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Borderline Personality Disorder – A Personal Story

I’m not sure if it was due to Borderline Personality Disorder directly, due to undiagnosed Bipolar Disorder, or simply due to a dysfunctional family (or a combination of the three) that I always had a problem “playing well with others.“ I never quite seemed to fit in, and always had trouble making and keeping friends (so I never had one). Later, as an adult, this showed up as a pattern of getting into short-term abusive relationships.

Maybe it was fear—I knew there was something wrong with me, very wrong with me, and I was afraid that if anyone got too close to me, they would know it, too. So I just never let anyone get close to me.

My mother had her first “breakdown” when I was twelve. “They” took her away to the mental institution and gave her shock treatments, and when she came home she was a zombie, who didn’t even know who I was. I became her caretaker and the new “mom” in our already dysfunctional family. My role at twelve years old was no longer to be a child—I became caretaker to a mentally ill mother, and “mom” to a younger sister and two younger brothers. Outside the home, of course, I still had no friends and no life.

I thought I was crazy, but I didn’t know what to do about it, so I just suffered silently from as far back as I can remember (twelve years old) until I was forty-five, when I was finally diagnosed. I lived in absolute terror that if anyone found out, I would be taken away like my mom and placed in the mental institution, forced to have shock treatments like she had. Ironically, it did take placement in a mental health facility for me to finally be diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Schizoaffective Disorder, as well as a host of other “smaller” mental disorders.

From the beginning, I had a very poor self-image and a very low self-esteem. Simply put, I just hated everything about myself. I always thought everyone else was better than me, and that I could never measure up. In school, I had to work twice as hard to get half as far as everyone else. It wasn’t until I was thirty-five years old that I found out I had ADHD. All I knew was that I could never do anything right, inside or outside the classroom. It was obvious I was different from everyone else.

I was socially awkward. I thought everyone hated me as much as I hated myself. I was very withdrawn, and very depressed, pretty much all the time. I am told I was very “moody” from a very young age, and I remember anxiety attacks as young as grammar school. I recall having “butterflies” in my stomach frequently. Back then, I thought of it as “the feeling that something is going to go wrong,” because I didn’t know the term “anxiety.” But I didn’t tell anyone about it, because I thought it would make me even more different than I already was, and that other people would hate me even more than they already did.

I really never knew how to make friends. I definitely didn’t know how to be a friend. Nobody ever showed me. There wasn’t anyone in my small, dysfunctional world to model myself after. Adults were ill. Children were cruel. I was short…I was Jewish…my mother was crazy… any one of a number of reasons for me to be teased. I knew I was different. I knew I wasn’t like the other girls in the neighborhood. I just didn’t care about the things they cared about.

I wasn’t into Barbie dolls, or makeup, or fashion, or crushes on actors, or any of the usual “girl things.” I mean, I wasn’t a tomboy or anything, either. I was just sort of a non-entity. I had no personality at all. I never smiled. I never laughed. I do remember crying, but never in front of anyone. I could never control what emotions I did have when I had them. Or the emotions I had seemed inappropriate, too extreme (high or low) or exaggerated for the event that triggered them.

I was a societal misfit. I became a loner.

My earliest memory is when I was ten years old. One day, I came out of the house in time to see a neighborhood boy banging my youngest brother’s head against the concrete curb. I lost it. I went in the house, grabbed a knife, and stabbed the kid in the back. It wasn’t a fatal blow, but the fact is that I did stab him. After that, every child in the neighborhood avoided me. And whispered about me. If they weren’t sure I was crazy before that, they were definitely sure after that. I don’t know what happened. I have no explanation for why I did what I did. I was never violent before or after that. It just happened. But I felt no emotion. No sense of guilt. No sense of responsibility for my actions. No fear. I just did it.

Other than the one memory of stabbing that neighborhood boy, I have no memories before twelve years old, when I was sexually molested by an acquaintance of my father’s. Because I thought it was somehow my fault, that I deserved it, I kept it a secret way into my adult life. This further pushed me into isolation from other children and later from other people. I was molested again at fourteen and again at sixteen (by different men). These events, at least in part, were responsible for the sexual confusion part of my adolescent identity crisis. Also these events, as well as my father’s physical abuse, led to my later choices of only abusive men for relationships. I didn’t find out until much later on that this was actually a part of my Borderline Personality Disorder.

In adolescence, my hallucinations were dismissed as “a vivid imagination.” So I became a “creative writer,” putting all my thoughts, however bizarre, into journals which no one but me would ever read. And I learned how to hide my hallucinations and my thoughts.

There were times when I got “excited” (which I later found out were manic episodes), but these times were always discouraged or explained away as “behavioral problems,” and my lofty ideas and dreams as “childish fantasies.” Anger and rage were explained as “typical adolescent rebellion.” Even though I was afraid that these “temper tantrums” of mine (what my mother called them) would get me even more sessions with my father’s leather belt, I just didn’t seem to be able to keep my mouth shut.

Several suicide attempts were explained away as “attention-getting behavior.” My first visit to a therapist at sixteen brought me a diagnosis of depression, and I was placed on Valium, which I promptly discarded after two days – I was “low” enough.

Borderline Personality Disorder by its very definition is a personality disorder but, for me, it was more of a non-personality disorder. I had no personality of my own. I was whatever the person I was with wanted me to be. I hoped I would find acceptance that way. When I started having boyfriends in my teens, I became whatever personality my boyfriend was. In groups, I took on the personality of those around me.

I had turned to alcohol at twelve years old, and drugs at fourteen years old (in tandem with those additional episodes of sexual abuse). Subsequently, all my “friends” were also alcohol and drug users. So my personality became that of an alcoholic and drug addict for many years.

In college, my personality became enmeshed with the leftover “hippie” subculture at the time—“sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll.” Again, I had no personality of my own. I became the typical college student at the time. However, by this time, when the drugs and alcohol would wear off, and when whatever guy I was with and I would break up and I would be alone with myself again, I knew there was something wrong with me. In my head, I knew.

I “felt” crazier than I had ever been—I was “locked” in a near-catatonic state. I don’t remember what happened, or how it happened, but somehow I got to a campus psychiatrist. I was diagnosed with Schizophrenia, and given very strong anti-psychotic medication. Needless to say, I had to leave college, because I could no longer function. Life after that was just a study in self-destruction—drugs, alcohol, suicide attempts, abusive relationships…

I was in and out of relationships like a fish in and out of water. None of them lasted very long. Usually, I was the one to break it off—mostly to reject before being rejected. I knew it would never work out. No relationship ever worked out for me. I came to understand that I just was not capable of loving anyone. Just not capable of loving at all. I believed I just did not have that emotion in me. But I would fake it, just so someone would love me. I always wanted to be loved. I just didn’t know the dynamics of a relationship. Since I never knew how to be a friend, I sure didn’t know how to be a girlfriend, much less wife.

I was married twice the year I was nineteen years old. The first time was to a drunk I met in a bar in Florida. We got married (while drunk) a week after we met, stayed drunk for four months together, then got divorced. Since love meant nothing to me, neither did marriage. I did not understand the concept of commitment. The second time was pretty much the same. Married a couple months later, to a drug addict in Buffalo, New York, while I was high. Stayed high together for a few months, then divorced. Again, it meant nothing to me.

All my life, I pushed people away. I had a twisted view of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others before they do unto you.” I also lived by a twisted philosophy: “Reject before being rejected.” Every time I let anyone get close to me, I got hurt. So eventually, I stopped letting anyone get close to me. I drank and drugged to fill up that lonely hole. I got married three more times. And divorced three more times. I had three children, by two different fathers.

Finally, at age forty-five, having had a “breakdown” of my own, I was first diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and placed on medication. I was then diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and placed on further medication. Even then, however, I continued to suffer with no sense of identity, and a life intent on self-destruction.

My mood swings were still extreme, the medications seemed worse at times than the symptoms, and I still went from relationship to relationship, never understanding why they never worked out. I still continued to choose abusive men, because that was all I ever knew. I still did not have a single person I could call “friend.”

My therapist then suggested a special type of therapy called Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), a therapy designed specifically for Borderline Personality Disorder. I attended DBT once a week, for an hour-and-a-half each week. It was a small group, only about eight of us, all women. Through this therapy, I was taught how to regulate my emotions, how to communicate effectively with others, how to have interpersonal relationships, and many, many other skills I never learned as a child or adolescent/young adult when I should have. In other words, I finally learned how to “play well with others.”

Now I have actually found a personality under all those layers of chaos and dysfunction that were my life! And I like that personality. And so do other people! I have a strong support system in place, the right combination of medications which I take religiously, and I am enjoying a long period of stability with the Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and other mental disorders.

I am still evolving on this journey to recovery, but the changes I have made, the growth I have seen in myself because of the techniques I have learned in DBT as well as talk therapy and self-management…well, my life is tenfold better than it has ever been before. I am learning how to love. And I am learning how to accept love. I am reconciling myself to the past. And I am excited about the future. And guess what? I have even made a friend!

About the Author

Michele Soloway has dealt with bipolar disorder from a very young age. Her grandmother, mother, brother, herself, and her teenage son all have the disorder. She also lost her sister to suicide because of bipolar disorder. Michele has a blog for bipolar survivors at http://www.bipolarcentral.com/bipolarsurvivorblog, and is also a contributing writer to www.bipolarcentral.com and www.borderlinecentral.com.

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