The Perks of Being a Borderline Resilient

Please enjoy this guest post written by Eli Juniper

Trigger Warning: Frank discussion of suicidal ideation.

You. Yes, You. I have tried for so long to explain to You, to make You understand. You have been cruel, You have been ignorant, You have been dismissive. I have grown as a shadow of my true self, because of You. I have worn out all the masks I could invent to protect myself. And, eventually, the Borderline Personality Disorder came knocking at my door.

Who knows when it began to affect me, maybe it was there all along, maybe it was Your doing, maybe it was both. “You” being my family, the people that rejected, bullied me as a child, as a young girl, as a teenager, the doctors and the psychologist that were completely in the dark of what was truly affecting me and who fed me medications until I was feeling completely numb and couldn’t think straight, couldn’t think at all.

I am never sure of who I really am, never sure of who I am going to be the next day, frightened by my own self, terrified by my emotions and their strength, their impact on myself, on my life, on my work, on my loved ones. These loved ones I am so afraid to lose, so afraid that sometimes I act in ways I probably shouldn’t, to avoid conflict, or to provoke it because I need a reaction, a proof of their love, a proof that they are not going to leave me, to abandon me.

Because in my head, it seems so easy to leave me. And being truly alone is one of my biggest fears, finding myself all alone with my own thoughts, and my own terrible feelings and emotions. I apologize all the time, for everything and nothing, as if I was so very sorry to simply be alive. As if my very presence was a disturbance to anyone around. As if everything I said could be an offense. I have been depressed, I have been addicted, I have been lonely, I have been on the dangerous edge of killing myself so many times I couldn’t count.

You may be wondering why I am talking about all of these negative aspects when I want to talk about the positive ones in this post/letter to You. I am talking about all of these aspects because they exist, and to pretend that they don’t, that there are only positive aspects would be an insult to any person with the Borderline Personality Disorder and to myself.

So… You ! I want to tell you about how the bad things I experience, and all these negative aspects actually are one side of a coin which is constantly shifting, thrown into the air and in perpetual movement.

And sometimes, some days, I am able to see the opposite side of the coin. How my emotions and their strength are like an engine, that allows me to be creative, to imagine, to make appear out of thin air stories, poetry, films, edits. How my fears fuel my most amazing qualities, such as compassion, empathy, morality, ethics, moral strength.

How I can see the world and its beauty – the leaves swaying in a tree can capture my attention for fifteen minutes, the lights in the streets are going to make me cry, the night sky and the stars are going to dazzle me until I realize I’ve been standing in the cold too long.

This sensibility makes me a human being apart. And if you add all of my experiences, all of my life, all of my being, all of my choices over the years, it is what makes me truly unique. So, now, I’m going to talk to you – all of the others like me, struggling every day with this terrifying and puzzling disorder.

You may be broken like I am, you may have a psyche slightly different than others, you may experience deep and intense suffering, you may feel some days like it’s not worth it (and actually as I’m finishing this post, I am in this very situation, but I keep writing anyway, because maybe, somehow it’s going to help someone, and then IT IS worth it). You may be lost, as I am sometimes, you may be wondering Why me, Why this, you may be trying not to hurt yourself.

But what I want to say is that it gives you so much too, it gives you the possibility to be helpful to others, to understand them, to change things if this is what you want to do, it gives you the possibility to appreciate the world, its details, its wonders, its strength like no other. And it will be your way of appreciating it. Yours, entirely.

Because as I am unique, with my Borderline Disorder, you are too. I only wish to remember these written words when I can only see the bad side of the coin. The difficulties. Always keeping in mind that the only way I can offer myself a tiny bit of peace will be through accepting and embracing who I am, entirely.

Not choosing what I want to throw and what to keep. Everything, as a whole.

A whole being Me, with my broken pieces to mend, and my scars to heal, and my incredible qualities and perks. As a BPD resilient.

This guest post was written by Eli Juniper. You can follower her on Twitter under @eli_juniper or at her blog, The Line Behind the Border.  If you can relate to Eli’s experiences and want to learn about an online course that may help, visit EmotionallySensitive.com