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This is a work of creative non-fiction.  It was for a Psychology project I had to do back in high school.  It's always stuck with me.  Has to do with what Borderline Personality Disorder is (BPD)
Most of it is fake, like the protagonist's life, but the information on BPD is true. At least it was 3 years ago when I wrote it all up.

So, apparently now I have to write this stuff. Apparently this whole thing will be therapeutic, or something. Don’t get me wrong; I sure do love my therapy (please tell me you can pick up on the sarcasm), but seriously, sometimes all the stupid doctors need to back off. In case you can’t tell, my anger is steadily increasing. And the lovely people who cause me this kind of frustration, they told me why I have such a short temper.
They say I have something called “Borderline Personality Disorder” (BPD). Yes, that’s right. It’s official. I really am insane now. Have a disorder and everything to prove it. And now I get stuck in therapy regularly, because they just have to “fix” me. I’m not even broken. Well alright, so that’s a lie, but still: You should get the idea.
Moving on though, well more like backwards: I feel like I should give my own background just to explain how I ended up here, with the whole diagnosis of “borderline.” Borderline of what? Well the ORIGINAL border was between psychosis and neurosis. Now, well now there’s some fight to have the name change to “Emotional Dysregulatory (or Dysregulation) Disorder. I kind of prefer the whole “borderline” thing better. It still makes me feel somewhat real, in some weird and twisted way. But, I’m going off on other tangents again. Back to the beginning now.
It all started this one day, I was feeling really torn up inside and I couldn’t exactly keep my anger in check. I was in no position to actually let my anger get the better of me; I’ve learned that holding onto my anger tends to save me in the long run. At least, I thought that was the life lesson. So, I was torn up and angry and I was looking for a way to make myself feel better. And my great mind told me to do all sorts of things. All of which ultimately hurt myself in some sense of the word. But, me being the person I am, I went ahead and did it all once to find my outlet. Yeah, call me what you will: I fooled around, I shop lifted, and I delved into drugs and alcohol. Kept that up for a bit, mainly the sex, but then it wasn’t enough, and I got to a place where I knew I couldn’t live my life this way. Next best thing was, of course, suicide. However, as we can all tell, I failed. But in a sense I won all the same.
What happened was I figured the best way to do this whole killing myself thing was by causing lots of bloodshed, and taking an obscenely large amount of ibuprofen based substances. So I did. During this failed attempt, which did land me in hospital with charcoal being pumped into my system, I learned that hurting myself physically was a nicer feeling than just emotionally and mentally. So I kept that up for a bit too. But since I did end up in the hospital from that first idea, which I don’t even know how I came to that conclusion in the first place, I had to see some counsellor to talk about my “issues.”
The first thing I did in retaliation to that was, obviously enough, lose my already building temper. Was I really that wrong to be pissed because of instead of waking up dead, I woke up in an ungodly white room, knowing full well there was no way I would ever get into “Heaven”. I didn’t believe in the whole religion thing, so I knew I was alive. Plus the pounding in my head and the nurses hovering around me were a fairly good hint. But, as I was saying, I got angry. Real angry, and they got defensive and said I was being “unreasonable” and had “obvious problems that needed to get sorted out.”
At this point you might be wondering where my parents were during all this. I was too. Turns out, they were mourning the loss of their daughter. Not my loss physically, just in every other sense. They said I was gone and never coming back. They said that I had to take the help or I would be left in that hospital. Needless to say, I went to the first session the next day.
It all went as expected, or at least what I assumed was expected. This was my first time; I figured it was how it was supposed to be. He asked me these questions about why I did it, and the best answer I could come up with was “I don’t know.” It appeared to me, after about the seventh, or so, time of answering like that that it was not a welcomed response. But I could see his eye twitching and the veins in his neck throbbing, so I did it one more time just for the sake of it. Yeah, yeah, lecture me later about being a bad person, I’m used to that as it stands.
He continued to ask me questions, mainly about my childhood and the early years of my adolescents. It was kind of nice seeing that he cared, to the degree of not just ripping my head off for being an annoying teenager, that I found myself actually telling the truth. At least the majority of it. And by that I mean that I didn’t know the whole story. Then he asked me this one question. One that would get me into serious complications if I answered truthfully, and well, I was scared and stuck in a hospital; I told the truth.
It was really a simple question: “How do you see yourself?” Simple right? But when I actually took the time to think about how I did see myself, it was a whole other story. I thought about it for a good five minutes, until he got a bit huffy with me for taking so long, and drew the conclusion I was, in fact, a horrible person. If not the worst. He was not pleased by this answer and made me explain why I made that decision about myself. Not a fun thing at all to explain to some guy that you’re meeting for the first time. But he was caring for me right? So I figured I should be a good sport and just indulge in his questions.
My reasons seemed logical to me. I slept around, probably had all the STDs possible, I liked to binge on alcohol and food (if the time seemed right), and then there was the whole stealing and lying about all of it to my parents. After he learned all this, he was even less pleased. He said all of what I did didn’t make me a slut or an alcoholic or a failure as a child. But, I wore on telling him that in my parents’ eyes I was all of the above and more.
What I’ve neglected to mention is that I didn’t have a great childhood. Don’t get me wrong, it could have been worse, a lot worse. But the fact of the matter is it could have been better. There were times when they just didn’t care about me, or if they felt the need they’d smack me for not thinking about the words that came out of my mouth, partly how I learned to keep a tight leash on my anger. They loved to play the blame game, and I was always the winner. It was my fault for it all. But the only brightside was that I was never sexually abused. At least not by them. I think.
Sexual abuse was a grey area for me, and I really could just recall feeling that sense of violation with the odd dream that reflected back on something like that happening, but I had no proof. Parents never told me, but it could have been there.
Telling my new counsellor about this, well he wanted me to get serious help. I said my parents needed to come get me soon because I wanted to go home. He said I might not be heading home for a while yet.
The next day came, my parents hadn’t visited me and I was in and out of consciousness. Sometimes I woke up with these weird dreams of the night that landed me in the hospital in the first place, but for the most part it was pretty uneventful. Then I woke up, at around 2:30 in the afternoon, to my parents and this strange woman standing over my bed nattering on about me. I was more than shocked, but it was nice to see my parents there.
Eventually the woman introduced herself to me. Apparently she was the psychiatrist who would be handling my “case.” Great way to wake up, eh? Being told I was a “case.” It sure was something.
She said she needed to talk to me and asked if I was able to get up and go to her office. All of this just had to happen on the hospital grounds, didn’t it? I got up and followed her out, shaking the sleepy cloud from my head. My counsellor worked fast, apparently.
Turns out, my parents had signed a paper agreeing for me to be treated by her and be put on medications if needed. I thought this was a weird idea; I had just tried to kill myself hadn’t I? But hey, they were the ones in charge right?
To find out what kind of drugs and method of therapy to be used, I had to take a few tests. Mainly just question and answer, and at the end of them all she would just nod and incline her head in that thoughtful way that really just made me uneasy. When she finally stopped, she looked at me and said I should try something along the lines of Prozac. Hearing this come out of her mouth, I merely just scoffed and shook my head. Me on Prozac? Yeah, that was NOT going to happen. Yet five minutes later she was sending me back to my room and calling the nurses to start the medication trials.
I stayed in the hospital for that last night, and then my parents toted me back home, with a prescription for Prozac.
The car ride from hospital to home was interesting. They told me I was borderline. I was confused and they laughed at me. Now I was confused and angry and straining to hold onto it all. They did go on to tell me that it was some kind of personality disorder. Says so in the name: Borderline Personality Disorder. Creative name isn’t it? I asked a couple of questions that were basically pointless since the only response was a shrug and mumbled “I dunno,” so I won’t repeat them here (I also can’t quite remember).
When I got home, I was impatient to find out more. So I began my own investigation. Which brings me to the beginning of this whole writing thing, at least in part. I am doing this for the “therapeutic” means. I don’t know how it helps, but I do know all I have to do is simply write whatever comes to mind. And since I started this, I’ve basically just wanted to tell my stupid little story. It entertained me at the time, so why not now.
I found basically all the same information everywhere I looked. I also found that all of what this whole BPD thing encircles pertains to me only all too well. The main things I needed to know were right there in the DSM-IV (the equivalent of the bible to shrinks).
The giant book had this great blurb about what BPD was:
A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
1: Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. (not including suicidal or self-mutilating behaviour covered in Criterion 5)
2: A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
3: Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
4: Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging. (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating; [not including] suicidal or self-mutilating behaviour covered in Criterion 5)
5: Recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behaviour.
6: Affective instability, due to marked reactivity of mood. (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
7: Chronic feelings of emptiness.
8: Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger. (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)
9: Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

Don’t feel bad if you don’t understand that stuff either, I know I sure didn’t. But, I had to figure it all out because, well, it was talking about me. That jumble of big words was everything that I was, well five or more of those things. Sadly, when I figured the whole thing out, I was part of the “or more” group; I really was all nine to some degree:
1: well that’s pretty straight forward; I always tried to keep from being abandoned, which is partially why even though my parents tormented me, I still wanted to be home with them.
2: take a look at my past relationships; they all failed because out of nowhere I would hate the guy I was with and tell him to get away from me before I castrated him. Take it from me: never tell a guy that with an angry tone, it really does terrify them. It also confuses them when you admit that they have done nothing and that yes the day before you were in love with them and that you literally woke up and decided to hate them, or so it seemed.
3: skewed views on myself. Quickly change what I want to do with my life and what kind of people I want. In a matter of minutes I went from never having sex to doing that whenever the opportunity arose, same with drinking. I swear I used to be a good/decent kid. Now I really don’t care (an example in itself).
4: this one is straight forward too; that explains the sex and binging on various substances.
5: this whole thing started because of all this. Though I can’t self-mutilate anymore because my therapist is seriously on me about that, and I don’t want her to leave me (abandonment issues anyone?).
6: basically I’m an emotional rollercoaster, focusing on things like extreme unhappiness, anger, panic; “negative” things.
7: I do feel empty, and I fill that void with all that great stuff in 4 and 5
8: I like to think my anger is appropriate, but I have learned I need to control it better, though I really don’t want to.
9: it’s true, I depersonalize myself, I do get paranoid but it goes away fairly quickly and I’m easily stressed, but moods can change quickly enough.

As you can tell, I had found myself a little title. Not so sure if that’s good or not anymore, but I’m hoping it is. It does mean I fit in somewhere.
I was reading all this stuff and it told me that two percent of adults have BPD and most are young women; so that’s a point for me. Then in studies done by Judith Lewis Herman, Christopher Perry, and Bessel von der Kolk, most of us had been traumatized and neglected before the age of seven by our families, with rates of seventy-one percent having been physically abused (count me in), sixty-seven percent had been sexually abused (I still can’t figure that one out), and sixty-two percent of us had the pleasure of witnessing domestic abuse (I have siblings, that’s all you need to know). Some studies also showed that BPD is a result from both genetic and environmental issues, and since there was no history of it in my family, I knew it had to be from how I lived. Aside from these little tidbits, I learned some discouraging things, as if that all wasn’t discouraging enough.
Turns out, mental health professionals really don’t like “borderlines.” They seem to think we really aren’t treatable. Makes me wonder why I still have to go to therapy.
Since it’s been known that psychiatrists like to say that anyone who gives them a hard time is borderline and aren’t worth being truly helped, this is one of the most over used diagnoses. Guess this is why there is very little effort put into learning more about it. Why the main attitude is “lock them up.” Apparently all I am to the mental health field is “manipulative, blameful, rageful, sexually provocative, unstable and messy,” in complete essence: “permanently damaged beyond help.” And they wonder why we have such a twisted view on ourselves and low self-esteem.
Then there was the interesting knowledge that males who act like borderline women (at least how the mental health professionals see us) are called antisocial. I don’t know what’s worse.
Eventually I stumbled across some information on treatment for people with BPD. In 1991, Marsha Linehan developed a specialized therapy for people with this disorder. Medications and standard therapy have low rates of working with people like me, so I was really interested in this one idea.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy is basically a negotiation between patient and therapist. They accept us as we are, but we have to agree to change for the better: sounded pretty nice. The whole idea was to enable us borderlines to have the tools to cope and deal that we were never taught in childhood. DBT and medications, which treat the symptoms (Prozac and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), appear to work quickly and give a satisfying synergy.
I wrote down what I could about DBT, and went to my therapist the next day with it. So far, she hasn’t acted on it; guess they were right about the lack of care.
Moving on though, that was all I really found that was worth anything.
That was what was floating around inside me. A personality disorder that sounds like I’m half a person. A mental disease that can’t be treated with any pill. This is what I am.
Frankly, I don’t mind it all that much. Everything that it is reflects me more than anything ever has before. So what if I’m generally in a negative mood, have relationship issues and like to do impulsive things that will only ever get me into compromising positions. It’s who I am. I can deal with that. Sure, the title does get to me sometimes, but I prefer it to “emotional dysregulation.”
I hate taking medications to keep my me on even ground, and others hate it when I get into the devaluating moods, but since I fear abandonment I can keep a lid on it. At least to a degree.
So, you’re free to ignore me now. My little autobiography is done. I just wanted to share who I was, and what I meant. The therapists didn’t listen, maybe you did.