I’m 19F and recently found out I’m borderline I have not sought out help although I am heavily considering behavioural therapy… I’m sorry this is an essay but I’ve tried to give you a perspective of my life and my behaviour but also the reason behind it. I’m looking for support, and coping strategies perhaps your perspective. Feel free to ask questions I may or may not answer… I’ll be honest I’ll avoid reading any responses but I want to start dealing with my problems. So here’s a start.  

Throughout my life my parents, specifically my mother has always been abusive. Although her abuse is no longer physical purely due to the fact I’m not a defenseless little child anymore, it is still very much consistent in the form of verbal abuse. For some reason no matter what she says to me i will always beg for her acknowledgement ... but even then she can't even. I have considered moving out... even running away... but at the end of the day i have to put my feelings aside and focus on my future. So i have merely become a squatter in my own home ... i know how this sounds the typical borderline playing the victim i get it i have spent months lurking on this page trying to make sense of my behaviour as i see common traits in others... i have an unhealthy obsession with the diagnosis manual and I read it on a weekly basis so i have a good understanding of myself and i try so hard to work through this all. But every time i start to make progress, start to find meaning in life or start to set goals my mother just brings me right down and i start to split. Which is a huge problem in my everyday functioning. 

To give you picture of my life my mother is an old fashioned Asian woman, when I say old fashioned I mean she once said to me ‘my dream for you in life is that one day you will become a good housewife’ and when I got into university she told me I was wasting my time and I was never smart enough to get a degree… I like to think that in this aspect of my life I have made it into a positive to use her to fuel my motivation to success. But as always she ridicules me… I could be crying my eyes out in my room for failing an assignment and she’ll spit it in my face and tell me I’m not good enough and I’m stupid for wasting my time. I’m not going to act like I’m the perfect little sunflower of a child… I speak back to her, I swear, I yell, I slam doors we fight endlessly through text messages because I learnt that this way I could express myself and not get beaten up. I guess you can say I act out a lot… 

My mother tells me in her messages I’m abusive and I should be ashamed of myself… maybe I should… but let me give you this picture of who she is… once when I was 12 years old she threw me up against the wall and strangled me… I felt my body giving up as I lost the energy to pull away so I grabbed a glass of soda and threw It in her face… I started to catch my breath but she went for it again… only this time I somehow managed to kick her arm off me … leaving a big bruise behind the next day. She took a photo of the bruise… threatened to show the police and send me away… I was terrified and ashamed of what I had done… but as I looked back at my past I realized… this is the classic ‘blame the victim’. I still to this day have never told anyone this story because I was so ashamed of myself for hurting my own mother. I guess you can say I blame a lot of my problems on my abusive upbringing and I’m very resentful… I feel neglected quite a lot… which makes things harder for me because I’m basically still living in the house that manifested all my symptoms. 

Recently she went on holiday, didn’t speak to me for 2 weeks straight. I’m not going to lie I felt happy during this time. But ever since she’s gotten back I have been splitting… I mean can you blame me? She told me she didn’t miss me or love me… because I don’t do work around the house…because I’m always answering her back (yes I do swear at her, but I try to control myself and not escalate the situation I usually only swear back when I feel threatened) she told me I’m abusive and I should be ashamed of myself. 

I accepted the fact many years ago there is nothing i can do about the abuse, sometimes you just have to accept your circumstances as they are. But you see, when i'm triggered by my mother i detach myself from every other part of my life. I stop caring about eating, friends, going out, assignments etc basically i sit back and watch my whole life fall apart without a care in the world because i just start to feel nothing but emptiness and everything i ever cared about becomes nothing. This is when I start to split and I struggle to cope ...

This is always something that has found it's way of getting to me but 2 years ago i was still in high school, so i found that school really helped me stay grounded because i could literally escape my problems and focus on learning, it made me feel good to be in a community and to not think about my 'situation'. I remember i use to come home at 8pm just to avoid my parents on school nights and of course they didn't care ... but now i can't escape them. 

I guess it's pretty obvious I have poor coping methods and shitty situation… but I guess what I’m asking for is support… and coping methods. I have turned to things such as Buddhism but it’s hard when your splitting …


