I don't even want to kill myself I feel like I need to

[efffervescence]

I have BPD and I just don't fucking like life. I am just constantly waiting for the next bad day to ruin my life. Things that ruin my life and set me back 6 months that completely fucking traumatize me would literally be a footnote for other people. I am also a victim of my own shit. I feel like if someone else doesn't fuck me up, I will just fuck things up for myself. I'm stuck in a cycle where I'm happy for a few months, something crazy happens, I have no grey area with my emotions so I spend the next however many months feeling like the sole survivor of a 15th century village that just got raped and pillaged and then another undefined length of time rebuilding my life because I did nothing but regress and let all of my responsibilities go to shit during the 6 months of misery. I have a bunch of cheating related trauma that involved a holiday if you check my profile you can see that's why I nearly died last time I tried to ctb.

In the last year and a bit I've experienced this cycle twice. Made friends, made a best friend, was so so happy that I was genuinely googling what mania felt like because I couldn't believe I could feel the way I was and it not be a symptom, and then we go on holiday (same fucking trip as the last cycle) and it was a total fucking disaster, caused by her, that ended in me having a complete fucking mental breakdown that fucked up my life. Spent some time miserable, contemplating suicide. Then meet a new guy who becomes the second boyfriend I've had since the last one who cheated on me, trust him 100%, am completely head over heals with him even after 8 months together, he ticks every box and I'm convinced I'm going to marry him. He goes away for 7 days, on the last day comes to me looking for sympathy because his ex had messaged him "yesterday" which had led to him cheating on him, I ask him a few questions and guess fucking what? He'd spent the last 6 days deeping it with her, after I told him to block her several times in Decemberish time as she clearly wanted him back, promised me he'd never talk to her again, HE had been the one to message HER first, he didn't even fucking mention me until SHE did 5 days in thinking we had broken up because even she knew him talking to her was a boundary for me, and he responded to it fucking bitching about me, telling her I make his mental health worse and that he can't talk to me even though I'm spending hours every day talking him through his mental health because it's in pieces while he's away. So while I'm comforting him about the things he's telling me for hours while I should be studying for exams, that he doesn't feel like his own person and his morals bend depending on who he's with and that he hates himself, he's literally manipulating me into supporting him through betraying me and the reason his mental health has actually went to shit is because he's doing all this. He was even asking ME if there was someone else? And then I find out by ACCIDENT. He deletes the conversation not realising he can recover it (same as my last cheating ex did, after promising me the messages hadn't been like that before he knew about recovering), and calls her after I find out because he's freaking out thinking I'll think he's cheating on me?? Then when he came back, tried to leave 5 minutes after he got here because I realised from the timestamps he'd been texting her while on the phone to me, then again the next night when I shout at him for maximum 4 sentences because he did this shit 3 DAYS before one of four exams I'm sitting and the hurt had left me with ONE day to study? While I'm begging him not to leave me like that because I'm having a fucking BPD meltdown and I'm scared for my life?? Obviously this is fucking traumatising, it feels like cheating because it fucking looks like it, which he admitted himself which is the reason he called her after I found out???? And they do this shit RIGHT before I sit 4 of the most important exams of my life and the hardest one is tomorrow and I haven't studied, eaten, barely slept in the 6 days since I found out.

And now what? I'm back to fucking counting the same drug I killed myself with last time, making the same plans I did last time, literally a fucking cycle. I was going to try lamotrigine but the wait time for a psychiatrist is four months minimum and I am already a patient there? What the fuck? I called private healthcare and none will take me because I'm borderline. This diagnosis is an actual death sentence. Funny thing is, I've been told that I seem more positive lately. Yeah, because I've found my pill stash and I'm planning to ctb? It's relief, not happiness

I don't even want to die. I actually do just want to be happy. I want to have a healthy relationship, a nice place to live, a good degree, a job I can hold down, some pets and see my friends and family. That's IT. I don't even want that much from life. But this fucking disorder makes that impossible and I seriously feel like I need to kill myself now because I actually cannot take another fucking DAY. I'd love to say after I fail these exams I'll ctb, but realistically I won't because of how fucking traumatic waking up in ICU seeing the pure trauma I'd inflicted on my family means I'll probably never be able to convince myself to do it again.

 

[hot]

I wish you only the best.

 

[efffervescence]

I wish you only the best.

Thank you for replying, I really appreciate it. I'm honestly just fed up with everything. Wishing you the best too

 

[hot]

Wishing you the best too

Thank you homie we all gonna make it, have a nice day.

I'm honestly just fed up with everything.

Me too, iam so fucking tired of everything. I have borderline depression ocd and anxiety disorder. I hate life too. Iam so fucking tired. Im just hoping for better days.

 

[Ash’Girl]

Nothing I can say will help you feel better now. I know the spin cycle highs and lows of BPD and you just described so many similar things I went through with repeated patterns up to my mid to late 20s.

And things that seem so trivial to masses are absolutely soul crushing to us.

How did I break the cycle? Faced my fears and spent a few years learning how to find some semblance of stability single. To be fair, I less broke the cycle than just got really, incredibly guarded about who I let get close to me. It is so fucking easy to regress into BPD meltdown land when I let the wrong people - chiefly assholes - close. It's like they sniff out that were like a human emotional punch bag who will keep coming back for more. Unfortunately oftimes the nice guys don't give us the euphoric highs we like so much but I learned to appreciate calm waters over epic highs and the deepest depths of hell.

Being selective about who I let close meant I could better regulate my emotions. Tried learning my own specific triggers, and figure out what I needed to do for avoiding being triggered. People will tell you that that's not healing, because you can't control everything through avoidance, and you should learn how to not react to those triggers. Me - my BPD does not allow for that. Everyone's different. I think I learned avoidance as a survival mechanism.

There are rare gems of humans out there who we can have healthy relationships with. I've done it. But before it happened, I had to spend a lot of time figuring out ME. Then, be very selective in choosing others.

To be honest I still am easily triggered and emotionally reactive but over the years my asshole radar got better, my tolerance for bullshit decreased, and I tried to work through my own codependency issues: with some success though I'll never be a "normie".

Just meant more periods of calm, less frequent epic highs and lows. I cobbled together something of a life. I've even felt happy. I'm only here because the final blow was… that magic unicorn guy, the healthy relationship - he died.

All past BPD lows combined are nowhere near the level of meltdown that caused me and I've not been able to pull myself up this time.

Anyway, that's just footnotes of my life with BPD. I know how hard it is to try to find a way to live with and I know the intensity of emotions that feel like third degree burns.

I can tell you, the assholes that really did fuck me up in my teens and early twenties, I rarely think about now. But when you are right in the thick of it, you do want to die, because the intensity of pain, betrayal and complete lack of stability for me used to feel like a million insects crawling under my skin and I just wanted to MAKE IT STOP. And it was a daily/weekly/monthly cycle for me back then. Piling on trauma after trauma and not being able to separate them. The alone time helped me reset and gave my overloaded system a much needed break (no more massive dopamine spikes with the euphoria, your brain chemistry changes when you're up and down more than a Richter scale reading).

Feel free to tell me to fuck off if you didn't want any advice, I'm in a wordy mood tonight and I ramble on like war and peace.

I should really have just said "I get it and I'm sorry you're going through all this shit", but sometimes I feel more seen/heard/understood when I read other peoples stories.

Sending you big love. I hope things get better, or at least more bearable. X

 

[efffervescence]

Nothing I can say will help you feel better now. I know the spin cycle highs and lows of BPD and you just described so many similar things I went through with repeated patterns up to my mid to late 20s.

And things that seem so trivial to masses are absolutely soul crushing to us.

How did I break the cycle? Faced my fears and spent a few years learning how to find some semblance of stability single. To be fair, I less broke the cycle than just got really, incredibly guarded about who I let get close to me. It is so fucking easy to regress into BPD meltdown land when I let the wrong people - chiefly assholes - close. It's like they sniff out that were like a human emotional punch bag who will keep coming back for more. Unfortunately oftimes the nice guys don't give us the euphoric highs we like so much but I learned to appreciate calm waters over epic highs and the deepest depths of hell.

Being selective about who I let close meant I could better regulate my emotions. Tried learning my own specific triggers, and figure out what I needed to do for avoiding being triggered. People will tell you that that's not healing, because you can't control everything through avoidance, and you should learn how to not react to those triggers. Me - my BPD does not allow for that. Everyone's different. I think I learned avoidance as a survival mechanism.

There are rare gems of humans out there who we can have healthy relationships with. I've done it. But before it happened, I had to spend a lot of time figuring out ME. Then, be very selective in choosing others.

To be honest I still am easily triggered and emotionally reactive but over the years my asshole radar got better, my tolerance for bullshit decreased, and I tried to work through my own codependency issues: with some success though I'll never be a "normie".

Just meant more periods of calm, less frequent epic highs and lows. I cobbled together something of a life. I've even felt happy. I'm only here because the final blow was… that magic unicorn guy, the healthy relationship - he died.

All past BPD lows combined are nowhere near the level of meltdown that caused me and I've not been able to pull myself up this time.

Anyway, that's just footnotes of my life with BPD. I know how hard it is to try to find a way to live with and I know the intensity of emotions that feel like third degree burns.

I can tell you, the assholes that really did fuck me up in my teens and early twenties, I rarely think about now. But when you are right in the thick of it, you do want to die, because the intensity of pain, betrayal and complete lack of stability for me used to feel like a million insects crawling under my skin and I just wanted to MAKE IT STOP. And it was a daily/weekly/monthly cycle for me back then. Piling on trauma after trauma and not being able to separate them. The alone time helped me reset and gave my overloaded system a much needed break (no more massive dopamine spikes with the euphoria, your brain chemistry changes when you're up and down more than a Richter scale reading).

Feel free to tell me to fuck off if you didn't want any advice, I'm in a wordy mood tonight and I ramble on like war and peace.

I should really have just said "I get it and I'm sorry you're going through all this shit", but sometimes I feel more seen/heard/understood when I read other peoples stories.

Sending you big love. I hope things get better, or at least more bearable. X

Hi, first of all I really really appreciate this reply. I wasn't really sure what I was looking for when I made this post but this is exactly what I needed to hear xx

I am in my mid-twenties now. I have seen huge improvements from my teenage years, I think I had quite a severe case of BPD as I was diagnosed before 18 and it was either in notes from when I was younger or my mum was told by a family therapist, not sure which one as I can't remember but I do know it has gotten better. I have heard it does from mid-late twenties, but because I have periods where I am so much better I genuinely thought that had already happened to me and am a bit worried that this is the best I'll get. It's funny, because before the friend/holiday event I was sure I didn't have it anymore, and then after that, when my relationship was still "pure", I was saying if I was given the choice I would've given up ADHD instead of BPD if I was given the choice. I guess that is just due to the highs and lows of the disorder but it never stops being a tough pill to swallow. It feels like when I'm in my happy phases, I don't even have it, and I forget how bad it is which I'm guessing is due to lack of emotional permanence from BPD or just my horrible memory from ADHD, me blocking out every traumatic phase due to cPTSD, or a combination of them all.

I have done what you suggested about breaking the cycle. I spent a long time single, I did date a few times but never seriously and never long term, just what normal people do lol. When I had that best friend and the group that came with her, I was genuinely really happy. I too, was very guarded and careful with who I chose as friends. She turned out to be a narcissist, which I know is overused but I will genuinely never call another person a narcissist again after seeing this, and I'm far from the only person who believes this. Total textbook. She had me fooled as she mirrored me, everything I had been through she had too, everything I felt she had felt that way too. She copied my symptoms, paid for a BPD diagnosis to get back into university, and then used it against me. She started to get nasty towards me when she had me locked in, after I had booked holidays with her. She used it to trigger me because now she could say that she was BPD too. I definitely feel the same as you, people like that seem to sniff people like us out like dogs. I am like a magnet for bad people.

I do know some of my triggers, the most easily avoidable and obvious one for me is alcohol. That day is one of the only days I've drank heavily in memory and I only did it because I was under so much pressure for him to have a good time as I brought him and he loves to drink and had been begging me the whole time. I only bought 3 drinks that day, I blacked out after he bought a bottle of wine and my last memory is him buying me another drink while I asked him not to after I dropped the last one he bought me because I was so drunk.

Another big one is cheating, which seems to extend to relationships in general as this seems to happen every time. I have been compiling a word document since this incident of all of them to try to learn them, but there are so many and most of them are in other people's hands so I just don't know how to work around them without isolating myself, so I completely get you with the prevention rather than reaction focussed mindset.

I am so so sorry that that happened to you, I seriously cannot even imagine the trauma. If relationship traumas like this can make me feel as low as this, I honestly can't even find the words to articulate how awful I feel for you thinking of how you must be feeling right now. If you ever want to talk to anyone, know that I am here.

Please don't fuck off, I am also feeling very wordy tonight, and this is some of the best advice I've ever received. I absolutely wish you the best. I honestly was replying to your message paragraph by paragraph because of the way my brain works but now I've read your story it all feels so silly. I hope it doesn't come across as insensitive, I'm just keeping it in as a reply as you spent the time to write such a detailed reply to me. I do have a rare gem of a human as a best friend, I really hope you have someone like that too. I am also a rambler, so please reach out if you want to ramble.

Sending you love also, I truly hope things get better for you

 

[Ash’Girl]

I'm really glad you got something from my ramble… and if you've come on leaps and bounds since your teens, another few years you WILL have made more progress. The key is identifying the things we have the power to change/control/expose ourselves too and sounds like you've done a lot of work.

I'm in my 40s, I have no clue how I got here but somehow I did. And… things got more manageable for more extended periods. I'm like you though, that when something does hit me, it hits hard. I have a tendency to beat myself up then for slipping back "see, you've not made any progress, you're still the same stupid fucked up 15 year old, still making stupid choices, still crazy, still useless, still…" well, whatever my brain wants to batter me about.

It's not true. Progress is there but you only see it when you can breathe again, evaluate and take yourself out of the emotional intensity. It's just a bit like an addict falling off the wagon - we think all is lost because of one fallback, but it's not unexpected when BPD makes us so hyper reactive and the emotions so overwhelming.

Never apologise or minimise what you're feeling though. None of what you've written is silly, what you're feeling is absolutely valid and I know - it hurts. End of world hurt. And I've been there, the only shift in my perspective is finding a… for me… deeper level of hell I guess. But that doesn't take away from anything you're feeling or going through.

And it's hard, because absolutely I do believe it's possible for us BPD folk to achieve some semblance of happiness and in an alternate universe I'd be the poster girl for the possibilities.

I can tell you, though: he gave me safety, stability, love, understanding, and always… always a soft space to land, whether I was up or down. And even though his death made me abandon all hope for the future I wanted, as he was really it for me, I am still glad I survived my crazy life long enough to meet him and feel that. Something real. I had similar hopes and dreams as you, fairly simple, but I think most of us just want to feel safe, secure, happy, loved, understood. And I had it, which means… you could too.

It's a gamble as is everything. Cheating, lying, abandonment are big triggers for me too. Oddly, with my fiancé I NEVER felt insecure, he wouldn't let me. He knew my triggers, so he'd reassure me without me needing to even ask, and I knew his and did the same. But it took an awful lot of bad experiences to find the good one.

I'm going to get shafted by some people for being a pro lifer.

I absolutely am not, given how much I want this shit show to be over it'd make me a massive hypocrite. But I'm reading from your post that you don't want to die, you're in a BPD meltdown and terrified there is no "better". That you'll always feel like this. And that's terrifying when you don't think you can survive another minute feeling like this. I 100% get that.

I'm not going to lie and say "yeah, here's a guarantee", there are none. I just wanted to say though - it's possible. I can see the progress I made from 21… to 25… to 30…. To 35. Things got calmer.

Big things still triggered. I'd still have episodes. I still struggled with periods of depression, fluctuating passive vs active suicidal ideation. But compared to my 20s, my 30s were so much easier emotionally, still intense compared to a person who doesn't have BPD, but nowhere near as intense as my younger years.

So I'm probably giving you conflicting messages here but… yeah. It can get better/easier. And also - in case nobody ever tells you, because they probably don't understand how hard it is: be proud of yourself for how far you've already come. Don't measure yourself in terms of people who don't have the disorder, they've no idea how hard it is to find ways to be even semi functional in a world where everything feels like a threat.

X

 

[Myforevercharlie]

Big hug to you

 

[efffervescence]

I'm really glad you got something from my ramble… and if you've come on leaps and bounds since your teens, another few years you WILL have made more progress. The key is identifying the things we have the power to change/control/expose ourselves too and sounds like you've done a lot of work.

I'm in my 40s, I have no clue how I got here but somehow I did. And… things got more manageable for more extended periods. I'm like you though, that when something does hit me, it hits hard. I have a tendency to beat myself up then for slipping back "see, you've not made any progress, you're still the same stupid fucked up 15 year old, still making stupid choices, still crazy, still useless, still…" well, whatever my brain wants to batter me about.

It's not true. Progress is there but you only see it when you can breathe again, evaluate and take yourself out of the emotional intensity. It's just a bit like an addict falling off the wagon - we think all is lost because of one fallback, but it's not unexpected when BPD makes us so hyper reactive and the emotions so overwhelming.

Never apologise or minimise what you're feeling though. None of what you've written is silly, what you're feeling is absolutely valid and I know - it hurts. End of world hurt. And I've been there, the only shift in my perspective is finding a… for me… deeper level of hell I guess. But that doesn't take away from anything you're feeling or going through.

And it's hard, because absolutely I do believe it's possible for us BPD folk to achieve some semblance of happiness and in an alternate universe I'd be the poster girl for the possibilities.

I can tell you, though: he gave me safety, stability, love, understanding, and always… always a soft space to land, whether I was up or down. And even though his death made me abandon all hope for the future I wanted, as he was really it for me, I am still glad I survived my crazy life long enough to meet him and feel that. Something real. I had similar hopes and dreams as you, fairly simple, but I think most of us just want to feel safe, secure, happy, loved, understood. And I had it, which means… you could too.

It's a gamble as is everything. Cheating, lying, abandonment are big triggers for me too. Oddly, with my fiancé I NEVER felt insecure, he wouldn't let me. He knew my triggers, so he'd reassure me without me needing to even ask, and I knew his and did the same. But it took an awful lot of bad experiences to find the good one.

I'm going to get shafted by some people for being a pro lifer.

I absolutely am not, given how much I want this shit show to be over it'd make me a massive hypocrite. But I'm reading from your post that you don't want to die, you're in a BPD meltdown and terrified there is no "better". That you'll always feel like this. And that's terrifying when you don't think you can survive another minute feeling like this. I 100% get that.

I'm not going to lie and say "yeah, here's a guarantee", there are none. I just wanted to say though - it's possible. I can see the progress I made from 21… to 25… to 30…. To 35. Things got calmer.

Big things still triggered. I'd still have episodes. I still struggled with periods of depression, fluctuating passive vs active suicidal ideation. But compared to my 20s, my 30s were so much easier emotionally, still intense compared to a person who doesn't have BPD, but nowhere near as intense as my younger years.

So I'm probably giving you conflicting messages here but… yeah. It can get better/easier. And also - in case nobody ever tells you, because they probably don't understand how hard it is: be proud of yourself for how far you've already come. Don't measure yourself in terms of people who don't have the disorder, they've no idea how hard it is to find ways to be even semi functional in a world where everything feels like a threat.

X

Thank you, I 100% understand the feeling of regression every time you fuck up. Feels like all of the hard work has been for nothing because all it's ever going to take is one day to undo it all.

This is why I am planning to stay with my boyfriend. Before this, I felt loved, secure, and he had my full trust. This has been huge because of those three things, while I believe him when he tells me he wasn't cheating, it still looks and feels like it. It reeks of it. The parallels with last time are consuming. The lies have been a complete shock, I never thought he would lie to me, especially not lies of this magnitude and lies this despicable. They honestly feel evil. Since he has admitted that he tells me "white lies to spare my feelings a lot", but that is just gaslighting. When he tells me these lies, it's because I see something and I ask him, to respond with something that alters my perception of the situation for his benefit is to gaslight me. When I already feel insane, to make me question reality to make things easier for him is a cruel thing to do. Worse, when I figure out that I was right, I stop questioning what I was asking about and start questioning him, what else he hasn't told me, what else he's lied to me about. At this point it really is reality I'm questioning. This all reeks of abandonment in itself, as I am now wondering whether he is only with me because his ex told him that he has a boyfriend, whether he'll leave me when they break up, but on top of that, after it happened he was repeatedly telling me to break up with him and saying things like "let's just break up then". I honestly don't even know if he wants to be with me. I have absolutely no idea what changed or how we got here, I felt we were closer than ever before he left and the night before I found out we had been talking about engagement, marriage, children, pets, etc. I'm struggling to figure out what version of him is real, what things he tells me are real, because everything he told his ex about me is the polar opposite of what he tells me almost daily. Before this, he also would not let me get triggered. Constant reassurance. When his ex messaged him a few times months ago, he told me immediately and we would reply together. I cannot for the life of me understand what changed. I thought he knew my triggers too, I think he does, I think he has just acted selfishly but I can't tell if it's a fuck up because he is going through a rough spot mentally at the moment as well, or if it was something more.

I am hoping this is a BPD meltdown, it's strange that I can never remember them so I every time I have them I can't recognise them, I can't remember how long they last, if this is different than the last or what. I think the fact that I genuinely cannot remember or imagine what it's like to be happy points towards it being one though. I will definitely keep reminding myself of this. Even if it turns out not to be, as long as it gets me through my exams I'm more than happy to choose to believe it.

Thank you, you should be proud of yourself too. I think we have both done well to get where we are. Making it to my twenties feels like a huge achievement considering how bad teenage BPD was. I'm sure I'll feel the same if I make it to 30 about my twenties. People without this disorder have absolutely no idea what it's like, it is so refreshing to talk to someone that does. I doubt most people will feel the way we do regularly more than a handful of times in their lives. I am quite good at not measuring myself in terms of people without BPD because I am very aware of this, it's the people that don't have BPD measuring me against them that is a bigger issue lol. The fact that they can live their lives so unaffected by things is way crazier to me than a BPD reaction, the way that people can literally do the devils bidding and then be snoozing on the pillow 1 hour later will never cease to amaze me.