On Relationships

Stop. Do not let those words pass your lips. Lock your lips, hold them in, and swallow them. Stop. Stop apologizing for every little thing which you cannot control, and save the apologies for when they really count. There are some of us who emerge from terrifying circumstances and feel the need to apologize for everything and anything, even if we had nothing to do with those events. Others of us grow so tired of apologizing that we deny all responsibility for anything, projecting blame on others who just happen to be standing next to the switch. We are hot, we are cold, but we are never dull. Any relationship with a person of a disordered personality can be intense, but it is important to understand why there is such friction between two people who care about each other so much.

As discussed before, childhood trauma can have profound effects on how a person develops into an adult. That adulthood fore which these persons are completely unprepared can be an enveloping darkness which makes them feel confused, lost, and scared. There was no guiding hand to teach us how to handle the most basic tasks of any functioning human, and none of these are quite as basic as socialization. When you are left to fend for yourself, you do not develop much trust towards others or altruism towards them. Instead, you are wary of others, thinking that every person is looking out for themselves first and everyone else when convenient. This is only natural when you have had to look out for yourself all throughout your adolescence.

To an outside observer, a person such as this can come across as cold, empty, mechanical, and selfish. While there is some truth to each of those points, the overarching reality is that we are, oftentimes, lonely. How does one make friends? How does one express love without seeming overbearing or without expressing it all at once as opposed to gradually overtime? How does one maintain a relationship with regular contact as opposed to dropping a friendship and picking it back up months later like a book? The impulse from outside observers is usually a frustrated response of "Just stop doing [A] and just [B] instead."

This shows the work which still lies ahead in demystifying personality disorders. Believe me, if we could make long-lasting relationships which blossom and flower into true connections as opposed to passing fancies, do you not think that we would? In my own experience, making connections is harder done than said. I hold little fancy in asking you about the weather or whether or not you caught the ball game the night before. I want personal details and I want them now. Tell me if you have ever had a threesome. Regale me with the telling of the first time you saw a dead person. Introduce me to those dark thoughts which you keep locked at the back of your mind and let me bath in your own darkness.

If I seem disinterested in you, I am probably assessing you from afar, bored by you, or completely unsure how to approach you without completely coming across as a maniac. Life has always been a carefully calculated series of interactions for me, because like with some personality disorders, there is a crippling and intense fear of abandonment. As a child I was constantly teased with the simultaneously tantalizing and horrifying possibility that one of my parents would leave and never come back. Through years of that painful conditioning, I have adopted this delightful need to stay with people forever, and when they leave (for whatever the reason), I am crushed and sent into a spiral. These anxieties soon gave way to the next domino: a fear of rejection.

I am confident in any endeavor which I know how to accomplish, but unlike with cooking or video games, there are too many variables in relationships. These variables make chances of success a crap shoot, and as a result, I am unwilling to put myself out there and attempt to make it work. Crippling loneliness works as a motivating force for only so long before it ruptures in my stomach and that darkness bleeds out of me through my eyes and mouth, drowning my pillow in a pool of what-if's and could-have-been's. Much of this self-fulfilling prophecy comes about as a result of something in the psychology field, commonly referred to as splitting.

Splitting is in reference to the "borderline" in BPD, a thin line between black and white which a person is able to leap across with the greatest of ease. I can hold you in the highest graces one moment and grow disdainful of your very breathing the next, breaking off all contact with you with no more hesitation than it takes to pop a zit. Every connection to the person in question is dropped. Numbers are erased, social media connections are deleted, and as you can expect, this makes it very hard for that connection to ever be regained, especially when the person orchestrating the erasure is vain and prideful, such as myself.

These broken friendships are not even under normal circumstances such as removing someone from your life who turned out to be a misogynist or a racist. Oftentimes, one argument or one quarrel will drive the disordered individual to develop intense hatred of the other individual in a matter of minutes or seconds. It can be over losing a video game to a less than gracious winner, the friend breaking plans with you at the last minute, or even an argument over semantics. All of this amplifies itself tenfold when the relationship is romantic.

Particularly with BPD, of which I share traits, there is almost an idolization of the other person(s) in the relationship. More so, you are given the opportunity to share more of yourself with a romantic partner. They see what you hide from the rest of the world, and these darker hues can make dating a living nightmare for the person with the disorder. We conceal our maddest edges out of fear of hurting the person we care most about. Slowly, comfort around this person takes hold and we let out the demons to see if this other person will accept them or run away in fear of the darkness we spew. If the person does not run, but rather, loves us more in return, then the first trial has been met and the next comes forth for them to face.

The frantic thoughts, radioactive emotions, and callous attitudes seep out overtime, and for some, this can all be too much, and they want out. This is when the fear of abandonment from before comes back with a vengeance. The disordered personality within our minds will do anything and everything to protect this relationship ranging from powerful and admittedly frightening displays of emotion to keep the person around to outright threats of suicide to scare the person into staying. If it was not apparent to you before, it should be now; Cluster B personality disorders are often associated with frequent hospitalization. There are desperate mental acrobatics involved to protect the ego at all costs, and this is a code red. When the person remains unswayed to stay, the psyche collapses in on itself, and the truly frightening and desperate displays are left behind for our friends to contain and clean up.

Inversely, if we were to initiate the break-up, it would most assuredly be quick, handled with the icy precision of a sniper, and done at a point in time when the other party would be unable to respond, make much plea, or hinder our exit from happening. This duality between feeling everything and nothing at all is varying solely on the desires of our egos. For most of our lives, we have been without dominion over our own lives, so to be in control is a new sensation which hold little regard for the emotional needs of others, which can make relationships all the more hazardous a minefield to cross. Despite all of the affectual foreplay and potential for self-destruction, I would not trade the potential for happiness away, despite how I might often fantasize for a life without need for love.

My last relationship was short, but oh so sweet. Before I was given my diagnoses, I dated an enchantress who had been diagnosed with BPD. Our lips were locked by the end of our first date; we knew it was fast, but we did not care. There was most certainly a spark. Our mindsets meshed perfectly with the grooves of the other, moving in unison, and each one's skyrocketing emotions syncing up with those of the other. We understood each other like no one else ever had understood us before. She pushed my boundaries in all the right ways, and I teased her mind until she would take control and do the same in turn.

We exuded passion to the point that others saw us as the dream couple. She could see through my anger and disgust and tell me exactly why they were not productive. I could walk through her barriers and talk to her on a level that only we could understand and respect. Her pain was my pain, and we knew what it took to heal those wounds and make each other better. She made me seek out therapy and learn more about myself than I had even thought possible. She is the reason I gained a deeper understanding into the reasons for why I am the way I am. We were perfect.

Then, it ended. One day, when I had dropped her off at her place, she said outright, "I don't think we should date anymore." I very calmly replied, "Okay." We said our goodbyes, and I drove away. I could not contain the storm for long, and fumes of untapped emotion flooded the car as I swerved down the highway, blasting music so loud that I had trouble hearing shortly after. Once home, I locked myself in my room for two weeks, picked up my bed and threw it across the room, knocked over cabinets and dressers, building a wall around myself which no one could penetrate, and though many tried to snap me out of it, I could not.

I sprayed venom at those who cared for me and tried to make me better, screaming at them for daring to show me one ounce of compassion. I did not feel worth it. "Is that all you can say? You really are a worthless friend," I screamed at one who tried to tell me that she missed out on someone special. "I don't need cliches from someone who cannot keep a girl for more than a week," I shouted at another. I was toxic. I was acidic. I was a nightmare to be around, but despite all of my dramatics, they did not give up on me, eventually pinning me down to my mattress and demanding I leave the house. My friends forced me to leave my den of despair and rejoin humanity against my will.

As time has passed I have come to terms with that departure from my life, but given the chance, I would absolutely do it all over again. I worked hard to control my emotions, even as I continue to struggle with developing relationships with others. Still, when things go south, I do my best to regain control over my mind. There is still intense emotion. There is still despair. There is still crippling loneliness, a fear of rejection, and that fear of abandonment. Now, however, I have the capacity to fight some of them more effectively. Rather than lock myself away from the human race, I run away. I run, I bike, I walk. I remain active in order to channel that pain into something positive. I work the anger and fear out of my body, crushing them in my fists and stomping them out with every step I take.

I will probably always have these demons inside of me. Personality disorders are not something you just take pills for or lose after some epiphany. They are a part of you, and for all the pain they bring us, it is important to channel them into something beautiful for those in our lives. No one will love you as intensely as we do, build you up and back up you as we do, or sing your graces as we do. All it takes on our part is knowledge of these demons within us so we might start to battle them on our own, and all it takes on the part of those in our lives is the compassion to try and understand why we are the way we are and the no-nonsense attitude to call us out when we are wrong and to tell us how we can better ourselves so we might better them in return.