I’m turning 22 this year and lots of my friends have been talking about where they see themselves in 5 years and it’s a hard conversation for me to navigate. Sometimes I think i’m not going to reach 27, sometimes I think I’ll have no friends and spend birthdays alone, sometimes I think I’ll be everything I always hoped I wouldn’t be. I was diagnosed with BPD in August last year and I still haven’t been able to start treatment because I’ve been passed around mental health teams for what seems like ages. One thing I find difficult to talk about when the ‘5 year’ conversation comes up is the fact that I don’t want kids. I don’t think I could cope with the emotional stress of it, and I don’t think I’m emotionally stable enough to raise a child to the standard of which I would want to. The worst part about this is that I have baby names in my notes, that I collect just in case one day I get better, but I know the chances of that are incredibly low.  A lot of my friends always say ‘well maybe you’ll change your mind’ or something similar but it makes me feel like they either don’t understand my reasoning or they feel like its ok to raise a child without being able to fulfill their emotional needs. I also feel as if I’m stuck reliving bad behaviour I exhibited to people in my life from my teenage years, while I have made the effort of changing my ways and apologising to those who are willing to hear me out, sometimes I fear going to visit my parents in my home town because I don’t know what I would do if I saw some people from that period of my life because I am so embarrassed.
 I think this is a bit of a rant post but I would find it really comforting to hear of anyone who also experiences feelings like this, and how you’ve coped