I think i am hindering my own recovery by pretending to be positive all the time. I think it comes from my desperate need to be liked along with it being the cultural norm for women where i am from. I think i do it because i am so scared people will be put off by all of this negativity i hold inside, even though my conscious eyes can see that it is the positivity that is actually putting them off; no one is buying it. I pretend to buy it in an attempt to make life feel easier but it does not work at least not long-term. I haven’t been officially classified as ‘quiet’ borderline but my psych doesn’t know of the subclasses - he just says ‘you seem to manage this pretty well’ and in my mind the automatic is ‘yes i hide how i feel extremely well, thank u’. I think i am, though, but i could be wrong. Diagnostically he was right, i am borderline, i think the reason i refused to accept it was that i don’t present externally the way i feel inside - like if you were to ask anyone, maybe even my family who have seen the most of my mood swings, whether i had an unstable mood, i think they would at most say “she is moody sure, but not to where it is a problem.” Strangers would laugh at the question and say “if anything, she is *too* positive sometimes.” 

No one knows what it is like for me inside, and so no one knows what to look for when searching for evidence that this disorder is making my life un-fucking-bearable, but it is not like i give them the chance to see it. I am too scared.