Borderline Personality Disorder,  Impulsiveness,  Substance Abuse,  Suicide

How Borderline Personality Disorder Put an End to My Party Days (#BPD)

The negative emotions I have are immobilizing. They crash over me like huge waves, knocking the wind out of me and forcing me underwater.

How Borderline Personality Disorder Put an End to My Party Days
August 10, 2015
by Harriet Williamson

In the summer of 2010, just before I turned 19 and in my first year of university, I attempted suicide with a month’s supply of my antidepressants and ended up in intensive care, breathing on a machine. By my second year, my good-time friends had had enough of me. I was no longer invited out, and became very isolated and increasingly unhappy. I got into an abusive relationship and attempted suicide another two times. I was also bulimic—vomiting everything that touched my lips.

During the first year of my undergraduate degree I reduced my calorie intake to 250 a day—about two and a half slices of bread or five medium apples—and started to go slowly insane. I drank, took drugs, and went to clubs with a religious fervor. My body started to cave in. I was starving and my hair started to fall out. My nails went blue. My skin turned to flaking scales. I once ate a burger after a night out and forced myself to run up and down the stairs until I actually passed out to “make up for it.” I went to my campus GP and told him I needed help. At five and a half stone (less than 80 pounds), he said I wasn’t sick enough to warrant eating disorders treatment, and borderline personality disorder (BPD) was never even mentioned.

People couldn’t keep up with my impulsive behavior, the manic phases and the fits of crying. The labels of “drama queen,” “attention seeker,” and “total fucking mess” followed me around like a bad smell. I tried to conceal it, but being called those things hurt. I didn’t know how to explain that all the stuff I was doing was an attempt to manage my out-of-control emotions, because when I’m going through a bad patch it feels like being on a sickening roller coaster—only, I can’t get off.

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