2. What Borderline Personality Disorder Means To Me...
We never knew what was going to happen next.
If you met my mother you would think she was a lovely, engaging, sweet lady. She was compassionate, listened, liked to chat, helped out wherever possible. Liked to pick us up and drop us off at school. She could always be counted on to bring a plate. She was always available to ferry kids across the town at all hours, no matter how much out of the way.
If you were me and my sister, you lived with constant fear. A heaviness that sat in your stomach. You never spoke out. Disagreement was at your own peril.
Borderline Personality Disorder meant my mother's love was not unconditional. It was completely conditional. Her opinion of us changed at the drop of a hat, from one moment to the next. If she perceived us as having wronged her, we were bad, evil, nasty, unlovable.
The tricky thing was, you never knew what would set her off. It would change from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. The only side we were allowed to take was hers. To agree with someone else was ganging up on her, wronging her, going against her, betraying her.
The only real opinions allowed were hers. Our opinions had to change when hers did, otherwise there'd be hell to pay.
Borderline Personality Disorder meant living in a prison. No way out. The only escape was into your own head, somewhere she couldn't reach. It meant living with a time bomb. It meant being dragged out of bed at all hours to take part in a fight you don't understand. It meant being told how horrible you are, how worthless, how mean and nasty and downright bad. It meant being told at fifteen you were a slut when you had barely ever kissed a boy. It meant being told your mother just doesn't love you as much as she used to. It meant having to grovel to hug and kiss someone because that's what they suddenly wanted, even when you were shaking with rage inside.
Her illness meant we were helpless, unable to express our rage or indignation. It meant not being allowed to have personal boundaries of any sort. It meant your entire life was your mother's life. It meant violation and emotional and verbal abuse. It meant you didn't actually exist as a person. Everything you did was her right to know. You had to tell her everything. It meant you lived with someone who had uncontrollable rages.
Her illness meant we lived in a constant sea of her caustic jealousy. She was jealous of my father, of his family. She was jealous of friends, of the fact my sister and I were close. She was suspicious of anything that would interfere with her domain.
Her illness meant she was never wrong, only ever wronged. Her illness meant my sister and I remembered events differently to her and if we ever attempted to bring them up she would rage at us, tell us we were wrong and we were deliberately twisting things to hurt her and suit ourselves. It meant we were never sure if we were imagining things. It meant we constantly questioned our own grip on reality. It meant it was always our fault. It meant we were nothing but trouble. It meant we let her down. It meant we could never live up to what she wanted because what she wanted constantly shifted.
Her illness meant real trust was something we never understood. It meant isolation and pain and bewilderment. It meant living in a war zone. Twenty four hours a day. Seven days a week.
My mother is almost psychotic with her fears of abandonment, so much so she took it personally if we were out late. She locked us in when we had a fight with her. She perceived any attempt at independence as rejection, abandonment and there was always a quagmire of trouble when we tried to leave when we were old enough to move away. The emotional blackmail was like neon. She made us feel guilty for being individual people.
My mother formed and terminated relationships with others all the time. She still goes through friends. There is no grey with her. People are saints or demons. This instability wasn't only confined to her friends, but to her children. We were evil one minute, wonderful the next. She shifted between intensely loving us to intensely hating us. She often would choose my sister as the saint and at the same time vilify me, and vice versa. This could happen without any provocation we were aware of: an innocent word or statement or look and the game was on.
Her mood swings were like PMSing on a stage the size of Jupiter. She could be depressed, nasty, loving, irritable at a moment's notice. When she would shift into her rages, it would sometimes last for days. Though she was able to be hysterically screaming at us with hate-filled words and answer the phone and switch into sweetness and light and normalcy, then hang up and switch back into Attila the Hun. We never knew what would happen, if we were safe or if we were in for a night of horror and screaming.
In her eyes, we were her. Her property, part of her, to do with as she wanted. If she couldn't control herself, we were the portals with which she expressed that.
Life with my mother was a continual living nightmare. From the moment we were born we were surrounded by this. We were consumed by this and her illness. We were constantly maneouvering through a dangerous and volatile minefield, one where detonation never meant death, just pain, confusion and intense emotions that had nowhere to go because she couldn't allow it. She was the only one allowed to feel anything real. My sister and I didn't really exist as people, just another part of her.
Imagine being so impotent with pent up emotions, so many of them you couldn't even begin to understand or deal with them (even if you were able to do so). Imagine being deathly frightened of expressing yourself, of mentioning your opinions, the fact you are hurt, you are upset, you feel wronged. Imagine knowing if you did such a thing the next few hours or days would be hell on earth where your entire spiritual being is ripped to shreds one way, then another, as someone who is meant to love you unconditionally does their best to find the ultimate way to hurt you, over and over again.
Imagine that, then imagine you are a small child. There is no one else to help you. There is nowhere else to go. This was my life. For eighteen years, this was my life. The frightening thing is, I haven't even really touched on what it was like. Life in my household was a million times worse than what I am now just able to express.
I know I will come back to this over and over again as I sift through everything in my head and heart. I will redefine and tune this until I see it clearly, with all the hideous bones, blood and sinew. Until I see it completely naked.
But right now, this is what Borderline Personality Disorder means to me...
If you met my mother you would think she was a lovely, engaging, sweet lady. She was compassionate, listened, liked to chat, helped out wherever possible. Liked to pick us up and drop us off at school. She could always be counted on to bring a plate. She was always available to ferry kids across the town at all hours, no matter how much out of the way.
If you were me and my sister, you lived with constant fear. A heaviness that sat in your stomach. You never spoke out. Disagreement was at your own peril.
Borderline Personality Disorder meant my mother's love was not unconditional. It was completely conditional. Her opinion of us changed at the drop of a hat, from one moment to the next. If she perceived us as having wronged her, we were bad, evil, nasty, unlovable.
The tricky thing was, you never knew what would set her off. It would change from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. The only side we were allowed to take was hers. To agree with someone else was ganging up on her, wronging her, going against her, betraying her.
The only real opinions allowed were hers. Our opinions had to change when hers did, otherwise there'd be hell to pay.
Borderline Personality Disorder meant living in a prison. No way out. The only escape was into your own head, somewhere she couldn't reach. It meant living with a time bomb. It meant being dragged out of bed at all hours to take part in a fight you don't understand. It meant being told how horrible you are, how worthless, how mean and nasty and downright bad. It meant being told at fifteen you were a slut when you had barely ever kissed a boy. It meant being told your mother just doesn't love you as much as she used to. It meant having to grovel to hug and kiss someone because that's what they suddenly wanted, even when you were shaking with rage inside.
Her illness meant we were helpless, unable to express our rage or indignation. It meant not being allowed to have personal boundaries of any sort. It meant your entire life was your mother's life. It meant violation and emotional and verbal abuse. It meant you didn't actually exist as a person. Everything you did was her right to know. You had to tell her everything. It meant you lived with someone who had uncontrollable rages.
Her illness meant we lived in a constant sea of her caustic jealousy. She was jealous of my father, of his family. She was jealous of friends, of the fact my sister and I were close. She was suspicious of anything that would interfere with her domain.
Her illness meant she was never wrong, only ever wronged. Her illness meant my sister and I remembered events differently to her and if we ever attempted to bring them up she would rage at us, tell us we were wrong and we were deliberately twisting things to hurt her and suit ourselves. It meant we were never sure if we were imagining things. It meant we constantly questioned our own grip on reality. It meant it was always our fault. It meant we were nothing but trouble. It meant we let her down. It meant we could never live up to what she wanted because what she wanted constantly shifted.
Her illness meant real trust was something we never understood. It meant isolation and pain and bewilderment. It meant living in a war zone. Twenty four hours a day. Seven days a week.
My mother is almost psychotic with her fears of abandonment, so much so she took it personally if we were out late. She locked us in when we had a fight with her. She perceived any attempt at independence as rejection, abandonment and there was always a quagmire of trouble when we tried to leave when we were old enough to move away. The emotional blackmail was like neon. She made us feel guilty for being individual people.
My mother formed and terminated relationships with others all the time. She still goes through friends. There is no grey with her. People are saints or demons. This instability wasn't only confined to her friends, but to her children. We were evil one minute, wonderful the next. She shifted between intensely loving us to intensely hating us. She often would choose my sister as the saint and at the same time vilify me, and vice versa. This could happen without any provocation we were aware of: an innocent word or statement or look and the game was on.
Her mood swings were like PMSing on a stage the size of Jupiter. She could be depressed, nasty, loving, irritable at a moment's notice. When she would shift into her rages, it would sometimes last for days. Though she was able to be hysterically screaming at us with hate-filled words and answer the phone and switch into sweetness and light and normalcy, then hang up and switch back into Attila the Hun. We never knew what would happen, if we were safe or if we were in for a night of horror and screaming.
In her eyes, we were her. Her property, part of her, to do with as she wanted. If she couldn't control herself, we were the portals with which she expressed that.
Life with my mother was a continual living nightmare. From the moment we were born we were surrounded by this. We were consumed by this and her illness. We were constantly maneouvering through a dangerous and volatile minefield, one where detonation never meant death, just pain, confusion and intense emotions that had nowhere to go because she couldn't allow it. She was the only one allowed to feel anything real. My sister and I didn't really exist as people, just another part of her.
Imagine being so impotent with pent up emotions, so many of them you couldn't even begin to understand or deal with them (even if you were able to do so). Imagine being deathly frightened of expressing yourself, of mentioning your opinions, the fact you are hurt, you are upset, you feel wronged. Imagine knowing if you did such a thing the next few hours or days would be hell on earth where your entire spiritual being is ripped to shreds one way, then another, as someone who is meant to love you unconditionally does their best to find the ultimate way to hurt you, over and over again.
Imagine that, then imagine you are a small child. There is no one else to help you. There is nowhere else to go. This was my life. For eighteen years, this was my life. The frightening thing is, I haven't even really touched on what it was like. Life in my household was a million times worse than what I am now just able to express.
I know I will come back to this over and over again as I sift through everything in my head and heart. I will redefine and tune this until I see it clearly, with all the hideous bones, blood and sinew. Until I see it completely naked.
But right now, this is what Borderline Personality Disorder means to me...
posted by a girl at 1:40 AM
2 Comments:
That sounds 100% like my mother. The craziness. The out of control hysterics- the calling me a slut when I was 12. Being possessive of us and then discarding us. Back and forth. back and forth. Being a victim and then victimizing us. Telling us we were beautiful,etc then the next day saying we were pigs. Telling us we were just perfect the way we are and then a second later ripping every single thing about us apart- trying to readjust every little thing about us. The 4am fights about who knows what- all of it. I always tell anyone who asks about my childhood- I was in Vietnam. That's exactly how it felt. Like I was in friggin Vietnam fighting. I had no idea why I was there and no idea why I was fighting or being fought with. It was Hell times a million. I feel lucky just to have survived it. My mother would slap me in the face and then hug and kiss me. It was insane. I think I am developing a little BPD in my adult relationships so I am going to read up on every thing there is about BPD and not become my mother.
Wow. A lot of that sounds like my own mother.
I don’t think she is BPD because I don’t see her fitting into the definitions required for that diagnosis (DSM-4). But a lot of the symptoms you mentioned about your mom sounds like mine. I am a diagnosed BPD, and I blame her for the way I am today.
She’s one of those people that appear complete pleasant and helpful to everyone outside the family. But yes, like you, I lived in fear.
Her love was conditional. And I feared her wrath if I took my dad’s side in an argument between mom and dad. When she was mad at me, I could sense the rage and hate.
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