I'm 25M and have had a bit of a stormy life. I recently finally got the stones to go to therapy after leaning about BPD and that treatment was possible. The Dr doing my evaluations is very talented and I know I am in good hands. I was told BPD will be one of the diagnosis I am getting tomorrow, but she wanted to go through all her notes to decide if I have any other c0morbidity.

I always knew something was wrong with me from an early age and knew what actions I was taking that I didn't like and could reason that I wouldn't do those things again. I really don't want to live like this anymore and just want to get better. Existence has been painful in one way or another for as long as I can remember. I'm getting a little overwhelmed facing this as I don't have a strong source of support for this in my life right now, so I just wanted to throw some of the things going through my head going into treatment (whatever that will look like)

Things like getting overly attached to one person (I now know that's what a FP is), being manipulative and controlling of significant others, have spurts of anger for seemingly minor things, going from extremely depressed to higher than high, disassociating causing me to fall behind in school and work, suicidal feelings... and all the other tell tale signs of BPD.

I am a software engineer and when I have clear days I am top of my field, do brilliant work and really help drive our products forward. When I have bad days, or disassociate at my desk I lose an entire day of productivity, it can go on for weeks at a time before I pull it together. Luckily I have an amazing employer who has a BPD child, is extremely compassionate and initially tipped me off that it should be something I should look into after having a heart to heart about was I was going through. It's still gutting to sit down everyday to do a job you love and are objectively good at... and you just cannot. I want to succeed and feel useful rather than a burden.

The largest source of guilt I feel is from my past relationships. I was never physically violent, didn't yell much, didn't throw things... but fear of abandonment and inability to regulate emotions would crush me. It led to being quite abusive to one degree or another. Lying, manipulations, picking fights over what should be insignificant. Something as simple as a night out could send me into an emotional spiral.

I could recognize those things happening and would fight so hard to not act. I would resort to locking my phone outside in the car, rocking myself for comfort. My last serious relationship ended in early 2019. I was with a (very talented) veterinarian student and I knew what I wanted to do in that relationship. I wanted to be a highly supportive boyfriend. Give her the space to grow in her field, help her study for her exams, be a good +1 for her networking events or stay home and take care of the cats. I wanted so badly to have a relationship built on mutual respect, trust and support. I knew what I needed to do. I knew those unreasonable emotions would come up again but early on I kept telling myself I could just ignore them and do the thing I wanted to do. But inevitably, the lying, the manipulation, it all started creeping in. As the emotions built and became more unmanaged I would pick fights over things that shouldn't be fights, I would start to have amnesia or even some false memories, which from her perspective could only have been seen as gaslighting. On a trip to Philly for vet school... I don't even know what set me off, but it ended with her on the phone crying and me knowing I fucked up and wanting so badly to undo it. It must have been hell for her.

It wasn't all bad times. We had great nights out together. For a while her friends loved me. There were times that I was able to be that amazing and supportive boyfriend... I just couldn't maintain it. She stuck it out for so long. She was amazing, supportive and understanding that the way I was acting was not how I wanted to act. I just couldn't do anything with that support at that time. I knew what I was doing wrong and just kept telling myself "Well, just don't do that stupid, easy". One of the last things she said to me when she was moving out of our apartment was "When it comes down to it, you're actually a great guy. You're just not emotionally stable".

For the longest time these emotions were blamed on anxiety, because I didn't know any better. It was the only word I knew to describe the overwhelming emotions I was feeling. Anti-Anxiety medication would just make me manic, even causing me to start trying to pick fights in beer league softball games. The few times I went to therapy I didn't do any sort of evaluations ahead of time and would get treated for the wrong thing, and get frustrated and give up. It's been a long, painful road to today.

Now it's clear to me growing up that my mother was BPD. She was constantly manipulating my father. Yelling at him for cleaning his car, doing laundry, not cleaning is car, forgetting to do laundry. When he first got a cell phone he had to get rid of it because she would call him every 20 minutes. My father on the other hand is off himself. He's a story teller and bullshit artist. He would tell us stories that as an adult I now know were complete and utter bullshit. He was abusive in his own way. Talking shit about my mom constantly to us behind her back, telling me that "If I ever came home with a (tattoo, piercing, whatever hair style he didn't like, cigs, whatever else" he would "some threat (like kick me out, haul my ass to jail, beat me up, etc)". He never yelled, but he just gaslight my brother and I constantly. I wasn't really allowed to have many friends growing up, my parents didn't have friends, I did and liked the things that were approved.

In middle school I wrote a poem about getting yelled at, and in turn, after my parents found it, they yelled at me for it. They told me my childhood was perfect, it was not. When we got a computer, conversations with my friends were heavily monitored. One I complained to a friend that my mother had yelled at me from something, then I got yelled at for telling people. Once in elementary school, I told them I was depressed and needed consoling. I do not remember their response, but I do remember sitting in my room afterwards, crying, feeling abandoned. Other times if I was feeling down my mother would corner me in my room and grill me over and over again asking "What is wrong", I would say "I don't know", and she would yell and me and continuing asking what was wrong. To them, they were the ones who could help or "fix" me. They didn't care to help me, they just wanted me as their pet because they never actually took the steps to get me to see someone.

I was bullied relentlessly in school. I am sure others were tormented worse than I, but it was constant. From K to 12. If there was a joke to be made, or someone to be put down, it was at my expense.  It all eventually wears on you. I never really had close friends. I had "friends", but like the friends that would want to see me at school, but never invite me to their house. The only time I felt like I really had a home was when I was wrestling, but after a concussion I had to stop that.

I feel like going back even to grade pre school, I was displaying BPD signs. That's when I had my first FP and started with the fear of abandonment.  When I couldn't go over to his house on the weekend for some reason, I remember standing outside the pre school bawling my eyes out. I was 4, but I still remember the intense emotions I was experiencing.

It's been a really, really long and painful road to today. Not just for me, but for the people I love. I really hope I stick with treatment, I hope that treatment is effective. I don't want to hurt people anymore and I don't want to experience this much pain myself on the regular. Because I honestly don't think a life like this is worth living, from a purely logical perspective. I've had 25+ years of pain and burdening others with that pain, I can't do another 25 years of it. As much as it sucks for me, it's not fair for the people around me that I inevitably hurt if I get too close. I don't want to be "A great guy, but emotionally unstable", I just want to be "A great guy". I want to show up to work everyday and do the level of work I've proven time and time again that I am capable of. I want to start my own consulting firm someday. I want to get back in and stay in shape.

Staring therapy is really, really scary. I don't know what's going to happen, I don't know how much hope there is, but I'm so desperate to feel normal. I feel alone, despite having some healthy adult friendships now. I need this to work, I need to stick with it and open up to whatever the process is going to be. Because otherwise, life is just going to continue to be a shit show and I can't keep living that existence.

If you've made it all the way down here, thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings. I could use some words of encouragement. I'm nervous and really don't know what to expect going forward.