Beware: stream-of-consciousness word vomit below 😂

I’ve been thinking about my life and my childhood a lot lately. Trying to piece together my narrative, and analyze the relationships I’ve had up to this point. 

I always thought I was decently self-aware, but when I found out I had BPD, I realized that I was only skimming the surface of my own self. Since then, I’ve really been focusing on building my core identity, which I never really focused on before— my sense of identity was always fairly shallow, and I defined myself more by the things I did, rather than the person I am (like my job, my school, and a couple of main interests/hobbies that I have)

And a big part of identifying my true core personality was realizing how much of a people-person I am. I just want to be loved, and overall I really just love people; I love to analyze their behavior, learn about their passions, find out their main motivations/values/goals. I love to make others feel supported, and loved. 

I realize now, that I strive to give others what I’ve never had.

I didn’t recognize until recently, that most of my close interpersonal/familial/romantic relationships have either been emotionally abusive, or emotionally neglectful. I realized that I don’t even know how to recognize what abuse looks/looked like in my life. I feel at times like maybe I’m just crazy, maybe I’m too sensitive. Maybe all those negative things people have said about me over the years are right. But then I question it. Was I just conditioned to believe this? Is that what gaslighting is supposed to feel like? So I’m really trying to examine the two biggest influences in my childhood now, so that I can hopefully learn more about myself, and figure out how to identify the abusive behaviors that may or may not still exist in my life, and to what degree.

My mom has a lot of narcissistic tendencies; I don’t know if she’s undiagnosed BPD or what, but my relationship with her has been toxic for as long as I can remember (though I can’t remember a lot of my childhood; which makes so much sense to me now as a sign of childhood abuse). She has always been inconsistent, weaponizing love and constantly dangling validation in front of me like a carrot on a string. She devalued me often, criticizing me and asking why I couldn’t be more like my older sister, the de facto golden child. My achievements were minimized, and any desire to do what *I* wanted, rather than what she wanted, was labeled “defiance”.

My dad has the emotional intelligence of a rock. Though I’m not sure I would label him as downright abusive, he’s also quite critical, and cannot figure how to have an emotional conversation to save his life. Any time I’ve ever come to him needing comfort and validation, my feelings were always minimized, and he’d just say everything would be fine, brushing it off without truly acknowledging my feelings.

And using this as a guide to apply to the rest of my life.... I’m just really fucking sad. I have loved so many people, and they’ve treated me similarly, sometimes worse than my parents. I just want to meet people who will respect and love me, and I want to give all the emotional energy I can to them because they deserve it. I just want to belong with a small group of good human beings, where we can all just be nice to each other. I don’t understand why this seems so elusive? Why have I only been able to find one human on the whole planet who is always nice to me? And why have I almost allowed myself to completely fuck that up, by treating her the way I’ve been treated so many times?