By Molly Burford
Trigger warning: This article makes brief references to self-harm and suicidal ideation.
The first time I stumbled across the term “borderline personality disorder,” also known as BPD, I was 19. I found a book my mom had left out on the kitchen counter called Get Me Out Of Here: My Recovery From Borderline Personality Disorder. A memoir by Rachel Reiland, the book’s chapters were filled with a description of a hell that sounded a lot like my own.
After flipping through a few more pages, I went to the family computer to Google more about BPD. As I worked my way through the search results, I found what I think deep down I already knew I would find. Almost every single symptom seemed to be aligned with what I experiencing:
- Desperate attempts to avoid real and imagined abandonment
- Suicidal behavior and self-harm
- Depression
- Chronic emptiness
- Low self-esteem
- Unstable interpersonal…
