*Potentially triggering. 

Also seeking advice, can’t figure out how to add two tags. 

Ok. I’m a 49 year old male. I’ve been running From this diagnosis my whole adult life. I used to work in a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed youth. I’ve seen what bpd can do to the people around me. I am genuinely sorry if this post triggers or insults people, I mean that. Just keeping it real. 

My mom strapped me all the time. She screamed at me for misspelling words she made me write five times over and over again. The old thin writing paper with the blue and red dotted lines just disintegrated under the weight of the tears an eight year old boy who couldn’t spell. She screamed and screamed. She destroyed my personhood. 

My personality. It is, after all, a personality disorder. 

I never had a chance. 

At 49 I’m agoraphobic, emotional and inconsolable at times. The times when I’m not lying to myself. I constantly let my wife down, she does nothing but support me and try to bear it. 

I’m a mess. I’m not fixable. 

My question: do I (in some vague notion that it’ll maybe it’ll be cathartic and healing) ruin the rest of my mom’s life by letting her know that she ruined mine?

She was a single mom in the 70’s, she had no support, she worked three jobs because my dad told her if she sued for more than $15 per week child support, he’d just quit his job. (You could get away with that in the 70’s without consequence.)

Did she do her best? Maybe. Her childhood was no picnic either. 

Do I lay all this on her now? Will I just feel worse about it if I do in some vain attempt at healing myself?

My instincts tell me to just bear it. My instincts tell me that it will absolutely destroy her in the closing years she has left. 

I know she’ll never forgive herself. She never forgave me. I was a little boy. She terrorized me. I know she probably knows it too. 

Will it pay to lay out for her how she irretrievably fucked me up?