Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is an emotional disorder that causes individuals to have extreme difficulties regulating their emotions.  Their sense of self is greatly distorted, causing them to feel worthless and fundamentally flawed.  Individuals with BPD may exhibit impulsive and highly emotional and/or aggressive behaviors.  They also have frequent (sometimes volatile) mood swings, which can lead to chaotic, unstable and abusive relationships.  They have intense fears of abandonment, shame, and feelings of emptiness.  These feelings often lead to “self-harm”, suicide attempts, and suicide.

It is estimated that more than 14 million American adults (about 1 in 16) suffer from this terrible, complicated, and highly misunderstood disorder.  Twenty percent of all psychiatric hospital stays are attributed to people who have BPD.  BPD is more common than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.  About 85% of adults diagnosed with BPD have at least 1 co-occurring disorder.  About 38% are prescribed 3 or more medications and about 38% have substance abuse/dependence disorders.  Between 55% and 85% of adults diagnosed with BPD “self-harm”, or injure their bodies. Approximately 10% will commit suicide; this rate is more than 50 times the suicide rate of the general population.

But who are we; the PEOPLE who possess this label?  We are the ones considered “difficult”, “lazy”, “attention-seekers”, “crazy”.  The truth is that we can’t stand ourselves.  We don’t want attention.  We are the ones who cry out in silence; we are the ones who quietly cry ourselves to sleep; we are the ones who hide our scars and say we are fine when we aren’t.  We feel hopeless, unloved, and alone.

We want to die, we don’t want to die. We scream, “Help me!” and “Leave me the fuck alone!” in the same breath.  We love and hate at the same time.  We push the people that we love away and we don’t understand why any more than they do.  We lay under our covers, sometimes for days at a time, to hide from our problems, our feelings, but mostly ourselves.  We wish the world away.  We don’t want to feel like this.  We don’t want to BE like this. 

So we take our medications, go to therapy, see psychiatrists, and go to classes in order to be able to appear as functional members of society.  On the outside, we look just like you, but on the inside an epic battle constantly rages.   Some days it takes everything inside of us just to get out of bed.  Some days we can’t even make it that far.  We try as hard as we can, but “normal” people don’t understand the complexity of our fight.  We are told that we are lazy and weak.  We are told to just, “Get over it!”  We are told to “Suck it up!” by people who have absolutely no idea what we are going through. 

But we are more than that.  We are your mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, and friends.  We care deeply for others, sometimes at our own expense.  We feel other peoples’ pain intensely.  We help others, even when we can’t seem to find the strength to help ourselves.  We are good listeners.  We help people with their problems even though we can’t solve our own. We want to lead happy, productive lives, like the “normal” people.  And so we trudge on, sometimes one minute at a time, and hope that we won’t end up being just another statistic…