I guess I should retract a bit, tell my story as it is now. I'm going to Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) again, which helped me immensely the first time around. Because for whatever reason I'm doing terribly now. No that’s not true, I've been doing terribly for a while now on and off, I just didn't realize it because I guess you could say I was in a bubble of my own delusions.
I've been struggling with emotional problems all my life. When I was a very young child it was anxiety and ADHD. When I was in high school it was depressing in addition to the anxiety. When i finally went into a hospital at the end of 12th grade they said BPD, and it all made sense. I do have all the other things I was diagnosed with but they were all intertwined. Why I had trouble with certain things and would grossly overreact. Why I would feel, think and say things that had no logical support. I began the DBT and I got much better.
I was dating Cloud for about 2 years until recently. I met him though a friend from the hospital, he went to the hospital also. It was amazing, we fit like puzzle pieces. I was doing great, his home life was fine and we were beyond happy. We fell madly in love, were each others first time and said we would get married and be high school sweethearts. We had our lives all planned out and ahead of us. Then things started to change. I stopped going to therapy because I finished the cycle and was supposed to be going away to school (I came home after 2 weeks) and just never went back. His home life started to become erratic and hostile. He managed ok, I however slowly started to crack under the stress of college(I had to be perfect) and money problems at home.
Cloud put up with my absurdities, outbursts and overreactions. He begged me to go to therapy and I agreed to go back seeing that I was doing badly (I wish I really saw just how bad I was as I do now). I began to improve (though not where needed most), and I can't say the same about Clouds home life. He had little money, his mother divorced his horrible step-dad who then took his little sister and made her hate him, he was kicked out of school because he was working so much and then he lost his job because of the economy. I was also still doing terrible, but of course I didn’t realize it and so wasn't really working on what I needed to in therapy.
Finally the worst happened. The step-dad accused Cloud of doing terrible and ludicrous things to his younger sister, and he was faced with an investigation of the worst kind. He needed me more than ever then to be the Violet he fell in love with and not stuck in a bubble of delusions. We fought often and were constantly breaking up. I thought it was all because of his stress. It wasn't though. He was stressed but it was me who really caused all the problems. I didn't see it even after he broke up with me and said he was done for good.
We talked a week later and in the conversation he said he felt emotionally abused by me because of my yelling and overreacting and he couldn’t do that right now, he couldn’t stick it out with me he had enough of it with everything else going on, and didn’t know if I would get better. I was shocked he would say such a thing.
We talked a bit for the next week but I kept insisting I didn’t change and it was him, I didn’t see it yet and so I guess he felt he had to move on. He blocked me from everything and started dating an old friend of his (he used to like her a little), who I had even become friendly with! I hate to give her a name, though I guess I can’t be mad at her for saying yes when he asked her out, so we'll call her... humm.. Alex. I felt that I had royally messed up and lost my love because of a damn mental illness I couldn’t control. I became extremely depressed after that for the next 3 days. I cried nonstop and couldn’t stop thinking about him to save my life! I thought, maybe he doesn’t love me or care anymore, maybe he hasn’t for a while, or maybe he's been talking to her for a while when we were still dating, or maybe she was just a rebound like everyone else insists.
It was on that 3rd day that what he said in that first conversation started to hit me. I did what he and my Nana said I should do; I really stopped and looked at all of it from his eyes. How I must have looked that morning freaking out when he finally left, and imagined all the things he’s already dealing with. And when I did I was horrified. I was completely irrational, overreacting and out of control. I was ashamed, even if I couldn’t help it. He has so much going on already and I freaked out over nothing and yelled at him for no reason.
After that I went to both my Psychiatrist and my Psychologist and talked to them about everything. I got a new medication, a mood stabilizer, in addition to my antidepressants. It made a world of difference. I also got tricks and tools to be able to handle things better in the mean time until I was better and myself again. I even got a great book, "Stop Walking on Eggshells." It's meant for someone who is dealing with someone who has BPD, so I really saw how it seems from others point of view and I really began to understand everything so much better.
I started to cry then. I saw just how bad I was and it gave me a real jolt that I needed. I realized I very likely did abuse Cloud a little emotionally. I started to think back. I looked in my journal at our old fights and realized I did start a lot of them. Or that if he did start them, I would overreact and make it much worse than it had to be. I realized that I had been so bad I worried he would cheat on me in the back room at his job, a boy who asked me to marry him at least 10 times! I couldn’t believe I didn’t see how irrational I had been for so long.
I've never felt a hurt like that before in my life. To suddenly realize how much you hurt someone you love, how foolish you'd been, and that it was very likely to late to get him back. He was already with someone else. Probably to help him move on, because he loves me (or at least used to 3 weeks ago) but he can't be with someone like me at this point in his life. This is according to everyone I talk to, I disagree and think he’s truly done with me like he says and really likes this new girl. Regardless I posted my status on facebook saying that ‘Violet’ realized she messed up really badly and there’s nothing she can do about it. It was about everything going on and I figured it didn’t matter if I said it. We weren’t facebook friends anymore, he wouldn’t see the post.
He texted me that night, asking how I was and what was with the status. Since we weren’t friends he must have looked me up to have seen my post. He called then and I told him I really understood this time. I had looked at it from his view and read a book and saw I really had been doing badly. That I realized how I looked and acted and been to him. I told him was right all along. That I was sorry that I hurt him and I never meant to. And that I did change and that I was better with the medication and the tricks and tools. He didn’t believe me. And why would he? He was right; he had heard it from me many times before only to see that I wasn't really better, despite what I thought.
I feel so horrible now. The irony of the situation is killing me! My overreactions and such are because I was so scared to lose him, and those things are exactly what sent him away into another girls arms. I wish I could show him that I understand and that while I’m not all better I’m me again, just struggling with my BPD. I’m not in a bubble anymore. I see everything for what it is.
I realize how bad I look now and how irrational I am. And it hurts because of course everyone gets fed up with it and walks away or leaves. My family, Cloud, anyone who’s around me when I lose control. And it’s not fair because I would have never picked to be this way. I hate it, much more than any of them ever will. They can leave or walk away from me when it’s too much. I’m stuck with it for the rest of my life, and I’ve come to hate myself for that and how its ruined so many things.
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