I have a secret: I have borderline personality disorder.
Yes, I am one of those people. I could tell you the story of how this particular illness came to manifest in my brain, but perhaps another time. For the purpose of this essay, really, all you need to know is that I, like many other people, have trauma.
The specificity of my trauma matters not; all that matters is that at some point things got fucked up. Things got really fucked up—so, in order to survive, I developed some maladaptive coping mechanisms. One of these maladaptive coping mechanisms was an eating disorder; another was self-mutilation; another, social alcohol abuse; and finally, my most addictive, borderline personality disorder.
Continue reading “I Have Borderline Personality Disorder—But I Am Not A Bad Person”