A Personal Experience with the BPD Diagnosis

I didn’t always know I had an illness. It was only after my first boyfriend broke up with me in my first year of college, five years ago, that I began to realize something might be wrong with me.

We would talk on the phone for up to five hours a night, and I would still have intense feelings that he didn’t spend enough time with me. That he didn’t love me. That he would leave me. That I wasn’t enough. My relationships constantly fluctuated — getting people to want to date me or be my friend was easy, but people never seemed to want to stick around.

There was always a falling out with a co-worker, a childhood friend or a potential boyfriend. I blamed it on everything and everyone except myself. No matter how great my life was, or how many people cared about me, I always felt empty and unloved. When my friends weren’t with me, I was always paranoid they would be saying things behind my back. I had no logical reason for these feelings, but I always felt like everyone was against me.

Even then, I just thought maybe I was going through a phase. What I didn’t know at the time was that people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder always have someone they deem their “FP” or “favorite person,” or the person they unconsciously choose in their minds to love-bomb, to constantly think about and to have unrealistically high expectations for. Whenever I had a falling out with my FP ― sometimes it was a friend and sometimes it was a romantic interest ― I would want to die. I didn’t know why at the time, but I constantly felt so worthless and abandoned.

No matter how great my life was, or how many people cared about me, I always felt empty and unloved.

And the patterns kept returning. Whenever a friend or lover didn’t text me back for over a few hours, I began to panic. They hate me. I did something wrong. Why would they ignore me like this? Who else are they hanging out with? Why am I not enough? These were some of the thoughts that plagued my mind ― thoughts that I tortured myself with. The worst part is, even if it wasn’t true, I still projected that as my truth onto others. Read the full article here.