Becoming Empowered

Over the past 7 years I have gone through a major battle with being diagnosed and treated for Borderline Personality Disorder. This short account explains what it's like and how I've come to cope.

Waking up...bright lights..."Where the hell am I, this isn't my room?!"

I've had these thoughts too many times to keep track.  This time, like all the times before, the answer was the psych ward at a local hospital.  As I asked myself this question, reality hit me with a feeling of dread in my stomach, and everything from the past day came hurtling back onto me.

I was at the doctors.  Exhausted for weeks, sinus infection they said.  Then the CT scan and the polyp.  Sent to the ENT.  Then the maddening news that there was actually nothing medically wrong with me, but then why did I still feel exhausted?  Leaving, almost in tears.  Just make it to the bathroom, I promised myself.  The fatigue and lack of activity had worn away at me and I found myself at the doctor's office, in the bathroom, having yet another mental breakdown.  Unable to speak when a nurse was finally alerted to my situation, they took me to an unused exam room and started asking questions.  The usual: Did someone hurt me, 'what's wrong?'.  I was too upset, too gone really, to answer.  They brought me water.  I drank, still infested with tears. 

Finally a phone was handed to me, and I was able to speak to someone from a local crisis line.  Did someone hurt me? No.  Was I suicidal?  Well, yes actually, I was, although this was news to me.  The signs had been there for days, and my Mom had tried to warn me that my sickness was looking more and more like depression. I denied it, not really realizing it myself - or not wanting to.  But in that moment I had realized I no longer wanted to live if this was what my life was going to continue to be like.

I remembered driving to the Emergency Department.  Stating over a not-so-convincingly private intercom that I was suicidal.  Whoosh.  They rushed me back to take my vitals and get me into a room where they could have a sitter watch my every move.  Hours went by in the ER before I was finally admitted.  Hours - which felt like days without time - always go by slowly in the ER before being sent to the psych ward, in which there is always time to reflect on the latest series of events which led me to my most current predicament.

Getting a Cold.  Turned into a sinus infection.  Tired.  Very tired.  Numerous doctor's appointments, and slowly getting turned away, no one believing anything medically was wrong.  Not going to work; too sleepy.  Too sleepy to do much but sit idle on the couch all day.  Depression.  Lack of desire to live.
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As I woke up the chilling conversation with my Mom after I decided I needed to go to the ER returned to me.  "You're going to lose your job.  Nobody puts up with this sort of thing."  My stomach churned.  "Great," I thought, "Not only am I in the psych ward but now I have the stomach bug".  I asked for medication, but no one seemed to sense my urgency.  I am going to puke any moment now, please give me something to stop that from happening!

After staring at my food long enough to burst into tears and then leave the room, I calmed down enough to call my work to tell them I would not be in today as I was in the hospital and no, I didn't know how long I'd be there.  Then I went to my room and decided to try to throw up; purge my system of the swirling thoughts in my stomach.  Nothing.  Not a drop.  I suddenly realized that I didn't have the stomach flu, but that I was intensely stressed because in my mind, I was now jobless. 

I had graduated the past spring (it was now November 2012), and had started my first grown-up job in June 2012.  And now, just like sand throw a sieve, I was losing it.  Trying to put the sand back in the sieve, but, of course, I couldn't get it back in fast enough.  "You're going to lose your job.  Nobody puts up with this sort of thing."
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I remember lying there on my stomach, surrounded by so many tears on the cold tile floor in the stairwell that it could have been blood from a gunshot wound.  Delirious, through a fog, I remember hearing voices.  "I don't know, two boys just told us they heard someone crying.  We came up and found her here."  The voices asked me questions which I don't remember, but I do remember being helped down the stairs, very dehydrated from all those tears, and into the back of an ambulance.

As I found water and then words, I found myself back in a crying fit.  Screaming fit, really.  So extremely upset because I felt like I had just been abandoned by my flute teacher because I couldn't come over, and I couldn't keep my control.  I stuffed blankets in my mouth, but still the wailing continued.  They were at a loss as to what to do with me.  Me too, I thought, me too.  Finally I calmed down enough and heard the words 'respite care'.  I would only stay one night.  I was a college student away from home and since I didn't live in the county, I couldn't stay more than one night.  I knew they hated me, and wanted me gone.  They were the enemy.
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As I realized the ramifications of missing so much work and by being admitted to the hospital, I felt more and more defeated and more and more suicidal.  But I was determined to do everything I could to keep my job.  I called everyday, around 9:30am - a half hour before the store opened - to let them know I wouldn't be in that day; that I was still in the hospital, having more 'tests' done as they 'tried to figure out what was wrong with me'.  Lies, all lies.  But it was better than the truth, I thought.

I again began trying to figure out how I ended up here.  I had been doing so well.  I had spent a year across the country attending school for a highly specialized career field and had moved back home with a job waiting for me.  Lucky me!  So much had fallen into place over the past 3 years, and here I was, back in the hospital again.

Not that my year in Seattle had been without a hospital stay or two.  I even made the only actual attempt on my life while I was out there.  But who could I blame, after all I was 2500 miles away from everything I knew.  Before I even really realized it was happening, I was headed down that familiar path to the ER again, this time with a confession to taking an overdose of my Effexor XR.

After a week of hating everything and everybody, being extremely suicidal, and not being able to control my body temperature, the withdrawal from being taken off of the Effexor XR after my attempted suicide subsided and normality returned once again.  I had a goal: get through school and move back home to the support of my family.
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Even before I was ever admitted to a psych ward, I had problems.  I had always had a strong urge to befriend a mother-aged female to act as a caregiver for me and to share all my problems with that person.  The older I got, the stronger the urge got, until it manifested itself with my flute teacher in college.  She didn't know what to do about it and was very wishy washy.  Some days filling that role, some days rejecting me.  This only fueled my fear of abandonment and my frantic attempts to control reality so that no one would ever leave me. 

I did this at first by acting more and more depressed and in need of more and more help.  Later, I started cutting my wrist to show my hurt - and to feel the pain that I had in some ways become numb to.  The first time I ever attempted to cut, ironically, was in the hospital.  My first ever offense.  I remember the long, silent three hour car ride with my Dad from my college dorm room to a hospital in my home town.  It was a long and awkward ride that I will never forget.  What was there to say, really?

During that hospital stay, I met many interesting people.  Those I remember most are the friendly gang member and the older lady who thought the best thing ever was brushing her teeth, and that was her answer to everything she was asked.  During that stay, the doctor overseeing my care started telling me that soon, my insurance would stop paying for me to be there.  I was in distress, and soon after took some cardboard to my wrist.  Later, in a meeting with my Mom and that doctor, I showed them what I had done in a frantic attempt to make them realize how much I was actually still hurting.  The doctor used this as proof that I was trying to manipulate people.  Really, I had done it mainly as a way to escape the immense pain and weight I was feeling, but he didn't know that and wouldn't listen to me.

A week later, while talking to my cousin who's a psychiatrist and relaying this story, she shrugged it off, telling me that the doctor probably thought I was 'borderline'.  After she left I poured over the internet, searching for what she had meant by this.  The results both shocked and comforted me. 

Borderline Personality Disorder.  A group of symptoms classify the disorder.  I identified with most of them.  A rush of relief and knowing came over me that I was not the only one experiencing all these things; the rapid mood changes, the self-harm, the fear of abandonment, the black and white thinking patterns, the intense anger I felt (and turned mainly towards myself), the lack of patience when I wanted something, the unstable self-image, the feelings of emptiness, and the urge to shop and eat excessively.  I had it, and I knew it.  And then I read more.

Borderline Personality Disorder is difficult to treat and hard, if impossible to recover from.  Although, symptoms do tend to lessen with age, with the peak in the 20s and 30s.  Great.  A death sentence.  Providers fear it as it's marked usually with numerous threats to avoid abandonment and threats of self-harm or suicide.  People with Borderline Personality Disorder are seen as manipulative and out of control.  Furthermore, if insurance companies get wind of the diagnosis, sometimes they stop covering services.  Wonderful news.
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Upon my return to work from my hospital stay in November, I was called into the owner's office and questioned briefly.  She wanted to know that I was okay to start working again and let me know that they have dealt with many issues in the past, and if I wanted to let her know what was going on, she would be happy to listen and work with me.  The next day I came into work with a decision that the truth was best, and called a meeting with her to explain what was really going on.  Surprisingly, it went well and afterward I felt much calmer.  Maybe I wasn't going to lose my job after all.
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After my Dad died in August of 2009, I tried to go back to college for my 4th year, but could not do it.  I would weep often and decided it was best to take the quarter off.  Upon moving home, I realized just how toxic my world at college had been, and decided to move back home to finish school at a nearby college. 

When my Dad died I was devastated.  Of all my family members, I was closest with him, and he knew how to handle my mental symptoms the best.  However, as I emerged out of the seemingly endless tunnel of grief, I realized he left me behind many gifts: a better relationship with my Mom, a chance to follow my dreams in school, and realize an aspiration I had never had any reason to follow before.  The longer he was gone, the more good seemed to fall into place in my life. 

But still, I was fatigued all the time and went through periods of deep depression during which I would become suicidal and spend time on local psych wards.  The cycle seemed endless, and that just made things worse.  At some point I started Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and over the course of the last 4 years it has helped me change my life.  I understand urges and have skills to help me cope through bad - and good - times in my life.  It has helped me realize what insight I have, and helped me analyze my patterns so that I can read and predict them better.
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In the spring of 2013, with a recommendation from my cousin who is herself an integrative psychiatrist, I began seeing a new psychiatrist who also practices functional medicine.  With her guidance, I have seen a lot more growth in myself.  She performs neurointegration therapy at her office.  Since starting the treatment (which results in permanent changes to the brain), I have gained new energy.  I now have two to three more hours in my day that I feel awake, and also wake up naturally on my own in the mornings.  I am ecstatic with the results thus far, and cannot wait to finish the treatment.

However, things are far from perfect.  One of my most recent neurointegration therapy sessions led me to taper off my dose of Klonopin - with the doctor's guidance - which had dire consequences.  Within days I was suicidal, and although I had enough skills to manage my thoughts at home for four days, I did finally admit myself, once again, to the psych ward.  However, this time my stay was brief and the reason for the stay was much different than my usual depression lead up. 

While in the hospital, I was, for the first time, able to spurt off a list of coping skills that I could use to manage my symptoms after discharge.  Finally, I had committed them to memory and could recall them without prompting! 

Furthermore, I no longer attempt to control reality with a fear of abandonment.  Yes, I have periods of time where that old friend creeps back up - albeit - less intense than earlier in my 20s.  Only now, instead of growing crazy, I can acknowledge and notice it and see that it is not reasonable; something Dialectical Behavioral Therapy has taught me.

I also cut much less frequently.  Usually once every few months, and then it's usually an isolated incident.  The black and white thinking has faded away as well.  And what's more, I'm finally feeling in control and empowered in regards to my mental illnesses (Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety, and Borderline Personality Disorder).

I am also extremely grateful for my job and the wonderful people I work with and for.  It is with their support that I continue to learn and grow in the workplace - instead of ending up jobless and on disability.  Others working there with mental illnesses have modeled for me the fact that I can indeed be successful, despite my mental illnesses, and that fact - which I am still learning - is very empowering.

So that leads me back to my original searches on Borderline Personality Disorder.  Is it really incurable?  Is it really a life sentence?  I did read that newer research suggests it may be possible, but very difficult, to have the symptoms subside.  I never believed they would because they were so extremely intense, outrageous, and powerful, but here I am, 7 years later.  I look at the characteristics of Borderline Personality Disorder and realize that I have all the traits, but that the disorder no longer controls my life and defines how I think and behave.  And that is empowering.

Author's Note

Not sure if the jumping around in time is totally effective as-is or not, and would like feedback on that and how the story reads. I was there, I can imagine it in my head, but I'm not sure how it comes across to my audience. Structural, etc. comments welcome as well.

Reviews

[Fetish Ewing]

What a harrowing story! I've had a couple of past friendships who were affected by borderline personality disorder which, unfortunately, got in the way of maintaining the friendships (though I miss them dearly) and I recognize all of the symptoms that they suffered from. I think a lot of readers will look to your story and feel a sense of recognition and comradely, which is so very important.

As far as the technicalities of the story, I feel as if you should italicize the inner monologues in your story to add a little more flavor, variety, to your prose. Also, don't worry so much on form, using cliches such as "through a fog" to impress your readers. Maintain control of your writing, but strip down; believe me, your story's going to be that much more individual, emotional and available for your readers to apply their own relation to your story, whether they have BPD or not.

Add a few lines detailing your life outside of BPD. Show your readers that, while the main focus is your struggle with BPD, you are a person with a life outside of that.

All in all, great story. I was rooting for you by the end, and I still am!

[Ravyne Hawke]

I think you did a wonderful job with the time jumps.. I kept up with everything exceptionally well. I really enjoyed the descriptions of your illnesses and how they've affected you. I too have Borderline, Anxiety and Bipolar Disorders. I will begin DBT therapy next week and I hope I am as successful at it as you were. I would like to know more about that other treatment you've been doing.. sounds interesting.