Long text convo with my boyfriend:

https://imgur.com/a/ofJIS7p

I'm sharing this for a few reasons. One, for some manifestations of BPD, some people don't have the skills that I do in limiting my tantrums to only people who have signed on to field them, and this is a demonstration of what it looks like to throw it all at one person who said "yes, I will take care of you." The only other person I texted while in crisis was my closest friend (the person in these texts is my boyfriend) but I said much less than I did here, and while she's used to it, she doesn't necessarily take a position where she "understands" my doing this kind of thing. Mostly I just told her "I'm going to fucking scream" over and over, and I sent the texts at 11:30am when I know she won't wake up til 5pm. I sent a couple of texts to the group chats of the people referred to in these screenshots, and while I stated that I was drawing a line, the texts were not that dramatic compared to these screenshots, and there were no threats, and there were no insults or anything meant in the moment to cause harm. Just messages stating that I was suffering and that the situation which allowed me to suffer was being terminated. Two, the recovery/repairs - for the type/manifestation of BPD that I have, it's crucial to be able to apologize in earnest. As you can see, the length of texts constituting the apology here is a fraction of what the freakout was, but he knows that it was genuine, and that's a BIG part of my being able to cope and survive this illness. Three, I refuse to be in the closet about what this is like. At work and for the most part at school, I don't let anyone know that I have crises like this, but among my close circle and online, I demand the space and energy to recognize what this really looks like. There are a lot of spaces on reddit where BPD is dismissed as someone being an asshole/unreasonable/tyrannical/a big baby. I am a big baby, but I will *always* speak on behalf of BPD behavior being a product not of being a shitty person, but a product of being a person living inside of a brain that wants you to die, that wants you to **suffer**, that wants you to give up. At our worst, we're making attempts at not being alone within this impossible existence. Not a reduction - these attempts are definitely harmful, shameful, and we absolutely need to try our hardest to avoid making them. But that's what it is: the world is falling apart underneath my feet and I desperately want to not be alone in the rubble, so I drag someone down with me. For every single person who has ever been harmed because of those attempts, I am deeply sorry and I wish and hope for you to make peace with the struggle and maybe even with the person. But for us, living inside these brains, I hope and wish for us to figure out what it takes to come out the other side of crises in a way that allows for repairs and which acknowledges the work that others have done for us.

Note, since a lot of people I know irl know my reddit username, and the people whose names are censored here may read this: I say stuff I don't mean. Please know that that's a fact.