Platonic love is comfortable. I don't worry that my friends will abandon me. I feel safe and secure. I don't depend on them and I don't feel like I'll fall apart if they don't text for a week. Of course I still want to see them and I miss them a lot, but it's just different when I consider how I feel romantically about someone. I feel obsessed. I feel shame, guilt, anger at my unrequited feelings. I want someone so badly that it physically hurts and feels like half of me is missing. When feelings are reciprocated, I switch so often that I can convince myself I don't have feelings for someone, but then I'm devastated if I perceive them detaching, sometimes within 15 minutes. 

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I truly feel like I could handle my BPD and all this shit if I just didn't have romantic feelings, but I want to love someone. I wanna be loved. I just want to do it in a healthy way. I'm genuinely confused at what love is supposed to be, though, and how to not be dependent on someone while in a partnership. To me, all relationships are - to some extent - co-dependent. However, dependency is rarely talked about in a positive way, it's always framed negatively and like something you should avoid. What is love without dependence? I just don't know how to not depend on someone who I love, to not trust them deeply, to not hope that they care about me as much as I care about them. I feel bad at caring about people. It's genuinely the only time I feel like I'm going crazy. I'm getting pretty good at compartmentalising it when I'm not around the person I'm into but when I'm around them it's like I forget how to organise my brain. It always feels like I'm just doing too much, I feel too much, and that'll always be the case unless I get into a relationship with someone else who has BPD (which I do not think is a great idea, personally). 

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I've watched a bunch of videos online, been to therapy, been single for a year after a pretty bad breakup, dated different types of people, worked through it pretty much constantly, and I just don't feel any different. I feel broken. I'm actually scared to date and find someone I really like because the more I love them the more it'll hurt me. I'm loving myself, doing all the things that people who don't have BPD tell you to do - which kind of doesn't help because 1. they're all saying different things and 2. they often don't have BPD - I just keep hitting the same wall. Sorry this is really fragmented and disconnected, I'm really trying to focus and pin down my feelings but it's quite difficult since there's a lot of layers, I guess. Thank you for reading. It already helps to just write it.