Also TW: Self harm, substance abuse, sexual content

I've only just been discharged from an 8 day hospital stay with.all but the first two days spent in the psych ward. I still feel like the ground has been pulled out from underneath me.

I have a history of diagnosed Depression, Anxiety, as well as a year or extreme agoraphobia. The first two have been noticeably affecting me for around the last 5 years now. Even those things started having a noticeable impact I knew there was something else wrong with me.

For as long as I can remember ever since I was a little kid I've known there was something wrong with my head. I couldn't figure out what it was but as soon as I had internet access around age 10 I became abnormally interested in mental illnesses and personality disorders. It took me awhile but eventually I found something that stuck with me. Bipolar Disorder. 

I was about 12 at that point, I was completely convinced. It made sense to me and would've brought me a great deal of relief back then if I'd had a name to how I felt. When I approached my mother about it I knew I would be shot down but it was so important to me that I was willing to try anyway. Of course she just laughed at me and brushed it off, she claims now that she heavily investigated it but I think that's a false memory she fabricated.

For the next 8 years up until now I became more and more adept at hiding my emotional state and my mental struggles. No one even knew how bad I was because I was so used to hiding it, why would I let anyone see when they would only pretend to care and never help or listen. I'd been told by my mother my whole life that other people had it worse than me, something she repeated when she dropped by to visit me in the psych ward. 

I don't know when it happened but eventually I was so good at convincing other people I wasn't doing that badly that I started fooling myself too. My state of normal was repressing almost everything then only showing a small amount of what I could even remember. Everyone around me was convinced I was the strong and stable one and I didn't need any help because of course I could handle myself.

I've been in a constant state of increased stress since September last year because of major housing instability. I think this accelerated the severity of my symptoms over time but I still had to keep myself together or I'd end up in a worse situation. 

I started seeing a psychologist at the end of last year and seeing my psychiatrist about my options for treatment resistant depression around the same time. I was absolutely desperate to do something that would work after having already gone through 6 different antidepressants. I would've even tried ECT if he'd given me the option but he said I wasn't psychotic or depressed enough for that. 

I told him I was closer than ever to committing fully to my suicide plan despite me outwardly looking better than I'm doing. He told me I was doing better than I thought I was and that my life situation is only improving over time, that I'm getting better. I felt betrayed then and even more so now given the events that followed.

He told me to look into MAOIs, by the next session I was taking the recommended 45mg of Phenelzine a day. I could only stand it for 3 weeks before I couldn't bear it anymore and stopped. The first two weeks were great but after that the side effects took their toll on me and probably had a large effect on unhinging me. When my reactions started getting bad I also started engaging in more risk taking behaviors as well as hooking up with people more often than usual. 

My breaking point was moving house about two weeks ago. The one before they caused 50 hours of insomnia packing followed by a psychotic break, hearing a dozen voices, passing out on the floor, and developing a permanent second voice in my head. 

This move however I ended up sleeping briefly before finding someone to hook up with PNP. Then overdosing on a combination of Phenelzine, GHL, and Meth. I did so knowing that at very least there was an easily fatal interaction between MAOIs and Meth if not also between everything else I mixed. I was completely apathetic to the 50/50 of death or a more intense high at the time, in my mind it was a passive suicide attempt with no downsides.

It turns out I probably came pretty close to death, likely by heart attack or outright heart failure. It was the meth that pushed it all over the edge. It was 30 minutes of the most pain I've ever felt in my life followed by the most intense high I've ever felt. In the morning when I left I was still feeling it and ended up finding someone else that was up for PNP. They only had Meth or MDMA and I wasn't stupid enough to give myself Seretonin Syndrome as well as a near miss by heart damage so of course I ended up smoking crack for most of The next 24 hours to try and chase the high of last night. 

I didn't tell anyone about my overdose until a few days later. I ended up asking about my concoction in the r/drugs discord and got a bit of a wakeup there. I'd never thought of myself as reckless or impulsive but when given a normal perspective I realised that I always had been. If I kept spiralling out of control and using Isabella recreation as a coping mechanism I was more likely to kill myself my accident that intentionally. 

I talked to my closest friend and then my psychologist who both told me I should try to be admitted to a ward to keep me safe and find the underlying cause. I once again convinced myself I must be Bipolar as that would explain what felt like days of mania preceeding and following my overdose. My mood had also been fluctuating with increasing intensity over the last month. 

I ended up in the psych ward after waiting in emergency for two days. I was admitted on Friday and had to wait until Monday for the consulting  team to see me. I stabilised while in there and managed to tell the consulting Psychiatrist everything that had happened by talking at 2-3x speed. I'd never been so open send honest with my story. He was the first of many people I talked to that seemed to take my hunch of Bipolar seriously.

Tuesday I was given a questionnaire called BPQ, I'd never felt such a mix of emotions so quickly. Relief that I was finally sure what was wrong that quickly turned to dejection and a feeling of dread. I had a sneaking suspicion that it was actually for BPD. 

It turned out BPQ stood for Borderline Personality Questionnaire. I could barely speak when I was told about my diagnosis because I was in such shock. I asked how sure they were.
'Well from the notes taken from the staff you talked to, your nurses, psychiatrist, psychologist, and your close friend as well as this questionnaire I would say that I'm very certain.'
I've been directly referred to DBT now but will be waiting 6-12 months because I'm going through the public system.

I do accept now that it was the correct diagnosis but I'm still struggling to figure out my feelings about it. If I'd been more self aware it would've been obvious. I've always had difficulty with all kinds of relationships and have very few friends I've known for more than even a year. 

Everything feels like it breaks as soon as I touch it and I used to warn people I would hurt them before I'd date them. They would never believe me but I would always hurt them no matter how hard I tried not to. My most successful relationship so far was my last one, I managed to be supportive, loving, considerate, and for once not leap into things. I don't think we're together anymore because they're also BPD and they painted me black because of things that happened after my overdose. 

I know they want an apology for the things I've done but I can't manage to feel sincere about it right now and so can't/won't do it. They hurt me too at the same time and I'm struggling with too much else to think rationally or explain.

BPD has had an unbelievable impact on my life that I'm still unravelling and coming to grips with. I hope this is the slow start of a successful recovery and a happy life.