When I was very young, I can remember crying to my mom about some emotional turmoil I was going through during one of our fights. She kept trying to get me to spill the beans, to explain to her why her 7 year old kid was so difficult and moody and angry. In the heat of the moment, I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head: "because I don't have a personality!" I didn't know why I said that. I immediately felt stupid the moment it came out of my mouth.

For years, I had thought that my concern wasn't real. Everyone has a personality, right? And they're all different. I was probably just disappointed about mine. (Or just too young to know what my personality was). But that's completely normal. Everyone has something they don't like about themselves. It's a non-avoidable part of life, trying to be something that you're OK with. Trying to discover what you like, that sort of thing.

Ok, fast forward to my current no-longer-getting-carded-every-time, slightly wrinkled state in life. And now I'm realizing, "hmm, maybe that incident when I was 7 was a BPD thing." I don't currently acutely feel like I don't have a personality. In fact, I feel pretty self-aware. But it's occurring to me that that may be an illusion.

I think my lack of personality manifests itself in a lot of ways. I do feel like I copy people's mannerisms if I'm not super careful about it. The urge doesn't go away inconveniently enough, I just have to keep fighting it and monitoring that I don't succumb to it. Also, I look back in my life and can finally relate to all those things kids used to do as teenagers. Wanting to commit to certain identities. To say "I'm a goth" or "a gym rat" or an "omnivore." It's not that I need to define and pin down myself...it's just like, take for example, not knowing, am I a masochist at heart, or do I like comfort? Am I shy, or am I an attention-seeker? Do I love people (perhaps too much), or am I a misanthrope? Am I super religious/spiritual? Or agnostic or atheist? Stuff that is  *really* hard to be both at the same time (like a paradox), although yes everyone is complex and has multiple sides to them. 

But yeah, when I was younger, I never really felt right saying much about myself. If I asked myself what I was in high school, I would have just said I was a sad moody girl who wishes she looked different, so why bother trying to wear something I like? Or bother picking out something to post on my wall? Or why bother really pursuing interests and hobbies? Everyone else seems compelled to. Meanwhile, all I seemed compelled to do most of all was navel gaze. And for all that navel gazing, I still feel like I'm exceptionally self aware, and like I'm extremely not-self-aware at the same time.

So, that's my own experience with my personality. It makes me wonder, for BPD and all of its diverse symptoms, why is lack of personality one of them? And how does it fit in? Does it cause other BPD problems? Or is it a result of the other problems?