Day one of the tiny white pills. Small and chalky. Bitterness explodes in my mouth– I can’t swallow it fast enough. This is going to save my life? Dr. Walker informed me, like he has countless times before, that they will take four weeks to build up in my system but the people around me will notice a decrease in my symptoms in a week or two. I’ll notice a difference in a month or so. A month is a long time to me. Sometimes a day is too long. I suppose I have lived with this for as long as I have already, what is a month longer? Okay self, stay alive for a month longer.
Not a lot of people in my life know I’m sick unwell. Perhaps my parents don’t even know that I live with this potentially fatal malfunction. I don’t speak to my friends every day. Some of them I go months between conversations. I like it that way. Not having friends that I talk to daily means nobody starts to wonder when they haven’t heard from me in a week or two or a month. My girlfriend is the only person that has almost seen how bad it gets and even she has only seen the tip of the iceberg. The thing that I love most about her is the patience she has with me and this baggage I’ve carried around for as long as I can remember.
How do I get away with keeping my illness such a greatly hid secret? How can I walk into a crowded room where everybody stares at me and not one person can tell I’m sick? Post pictures of myself all over the internet and be seen as just a regular person? It’s simple. Most people don’t consider what I battle a real illness (and I wear long sleeves). Maybe they see it as a weakness, something I can control if I wanted to. But not a real illness. There is such a taboo about mental illnesses and it makes it hard for much of society to look at somebody who is struggling as a person who needs help. I have been told my whole life to JUST STOP! just stop JUST stop stop with the negative thoughts, stop crying, stop getting so mad, stop stop stop just stop like I wake up every day and choose to feel this way. A person with mental illness commits crime and parents tell their children that the person is a bad person when in reality that person is not well. They may be a good person when they’re not in the middle of an episode or when they’re on the correct medicine. These people are not their illness, they may do bad things, but that doesn’t mean they are a bad person.
Hi, my name is Pacie and I live with Borderline Personality Disorder. I am, technically, mentally ill. I’m sure I’ve lost a few readers with that sentence because if a person does consider mental illnesses real illnesses BPD isn’t usually in that cluster. Depression and anxiety would also be excluded from their group of what they consider to be real. Trust me when I tell you, Borderline Personality Disorder is real and it is deadly. There is a constant fight within myself every day. Some days are admittedly better than others but there are some days I wish and pray that God doesn’t stop me from ending it all.
I have no control of my emotions. There are thoughts in my head and I have no idea who thought them, but it wasn’t me. When I’m having an episode things come from my throat that I don’t want to say and it’s like I’m on the outside of my head screaming, begging myself to stop saying those things. Stop throwing those things. Stop hitting that person. Just. Stop. but that voice doesn’t stop. My hands don’t stop. I don’t stop. I can’t stop. Afterward, when I’m allowed back in my head and in my body, I drown in remorse. All I want, I need, is for somebody to tell me they still love me despite the awful monster I am. When I don’t have that option, when the person on the receiving end has had enough of the abuse and they leave, the urge to self harm comes. It feels good, it reminds me. Until recently I have been able to suppress the urge until it eventually goes away. It’s been years since I decided to take the easy way out of the moment. But I did. I relapsed. And then I was able to go to sleep. Now I have to start over with overcoming that addiction.
I was diagnosed by the military in 2010 after I nearly cut my arm off due to my habit of self mutilation while stationed in Germany. Every week for months before that incident I went to therapy. I was reassigned three different times to different doctors because they felt they couldn’t treat me efficiently, my depression and anxiety were “extreme”. I was on multiple medications for my depression, anxiety, and insomnia. I tried to get better. There was nothing I wanted more than to be normal like my friends. Normalcy never came. The medicine never helped. There was minor relief when they finally put a name to my lifelong enemy, Borderline Personality Disorder, but it soon vanished when I realized it wasn’t something that would just go away. After I was finished with the military and I came home there was even more disappointment and hopelessness.
I couldn’t find a therapist. I was out of medicine. I needed help.
Five years later and I have still not been to a therapist, but I have recently started trying again to find somebody that will take me and my BPD on. My family doctor prescribes me anti-depressants and I turn down anti-anxiety medicine or anything else I may become too friendly with. (Not so deep inside I know there’s a little drug addict in me, itching to find something to numb it all.) Today I started on a new medicine and I am determined to beat this. I will stay on these tiny white pills even after they rob me of my ability to write. I will recover.
I am going to share my journey, struggles, and accomplishments with the entire internet. With people I don’t know, people that know me from my online presence, and my friends that maybe didn’t know. It’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be fun. I’m not doing this to gain sympathy or pity. Maybe a prayer or two though. I know there is somebody out there that struggles the way I do. Maybe they feel like they are the only person in the whole world that feels out of control. But we don’t have to do this alone. We don’t have to struggle by ourselves. We don’t have to hate who we are because of BPD. We’re not monsters. We can overcome. We’ll have to fight for the rest of our lives but it’s going to get better if we put in work and make it happen.
My whole life I felt like I was born to be a writer. It has always been that one thing I did slightly better than the masses. Medication takes that away from me. This medicine is going to take that away from me. It’s going to be hard. It’s not going to stop me though. There is a beautiful, sweet, smart, and funny blonde sleeping on the right side of a bed across town that I would do anything for. Including giving up my passion. If I can’t do this for myself, I can do this for her.
Love, Pacie 