I have borderline personality disorder...  also known as emotional dysregulation disorder which is a simpler, yet much more accurate description. 

I feel like speaking up about it just because it’s been impacting my life for a very long time and I’ve been pretty ashamed to make it public but also want to fight stigma. It’s also been flaring up pretty badly lately and I need some kind of outlet.

For me, the biggest way that this disorder presents itself is an almost blind focus on romantic relationships to the detriment of almost everything else. I appear okay 95% of the time but anytime a relationship issue is involved, I become completely impulsive and dysregulated at the expense of everything else in my life. I have left jobs, moved towns (and now countries, lol) fucked up friendships, etc, because of how unhealthily attached I can become. Not to say anything about the relationships themselves, it’s just how I react to them and my need for them.

Additionally, I have an extreme core sense of emptiness that never seems to go away and manifests itself as me striving for something to fill the space, which often is a relationship. However, the sad part is, it never becomes enough in the end and I am left seeking out attention in other ways. It’s this desire for stimulation or excitement that never ends up being satisfied and leaves me feeling completely discontented with my life unless I’m in the middle of something very exciting, which of course we know, life rarely is. It’s a never ending FOMO, if you will, a constant rat race to feel something other than empty. 

I’m lonely and bored nearly all of the time unless I am around others. I don’t know what it means to have inner peace. I often find it very difficult to make decisions and have extremely black &amp; white thinking about people that burn bridges because I will blow up and become angry but then later on realize it was really me who overreacted. Overreaction. That’s a biggie. 

There’s a Modest Mouse lyric - “Changed my mind so much I can’t even trust it. My mind changed me so much I can’t even trust myself”. Hard relate. The searing indecision that cuts through everything to the point where I really don’t know who I am, what I want, where I need to be. 

Lately I have struggled with suicidal thoughts. I have in the past too but I just wanted to say that because damn, I know I feel better and less alone when someone admits that they have had some too. Less ashamed. 

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever really be happy because I seem to fuck myself over every time that I am. I start the pursuit of something more, intangible, to fill that sense of emptiness that always comes up again &amp; again. 

I clearly remember being happy for years, in stable, loving, amazing relationships. Yeah, multiple ones were good. But I let myself be selfish and I let that demon inside of me trick me into believing - I could be happier. But I never am.

I could wax on about the reasons why I’m like this now but would any of it make a difference? 

Was it inconsistent parenting and emotional neglect? Yeah, probably. Research shows some kind of abuse in the formative years leads to an inability to feel whole and to constantly be striving for an unattainable love. Even though I’ve been given great love, I’ll never be able to truly have what I actually need - self love.

Self loathing takes it’s place so maybe if I just keep running &amp; running I’ll be able to smother that. 

Every inconvenience feels like the end of the world. Emotional turbulence. Inability to go on when something in a relationship or close friendship is going wrong....