My Relationships With Everyone

So I printed out the symptoms of BPD from the Mayoclinic website. I’m going to go through each one and how it’s affected not only my romantic relationships but also my relationships with family, friends, and even myself. I will be using names of the three relationships I spoke about yesterday but I’m changing one of their name. My healthiest relationship guy I’m going to call Jake, the other two I’m using their real first names because I don’t owe them shit. But I don’t know how Jake would feel if I used his real name, so to be on the safe side I’m going to call him Jake.

Since I wrote about him yesterday I have been missing him so much. I want another chance! LOL. I can do long distance for a while. LOL wishful thinking I know.

Okay, I’m going to get started with the BPD symptoms and how they’ve affected my relationships.

• An intense fear of abandonment, even going to extreme measures to avoid real or imagined separation or rejection: For this one I think I’m going to go to Will (the last one I mentioned, the toxic BDSM guy). I was so scared he was going to drop me I really went to extremes, I bought him stuff all the time, I let him go way too far because I was convinced that if I couldn’t keep him happy he would drop me like a bad habit. I wanted so badly for him to like, love, and respect me, and I was so scared he was going to leave, I went to extremes to try to keep him happy. Although I don’t think he appreciated anything, and since he was fucking anything with legs he certainly didn’t care or respect me, despite what he said. He basically rejected me anyway.
• A pattern of unstable intense relationships, such as idealizing someone one moment and then suddenly believing the person doesn’t care enough: well this one goes to Bobby the ghoster as well as Will. With both of them, one minute I was idealizing them and spending all my time trying to make them happy, and the next I absolutely hated them. And it was an unstoppable cycle. With Jake, I never really went through that. He treated me really well, and for some reason I trusted him, and didn’t have that fear. I knew how he felt about me, I never doubted him for a second when we were together. But after he had enough and wouldn’t take me back (I really can’t blame him for that though.) I was mad, and I remember trying to get him back by sending him song lyrics and writing how sorry I was and how much I loved him. For a little while after it ended I felt he was being unfair and kind of a little cruel. But I now realize that I wasn’t being fair to him and he did what he had to do for himself. The Weeknd has a song on his latest album called “Hardest To Love”, and I feel like that song really describes me back then and sometimes even now. There’s also a song by Mariah Carey and Ne-yo “Angel’s Cry remix” I feel like the Neyo verse describes Jake and I, at least how I felt.
• Rapid changes in self-identity and self-image that include shifting goals and values, and seeing yourself as bad or as if you don’t exist at all: This is really about my relationship with myself, although it has affected my relationships as well. I have a very distorted self image. My self-esteem isn’t great in some areas. Although it’s wonderful in others, but as far as my looks go I’m really not confident at all. In fact there are some days where I feel fat, ugly, and worthless. In fact pretty much the entire quarantine I haven’t even put on makeup or care how I dressed or anything. It’s hard sometimes. My entire life I’ve suffered with my self-identity, I couldn’t figure out who I was or what I wanted in life. My goals and values would change whenever I was with a different guy. I didn’t know who I was so I would shift what my values and goals were to whatever I thought the guy would want. Although now, I’m doing pretty well in that area, I know my values and I know what I think is the right thing and I’m unapologetic when it comes to my beliefs. I hope if I get into a relationship that doesn’t change. And my goal of being an author stems back to when I was a child, I was constantly reading, and I used to write short stories. I really think this would be the best profession for me, and I love it.
• Periods of stress-related paranoia and loss of contact with reality, lasting from a few minutes to a few hours: well I would definitely get paranoid that whomever I was dating would just leave me, especially when I was under stress, but the other parts don’t really apply.
• Impulsive and risky behavior such as gambling, reckless driving, unsafe sex, spending sprees, binge eating or drug abuse, or sabotaging success by suddenly quitting a good job or ending a positive relationship: Oh wow, this will be a long one. Well, I never been a gambler, reckless driving- a few times especially with Will, he’d call late at night and I would have a sleeping pill in my system and I’d drove the 40 minutes to his house and didn’t bother with red lights. Or stop signs. Unsafe sex, wow. Ironically I got less promiscuous after my car wreck. But in High School, I can’t even put a number on it. I cheated on my boyfriend with his best friend at a house party that he was at as well. We might have gotten away with it, or at least been able to finish, but we were drunk and forgot to lock the door. All of a sudden my boyfriend stormed in and his friend bolted. Before you judge, my boyfriend was an abusive dickhead and the only time he would stop abusing me for a little while anyway is when I cheated on him and made sure he found out about it. It was like whenever I cheated he realized, “oh shit, I might lose her, I should probably stop hitting her”. As for the promniscuity and not knowing a number, well I was molested as an infant, I had bipolar, BPD and a mother that kept trying to get me help. Don’t Judge. I appreciate all she did now that I got help and am an adult, but as a teenager it was super stressful and very inconvenient. I honestly don’t remember if I ever used protection, probably not, but I started getting tested as soon as I went on birth control at like 13. I give my mom major props for that, because I’d be a parent of like 20 kids. Anyway, moving on next up is spending sprees, let’s just say yes, and maybe I’ll go into more detail in another post, or when my little situation is taken care of. I will say I spent a LOT of money in relationships thinking if I bought stuff for them then they wouldn’t leave me or get tired of me and they would like me more or I also had this delusion at times that they’d realize I was perfect for them after I got them stuff or something. I also spent a lot of money on lingerie, sex toys, etc. To make them happy. Binge eating or drug abuse: well yeah, but again that had more to do with my relationship with myself. I would binge, throw up, repeat. At 19 I just stopped eating and went from bulimia to anorexia. As for drug abuse, big yeah, and not just alcohol and weed. Throw in some coke, special k, angel dust, ecstasy, blah blah blah. The funny thing is that I didn’t really like them. I don’t like feeling stupid and like I can’t think, or control my thoughts. But I kept doing them hoping for a different result (Isn’t that like the definition of insanity or something?). And finally, we have sabotaging success by suddenly quitting a good job or ending a positive relationship: yep on both counts. My very first job was in retail and yeah I had to quit because I was moving back to New York, but I totally got sent home the last day. I cursed them all out, I couldn’t handle the thought of never seeing them again and I went into self-sabotage mode. As for ending a positive relationship, Jake.
• Suicidal threats or behavior or self-injury, often in response to fear of separation or rejection: Spoiler alert, suicidal threats/behavior don’t work, especially if the idiot doesn’t care about you. As for self-harm that was all my relationship with myself. I hated myself for a LONG time. Most of my life actually, I’m still learning how to love myself. Of course I did stop mutilating a long time ago. As my uncle likes to point out: As a teen it was drugs/alcohol, in your 20’s it was cutting, and now in my 30’s it’s shopping.
• Wide mood swings lasting from a few hours to a few days, which can include intense happiness, irritability, shame or anxiety: My mood swings can be unbearable for my family, guys I’m with, myself. I struggle with this one, although I am on a mood stabilizer combination that is seeming to work. So it hasn’t been as bad for a long time. But it still pops up. Medication helps, it’s not a cure-all.
• Ongoing feelings of emptiness: Not gonna lie, that’s one I’m still struggling with. Most days it’s better, I have my grandfather to take care of, I have this blog, I also have a big ass diamond painting I’m doing, I’m reading again. But I’m still struggling sometimes.
• Inappropriate, intense anger, such as frequently losing your temper, being sarcastic or bitter, or having physical fights: Yeah definitely, although I haven’t been as bad of late. And I haven’t been in a physical fight since I was like 16. And I’m still sarcastic at times but that’s just me. But whenever I dealt with Bobby or Will I got intensely angry on multiple occasions. I don’t think it was ‘inappropriate’ however.

So while I’m doing a lot better than in the past, a lot of these issues do persist, but to a lesser extent. I’m in a good space now, but it took a lot of work to get here, and I still have work to do. Although I kind of feel like that’s everyone. Everyone has their own issues that they need to work on, and that working on someone’s self is an everyday thing.