Before now I only ever told a very small handful of people about my BPD, one was my former best friend (that's right, former) and my ex boyfriend who I was with for 4 years, and my mother. I never wanted anyone else to know. This year, in the spirit of being older and independent and trying to make mental illness more something we should be open about, I started being open with it to everyone- new boyfriends, new friends, old friends, family. It was all liberating- at first- but then I realised something. Just because I was OK with saying it, didn't mean that the people I told were OK with me telling them. While I thought I was being all open and connecting, people took it as something too intense and strange. Not everyone, but a lot, and I get it. Because it's a bit weird for a new friend to randomly say over lunch 'oh yeah, I did yoga, it helps me relax and I have a mental illness called BPD so I definitely need to find ways to help me relax'. Yeah. No. I liken it to openly telling people that I was on my period. Some took it well, some just took it, and some got uncomfortable. 
But, periods come and go and every girl has them, but BPD is not just casually something every girl deals with once a month and everyone learns about in school biology, BPD is something new and strange and confusing to many people who've never heard about it before. I guess, even though I was at pains to tell people how chill I was with, how OK I felt about it and how I was dealing with it well, people *did* start to see me differently. 
   I hated the way some people looked at me all bug eyed with pity and said something like 'oh wow, I'm sorry' as well as the people who just glossed over it with something like 'oh ok....what coffee are you getting?' Because BPD is just not going to be something that people are going to somehow instinctively understand and it felt like the more I tried to explain it, the more I'd feel they were getting more sympathetic towards me in that 'poor little thing' way or getting more uncomfortable. Being open with Bipolar I think would even be easier, because people know about it, as in- they understand the basis of it as something to do with moods that are out of people's control and they might have to take medication. No one seems to know about BPD, and if they already do, you can bet it's from either them already having a friend with it, or having a bad experience with someone with it or have just studied it in psychology classes. But no one really *knows* what it's like and don't know how to react when you tell them. 

  So I've stopped telling people now, because I've decided that people don't need to know about it unless they're a best friend or boyfriend, and even then, I'm going to wait a little while to tell them. I think I'd rather just be seen as a normal girl and allow people to see me like that and if I do have an outburst or anything, for them to just make up their own minds about still wanting to be friends with me and not just seeing me as a charity case or a bomb to be feared. I just feel that unfortunately, BPD is never going to be socially accepted enough to be discussed in a respectful and very understanding way over lunch with a new friend. It's not like a physical illness that you can talk about with that sort of emotional distance, it's something people are going to have the hardest time just understanding and then have a harder time knowing how to treat you after telling them. 