Man...this is actually really hard to start. Let me tell you about the worst experience of my life. As I arrive to this new turning point in my sickness, let me tell you about the turning point that made me how I am today.

This is also for the ones whose family members suffer from BPD and claim BPD people are monsters. I will show you what makes a person go nuts.


I have been going to therapy for half a year now and have started to integrate pretty well. I am more balanced, able to hold a job and maintain relationships. The summer has been really good and I have managed to grow closer with my boyfriend. Before my diagnosis, it was pretty hard for us to be together because I was in a mess and didn't know why. 

But now as I have integrated, I have also started to remember more things that I dissociated from and as I feel they partly explain why these past 1 year and a half have been such hell for me. I have started to recall emotional and sexual abuse traumas inflicted on me by my ex partner and one case where I was raped by a person I met online. I am not trying to shift the diagnosis. BPD is what it is. I can recognize certain patterns I had even before I met my ex. But it was much milder and knowing myself and my coping/relearning skills it wouldn't have affected my life in a way as it currently is. 

I met my ex partner when I was 19 and he was 38. It was already a recipe for a disaster if you think about it, but my unfortunate luck was to fall for a narcissist who thrived from emotionally abusing me for the next four years. And not just emotionally and mentally, also sexually. I was picked apart by this person (it didn't help I was recovering from the loss of my father), completely. 

In some ways he was very, very controlling. In some, I was allowed to do stuff but he always let me hear from it afterwards. I was always the bad, dumb slut. I didn't dress well enough, I was fat, I had sex the wrong way (women are not so forward). I wasn't allowed to tell my opinions ( this would lead to temper tantrums and throwing me out of the apartment or not talking to me for weeks at a time), my only existence was just to comp his opinions and validate him. And yet it wasn't enough. He was jealous, claiming people cared for me more because I was young and pretty and female. If I initiated sex, he would either deny it, or would tell me how he thought about others while we do it. But I wasn't allowed to deny him sex. I couldn't, because then it would have meant some kind of mental punishment later on. He would often tell me about who of my friends he wants to fuck and why. He would throw me out of the apartment, scream at me, yell at me for being in his presence when I should have known better to be somewhere else. He would not show up on our dates without any answer. I needed to dress the way he wanted to be acceptable and not too 'lesbian'. The more I looked like a teenage jailbait, the better. All and all he reduced me into an object, without emotion, without need, without any opinion. There are more details and situations but they are pretty horrible so I will not go into them.

I have been called a stupid whore, cunt, bitch...anything you can imagine. Sometimes because I dropped something, sometimes because I accidentally pressed the wrong button on a remote. Sometimes I was punished for being clumsy. It took me half a year into my current relationship that no one is going to hurt me just because I spilled some milk. He would push all my abandonment buttons, leaving me standing somewhere when he stormed off without giving me a reason. He would not pick up his phone for days just because he didn't feel like it. When we broke up I learned he had spread all my intimate details and secrets to common friends. He had lied to me about most of our relationship and apparently fucked people behind my back. And of course went around telling what a selfish, bad whore I am. I heard that he had told people how he had trained me well, because women, like horses need to be whipped and tamed before they can be of proper use. 

Soon after we broke up, I was pretty raw and battered as you can imagine. And still in a stage of shock. I met a dude online, someone I had talked to on and off for awhile but didn't think much about it. Long story short, I got raped by this person. I think that was the breaking point. It was one horror too much. And I shut down. I never talked about it. Not before last week. I never talked about the sexual abuse by my ex-partner either, not before last week. Some of the emotional, I have. 
I was ashamed, I still am to a point. I thought I could get over it if I just left the situation. Nothing is wrong as the abuse stops, right? I should just be happy, right? I wouldn't become those statistical women, those who become victims and never maintain healthy relationships again. 
I blocked it. And stopped healing. 

A couple of weeks after that I met my current bf and I was happy. I am still happy, and I love him. It's just this, all of this that I have started to deal with pushes the breaks on my life and makes me, understandably anxious, distrusting and...well, unstable is the kind way of putting it. It makes having this relationship hard, because I am afraid of it. Not him, but coming to him with all these scars and all this package and problems and feeling ok staying. With all my crazy and shortcomings. I have learned to hate myself so I assume that is how he feels about me as well. And it is not fair. 

Of course all the shit followed me even if I didn't want it. I fell back to the old patterns of being afraid of punishment and not understanding when it didn't happen. Assuming my partner was always right and my opinion didn't matter. Being afraid of everything, applying hierarchy and entitlement where it didn't apply. I was so used to it, so I kept doing it without realizing. And making life so much worse for myself and those around me. 

Getting abused for years and raped does this to a person. It twists your ability to read social situations or to understand them. Even if you don't mean any harm, you are not apt. The symptom list for PTSD and especially the one for rape trauma goes very well together with BPD. 

I was diagnosed with BPD half a year ago and the therapy has given a lot of progress. A lot. It has given me tools to understand this. And I guess because of that I am able to face with this now. I am ready to heal from this and cast it behind me, even if I am not sure how. It's going to take time. But I finally understand. 
And I forgive myself. 

I understand that I could have done nothing to prevent these events from unfolding the way they did. It would be even better if I could forgive myself for the ordeal I am in now. 
For the past week, after all this reflection, I have been crying my eyes out. 
I am sorry that I have made life difficult for the people around me with my illness. But my illness is not my fault. I did not deserve any of what happened to me. No one does. 

I feel very scared realizing this. I am afraid I will never have a normal life because of it, or my healing will be too slow for my relationships, romantic or platonic to endure it. I am afraid of all those things but at the same time I am grateful for finally getting to the bottom of it. 

Of course every BPD story is different. But I am just thinking about everyone who thinks we are monsters. Monsters are not born. They are made by other people. As corny as it sounds. 

But surprisingly, first time in my life I feel like glimpse of the person I was before all this happened. I found myself, or got myself back. I am going to keep her. 