've got a great GPA, but everyone knows you're unreliable. Society hedges you in.
The greatest thing about you, however, is your ability to maintain the facade that everything's going great. You've got a lot of masks in your closet, one for every occasion. You're the center of the party, a real ladies' man. You can seduce the best of them. But you awake empty and alone every morning.
So, late one night whilst listening to an old sermon by a long-dead Alliance preacher, you fall to the kitchen floor in tears and renounce all the whoring and drinking - and lose all those acquaintances you thought were your friends. After a year of church-hopping (and discovering just how much the God of the Christian religion resembles your mother), you instead turn to coffee, cigarettes, and video games for distraction from your abysmal failure at life.
You realize every time you see (say) a father tousle his son's hair, two parents waiting expectantly for their child to get out of class on a Friday evening so they can go to the cabin for the weekend, or a an old couple gazing lovingly into each others' eyes that these things were not meant for you.
No one's going to assuage the shame you accrued at the hands of your mother during your childhood, nor your guilt over ignoring your mother. No one's going to teach you how to have a relationship - the pattern of dysfunction is already burned into your brain for all time. No one to help out with tuition, co-sign a loan, or even teach you how to save. Family vacations? Not for you. It's all pure envy at what others have and burning rage at what you don't. "Are not my ways equal?", asks God of His people. No. Not by a long shot.
Is it wrong to mourn the loss of what could have been a satisfying, productive life? Is it a crime if, from time to time, my mask slips a little and I disturb those whom I serve, those daintily dining on the plenty of this world, those who have what I so desperately need, in Eden? I'm the first to admit that it's not "everyone else's'" fault. But, just the same, full-time acting takes a lot of effort. One can't do anything forever.
So, in response to those readers who commented that our behavior is a choice, let me suggest that we are simply floundering under tons of bad circumstances beyond our control.
If we can't love it's because we were never loved. If we can't have a meaningful relationship it's because we never witnessed any such thing during our childhoods. Most of our psychological and emotional efforts are used up trying to subsume our despair and rage so we can survive and you "normal people" can safely go about your happy lives unmolested. I am sorry if our resentment of your good fortunes of mental health, family, and finance shows from time to time.
But if all the children being raised by single mothers at present are any indication, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Jim said (July 24, 2012):
Find a good therapist, clergyman, or counselor experienced with EFT and give it a try. I believe you will benefit from it. With the help of a good coach I am confident that someday you will discover who you are (BPD feelings included) so you won't have to put on an act anymore.
I admire your ability to be introspective. This is a rare trait for people who suffer with BPD so, consider yourself blessed. You are smart and bright so make those little changes in your life as God reveals them to you. Keep examining yourself so you can grow and mature. I pray that you find peace as you seek to find meaning for your life. Hang in there, my friend. You're doing well.