The Cat has its Heart on the Outside

Available as a fanzine in Swedish with a translation note  here.

Borderline Personality Disorder isn’t being cute and ‘clingy’ and ‘adorably needy’. Being with (romantic or otherwise) someone with BPD isn’t akin to taking care of a pet. BPD isn’t an ‘aw it’s so endearing that they need me so badly’ type of thing. 

BPD is a mental illness that is a conglomeration of several different tendencies and it’s not easy to diagnose. You don’t just decide you have it, just like you don’t decide you’re depressed because you had a bad  day, or you don’t decide you’re bipolar because your mood changes quickly sometimes. Believe  me, you don’t want it.

BPD is turning nothing into everything, is knowing you’re being irrational and not being able to stop regardless, is suppressing breakdowns for fear of being abusive or of manipulating the person you’re talking to into having to take care of you when they really don’t want to.

It’s thinking someone doesn’t care about you anymore because they made a new friend. It’s automatically registering new people as a threat. It’s a fear of abandonment and rejection that’s damn near omnipresent. It’s being able to shift from ‘I love you so much!’ to ‘I don’t give a fuck, I hate you, I don’t even want to talk to you’ and back at the drop of a hat.

It’s finding identity in a drastic hair change, and then feeling unsafe and desperately trying to fix it before you have to go out. It’s seeing someone you adore and trying to emulate them because you have no idea who you are. It’s waking up and trying to be a new person every day. Go vegan, go goth, go hipster, go glamour, cut your hair, change your makeup, gain weight, lose weight, and never feel quite there. Ever.

It’s comprehending ‘love’ as ‘pity’ and wanting to rip yourself apart if their tone is all too casual when your friend or love interest is returning compliments or affection. It’s regretting saying anything about your mood and desperately trying to turn the conversation around while simultaneously NEEDING to get it out. It’s wanting to bleed yourself dry as opposed to cry in someone’s arms because, at least then, they don’t have to clean your wounds for you. They won’t hate you. They won’t be annoyed. 

It’s the constant battle, every time you get upset, of, “Is this worth being sad about? Is it worth talking about? What is more abusive, talking about this or hiding it? If I tell them I’ll bring them down and I’ll guilt trip them and they will resent me and it will all be my fault. If I don’t, I’m a disgusting liar, I’m manipulative, I’m untrustworthy.”

It’s wondering if you’re faking your symptoms. It’s disassociating and feeling like a ghost for days. It’s feeling like you aren’t real, and then wishing you weren’t. It’s fear, a lack of self, and about a million different thoughts running through your head at all times. It’s trying to live for the people you love as opposed to yourself. It’s feeling suicidal and then feeling bad for feeling suicidal because, whoops, you’re being manipulative. 

tbh the worst thing about being a self aware mentally ill person is that people assume that because you understand your illness you’re automatically able to actually apply your knowledge to your life and cure yourself

Do I know my brain isn’t making the most sense right now?  Yes.  Can I stop it?  No. 

So people with bpd get ridiculed for having irrational emotional responses or fearing nonexistant abandonment, but non-borderlines don’t understand how real and logical it seems to us.

Like I don’t care if it’s a minor issue, even if I know it’s a minor issue, my brain has decided its worth a full on meltdown.

Or if my friend doesn’t respond to my messages, my mind will put pieces together in such a way that being abandoned seems logical.

My brain is really talented at making me believe things and they seem real to me so don’t ridicule me for my emotions

ON A SCALE OF YURI PLISETSKY HOW ARE YOU TODAY?