BPD is not an "excuse", it's a crippling mental illness

I’m on edge pretty much all of the time. I’m calm when I want to be. I have a constant need to be organised. I don’t mind leaving my clothes on the floor. I become snappy when I’m in a supermarket for too long. I crave distractions. I’m sometimes reckless. I’m the walking-talking definition of a teacher’s pet. I have dyed my hair so many times that my natural hair colour probably won’t come back. I recently decoloured my hair. I’m annoyed by mass emails. I trust the loved ones in my life. I become paranoid if someone is running late to meet me because I think they’ve ditched me.

Originally, I was ashamed about struggling with my mental health. I spent the first year trying to cope alone. I thought I was lying as I couldn’t believe that anyone could feel this level of pain without imagining it, so it was difficult to reach out.

A lot of passing comments have been made from supportive adults even my own parents in my life, its only now that I realise how much they have affected me. Someone once told me that I was ‘behaving like a little girl’ and was ‘too old to be feeling this way’. I was told to ‘stop wasting people’s time’ and I was ‘being a burden and impacting my friends too much.’ They even said that I shouldn’t be so unhappy because my family has given me a lot and has always been a support.

I was regarded as being ‘too difficult to deal with’ which didn’t correlate with how I had been seen previously. When it wasn’t an easy fix, they thought I wasn’t trying to help myself and were frustrated.

My feelings were completely dismissed, and I was told that ‘I hadn’t experienced any such trauma so I shouldn’t be struggling’.

This fed into my own disbelief about myself and how I was portraying what I was going through and made me feel even more isolated. I felt demonised for what I was going through, completely misunderstood and not trusted.

These comments all came from my very closed ones. I had no explanation for how I was feeling so it became internalised. These remarks still go through my head daily and have stopped me getting help when I really needed it, because I was afraid of people thinking the same things.

I remember ,I was starting my first year of University and I thought it was going to be a fresh start to my life. It wasn’t like that. My past problems followed me and continue to overtake and confuse me. I was unhappy most of the time, and when I thought things were going well, another obstacle threw me off the rails of happiness.

Having BPD is like having two different persona, the good and the bad. I describe the good persona as “the happy me”. And there’s the bad, filled with negativity and built-in anger and sadness.

One day, my aggression got too much. I didn’t feel I was conscious in my mind and I was far from being in control. That day, everything was a blur until I was switched back on and realised my mistakes. I felt ashamed and disappointed in myself, and I lost a close friend because of my actions.

And because of my BPD, I hurt new friends I made along the way at university, as I wasn’t able to control my emotions. I became too dependent and extremely clingy with people. I knew what I was doing was wrong, and every potential new friendship I could have had, my BPD stopped it from developing and pushed them away. It led me to depression, hardly leaving my bed, lack of motivation and an excessive amount of crying. This crushed me so much I knew I had to do something if I didn't want to be alone. 

I’ve made it sound like I live in contradictions: life with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is just that. I wake up, go about my day, and change my mind more than a child trying to pick which sweet they want in a candy shop. I can be elated one minute and then the next feel like shouting at a bunch of trees which can’t shout back. I was diagnosed with BPD last year.It was like having a mirror held in front of me for the first time. I thought people would finally understand and value me for what I had been going through and my feelings would no longer be overlooked because there was a label on my experience.

However, this should not have been the case. I should have been respected from the beginning by the people I was confiding in. My feeling should not have been disregarded because everyone thought it was a ‘phase’ and blamed it on me being a teenager. My feelings shouldn’t have been regarded as ‘just being hormones.’

Sadly, many people I know don’t seem to understand my BPD and think it’s an excuse. But it’s an everyday challenge to face, and it shouldn’t be held against me. We didn’t get to choose to have it. 

It's already hard enough for young people to speak up about struggling with mental health. For them to be met with ignorance and have their experience discarded doesn’t make it any better. No one should feel their experience is invalid because they don’t have a name for what they are going through. We ALL have mental health. We ALL have good and bad times. You shouldn’t have to be labelled to be listened to.

Personality Disorders don’t have the best reputation. I’ve had several people tell me that they were shocked I had this sort of illness, exclaiming “your personality seems more than alright to me”. Well, that’s because it is. It’s comfortably more than alright.

Having a Personality Disorder doesn’t mean your personality is dangerous or worthless. It’s just that I’m a bit more sensitive than the average person and my emotions can often become a bit too overbearing. I’m still a funny, confident, and determined person who wants to make a difference in the world. This period of lockdown has been hard on every single person, irrespective of any conditions or ailments they may have. And now more than ever, it’s been ever so important to look out for the people around you: partners, parents, neighbours, strangers, and so on.

So, I want to share some superpowers that come with having BPD and how they’ve helped me in this strange time. I hope that I can give an insight into how the things that makes us quirky and misunderstood are the things which make us more special than we’ll ever know. My close friends call me an empath: someone who can feel and relate to the emotions of another individual. I’ve been hyper-aware of the loneliness that has crept among us over the last couple of months, and so I’ve made an effort to regularly check up on loved ones, cry with them over video call without any embarrassment, and offer a supportive ear whenever they need.

I’ve always been a loving person, and so I’ve tried my very best to reconnect with people who haven’t been in my life for a while to let them know that I still think of them fondly. Like so many others, I've lost some people, some bonds due to my exaggerated behaviour at times. I’ve experienced every emotion under the sun over this loss: anger, sadness, pity, and indifference, to name a few. But above all else, I have embraced those emotions, no matter how intense and confusing they’ve been, because they show that I care. And I’ll never stop caring for others or being attentive to how someone else is feeling.

The next step for me is learning to be attentive of how I’m feeling. I’ve been blessed with many opportunities in life, none of which I want to take for granted. I’m looking forward to the next chapter, continuing my education through graduate studies. I’ve got an amazing support system around me, as well as a community of fellow quirky and misunderstood people who have their own stories to tell.

And if there’s one thing that having BPD has taught me, it’s this: having a mental illness does not stop you from living a fulfilling life. If anything, it inspires you to spread positivity and make your voice heard, no matter who the audience is. Speak up, speak out.

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