For many years I've been alone. I lived in my own apartment, by myself, for several years. Occasionally I'd see friends, or go out, but mostly I was very content being alone. For a long time I threw myself at my work and career. When I burned out on that and work started to slow, I found hobbies to keep me busy.

For me, being alone doesn't mean feeling lonely. Feeling lonely is when you want to be around people and connect with them, and you can't. I had a routine for a long time to keep people away and focus on myself. I thought I had done a lot of good work on myself and matured to the point where I could manage my BPD in my personal and work life.

And then I met someone. About a month ago I started seeing someone, and after our first couple of dates, I immediately found myself reverting back to the same abandonment fears and anxieties that I had been suppressing for so long. It's almost as if I can't truly care about someone and have feelings for them without being mentally ill. I mean, it was the BPD starterpack. The fear of abandonment, the splitting, the intensity and sensitivity to every single thing, the perception of hateful things being said and done that weren't, and especially the self-destructive urges to drink heavily, hurt myself, and smoke cigarettes heavy.

I'm not even sure where things stand with this person, but for the first time in probably a decade, I honestly feel loneliness. I fought off caring and having feelings for so long that now that I've reintroduced that into my life, it seems unbearable. All I can do is think about this person, and want to be with her, and when I'm not, or haven't heard from her in a couple of days, I just want to hurt myself, and yet I've fought so hard not to scare her with these feelings.

As a male with BPD, dating and relationships just feels like a non-starter for me. I'm finally at a point in my life where I'm ready to settle down. I've been dating a lot, but most people make me uncomfortable, or I don't trust them to see my other side, and I just let it fizzle out. And then I finally meet someone who I feel comfortable with, and who I can feel safe sharing some of this shit with, and it just fucking kills me.

I want to be normal. I want to be like all the other happy couples I see in the street, pushing their children along in strollers. And yet I look at them and think "How?" How the fuck did you make that work? I only ever see thousands of ways for things to go wrong, and yet some how everyone else figured out that one special path to make it work.

I've made mistakes. I'll continue to make mistakes. But how do you actually make something work when you have a mental illness that actively fights against making it work? I thought I had learned my lessons. I thought I had matured past all the craziness. And yet here I am, still fighting the same demons from 10 years ago. I had forgotten what it felt like to be lonely. And I still don't know how to deal with it.