The Background
Borderline Personality Disorder. These words can be daunting. What does it mean? Will I be okay? How will this affect my life as I know it? I have BPD. I refer to it as “constant suffering.” Your mind does not stop. It is constantly looking for the smallest sleight, pondering when the next person will leave, reminding you over and over how you are not good enough. For anyone. Ever.
For me, BPD has been a constant presence in my life. I remember feeling huge feelings from the time I was little. I was very sensitive, and I cried. A LOT. I was very quiet and shy. Then I had a life-changing experience. Fourth grade. I come in from recess and hear my teacher saying “I hate that Amber Howard girl” to another teacher. What?! Of course my feelings were hurt. I didn’t understand. I ran to the bathroom and cried. Then I had a lightbulb moment. I was suddenly conscious of everything around me. And if she hated me for who I was, a quiet girl who barely talked and never got in trouble, I was going to change who I was and really make her hate me. Yes, that was my plan. I became a rebel who constantly got into trouble, a truly hated girl. And I didn’t care. My home life wasn’t any better. I rebelled against my abusive overbearing mother. She was very mean to me. I felt scared all the time. I was always confused by what was happening. I didn’t know when she would blow up next. More on this subject later.
Now to get a little technical. According to the DSM, Borderline Personality Disorder is “ a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. What this means is that we will do anything we can to avoid someone leaving us, abandoning us. Everything in our relationship could be going fine, and one look or one comment could send us spiraling. We may be imagining the abandonment. We see what we want to see. We want them to leave, but we don’t want them to leave. And we will do whatever we devise in our brains to stop it, to make them stay. We may threaten them, with suicide, with physical harm, or with anything we can. Anything to make the feelings stop. We can’t handle the feelings. It drives us crazy. I have dealt with this many times, especially in love relationships. If I felt like I was going to be abandoned, or if I was abandoned, I would do anything and everything I could to get that person back. I would send a million texts, I would call a thousand times. And if I got no response, I would take it to the next level. I always started with suicide. Why did I want to live anymore if the person I loved, the one who promised to ALWAYS be there, didn’t even want me? I felt like they wouldn’t care if I killed myself, and in fact they were encouraging it. I felt hopeless and worthless. I would “try” to kill myself, a pathetic attempt just to show them that I was serious. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. They would come back for awhile, and then abandon me again. Over and over. It was heartbreaking. So I became angry, at myself, at them. Then the rage would begin…
A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. Say you meet a person, someone who makes your heart flip. Then say that you begin to idolize this person, because they’re smart, funny, compassionate. They are suddenly the only one for you. You LOVE them. You can’t live without them. You attach yourself to them in your mind and your soul. Now say that person makes a comment about something you do. Your mind starts playing tricks on you. You start to think that this person must not really love you if they insult you like that, even though what they said may not have been intended as an insult. Then your mind goes to the next thought. I Hate Them. You can’t stand them suddenly. Just the thought of them makes you sick with depression, fear, and anger. Then you lash out. Then they say how much they love you and give you some hope. So you love them again, you need them, you can’t live without them. This cycle will keep happening until that person can’t take it anymore and abandons you for good. One of my ex-boyfriends, Paul O., was the love of my life. I idolized him. He was smart and articulate. He claimed to be romantic and sentimental. I was head over heels for him. But…he was not what he claimed to be. He was distant and cold. Heartless. A narcissist. He made me so sad. I was sick just at the thought of him. And I was angry that he had tricked me. But…I still loved him. Sick, right? My mind told me that he was bad for me, that he would never really love me, that he wasn’t capable of loving anyone. But my heart yearned for him, yearned for those few seconds of happiness with him, a romantic gesture, a deep kiss. I bounced back and forth between idealizing him and despising him. This went on for years…
-Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self- image or sense of self. People with BPD do not know who they are. We are like chameleons. Depending on what kind of people we are with, we will take on the characteristics of those people. We do this because we do not want anyone to harm us. We pre-determine that someone will hurt us in some way. So we take measures to not let that happen. We do whatever it takes to lessen our suffering. We also don’t know who we are. We have never known exactly who we are, what our boundaries are, what our likes and dislikes are, what we are willing to do for others, and what we expect others to do for us. It’s all a blur to us. But we are very good at fitting in almost anywhere because of our ability to change ourselves. I would add that some of us may suffer from low self-esteem. Since we don’t know who we are, we become hopeless and start to feel worthless, then we start to believe it. I remember times during my life where I changed who I was to fit in. It’s easy to do. I can fit in with the poor and homeless, and I can also fit in with the rich and priveledged. My ex-husband, Brian K., was an addict alcoholic. I was not. Yet I fit in with him and his friends when they were smoking crack. I did not smoke crack, but was able to change my mentality to their mentality. And thus avoid having any problems. And the more we change ourselves for everyone else, the more our real self slips away.
-Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g. spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). People with BPD tend to want to self-sabotage, so they impulsively do these things mentioned above, because they want to feel bad about themselves, they want to keep recreating their damage over and over. When we are in a depression, we may go out and spend all our money on useless things, or binge eat to try to fill the void in our life. When we are in an anger rage, we may use substances or drive recklessly, and have thoughtless, impulsive sex with whoever. I am myself terrible with money, I will spend it impulsively, even if it’s just for some coffee. I will know in my logical brain that I cannot afford to keep buying coffees everyday, but my borderline brain urges me on to do it. I have also used substances to try and figure things out. I’ve used them impulsively and not impulsively. Mostly weed, but once or twice pills, and a short stint with cocaine. Drugs didn’t help what I needed help with though. My medication is a different story though… When I used to rage uncontrollably, I would drive recklessly and not give it a second thought. I would also have sex with strangers, co-workers, old friends, whoever. But that is not all I did when I was in a BPD anger rage. I did bad things. But more on that later.
-Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior. Ahh suicide. The ultimate out. Mixed with impulsivity it is not a good thing. One small sleight and our train of thought will be: they don’t like me anymore, nobody will ever like me, I’m worthless, I’ll show them how little I mean, it’s hopeless, I feel like I should do the world a favor and just kill myself. And if we are in a rage or a deep depression, we will try to kill ourselves. It’s not a cry for help. It’s a cry for understanding. Do we really want to kill ourselves? Yes, sometimes we really do. But sometimes we just need someone to want to help us, somebody to take the knife out of our hand and tell us that everything will be okay, and that they’ll be there until the end. All of my suicide attempts circled around relationships I was in. He would say my feelings are stupid and don’t matter. Over and over and over. At first I was just sad. Until the thousandth time he said it, and then I got angry. My sadness turned to rage. My rage took me to places I didn’t want to be, made me someone I didn’t want to be. A monster. So now I felt sad, angry, and guilty for feeling those ways. Then I would impulsively take a bunch of pills, or drive to the top of a cliff and ponder what would happen if I were to actually kill myself. Would anybody even care? Of course the answer was no, and that made me feel even worse. I would also threaten to commit suicide often. But looking back at it now, that didn’t help anything. Either my threat would be ignored, or I would end up being taken by the police to the psychiatric hospital. Both outcomes were bad. If my threats were ignored, that would make me feel even more like I was worthless and that I really should be dead. If I ended up at the psychiatric hospital, I would talk my way out and still be feeling just as hopeless and worthless as before.
-Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g. intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety, usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days). Basically what this is saying is that we have instability of our moods, whether it be hopelessness, anxiety, or irritability/anger, just to name a few. One second we can be happy go lucky, all is well with the world, and the next we could be angry and rageful. It is an intense experience, and one that could come with grave consequences. It is not fun. We hurt others feelings. We hurt ourselves. This unpredictability in moods changes us and changes the people we are around, because no one, not even ourselves, knows when it will happen. That is why this hurts people. They get scared because they’re not expecting what happens. And they get angry because they want to be in control, and when we’re out of control, they feel out of control also. Then they lash out at us. And we lash right back. But harder. This happened a lot with Paul O. Everything would be fine, and then he would say something to me that I found demeaning, like how my feelings don’t matter, and I would instantaneously become very angry, which I found perfectly fine because I had a right to get angry. But he didn’t feel that way. One of the ways he lashed out at me was to ignore me (gasp), one of the very worst things you can do to a person with Borderline. That would just make me angrier, even rageful. Again, more on this later…-Chronic feelings of emptiness. Like there is something missing. We don’t know what it is, and the feeling never goes away. We try to fill this empty spot with relationships, kids, money, sex, drugs, or any multitude of things. But that does not work. The feeling persists. It is constant and daunting. When I was sixteen I tried to fill the emptiness with art. I would put my heart and soul into my art projects in a vain attempt to stop that feeling. It worked for awhile. Then I tried a different method. I got a job that I loved and put my heart and soul into that. It didn’t work though, so I tried art again. When that didn’t work, I went into the army. Then I got married. Then we had kids. None of that filled the empty void in my soul. And that’s when I turned to sex. I had sex with so many people that I don’t remember most of their names. This definitely didn’t help me. So I tried relationships again. What a mistake! That’s when I decided to start working on myself, for myself. Not for anybody else. The feeling of emptiness is still there, but I feel it fading away with the more work I do on my own well-being.
-Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g. frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights). This is one of those things that we as people with BPD struggle with. One of the reasons we struggle with it is because all of the other symptoms cause us anger. At others and at ourselves. When we have an abundance of negative emotions flooding our brain, we become angry, rageful, and could even black out, or dissociate. I have blacked out from anger many times. I call it a rage blackout. And during these blackouts I wasn’t aware of what I was doing. What I was doing was some pretty bad stuff. I could have gotten into big trouble. But during the rages I didn’t care. I took no second look at what I was doing. I didn’t even know what I was doing. It was all impulsive.
-Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms. We sometimes get a little paranoid, a little stressed out, a little angry. And sometimes these feelings get so intense that we dissociate, we disconnect from ourselves. I used to be a very angry girl. And I would get so angry that I would black out. We black out when we can’t handle the feelings that we’re feeling. Then we do things when we’re blacked out and we don’t remember what we did. And the things we do are usually destructive to ourselves and others. I used to black out all the time. I was told what I did after the fact. I got myself into trouble more than once.
Now that all that stuff is out of the way, let’s get to some good stuff. My story. It was 2014, and I was taking weekend college classes. It was the first day, so the advisors had set out a lunch for us. It was very nice, After classes were over I told my job that I could work. So they sent me to deliver medications to a city about an hour away. On the way there I started to not feel good very quickly. I had to pull over to puke at least five times. When I finally made it to the nursing home I was delivering meds to, I could barely stand. I asked one of the workers where the closest emergency room was. It was about five minutes away. So I headed there. I again had to pull over several times. When I got to the emergency room I told them what was happening, and how I thought I had food poisoning from the lunch at the college, but the doctors told me I had appendicitis and would have to have surgery. My boyfriend, Paul O., came to see me that night. I asked him if he could come in the morning after my surgery and see me and give me a ride home and take care of me. He said yes. I suffered through the rest of the night, and when the morning and my surgery came, I was relieved. I was in so much pain. I just wanted it to stop. So they did the surgery and when I came to I looked up and my parents were sitting there. Where was Paul? What was happening? Why wasn’t he there like he said he would be? I felt fearful and abandoned. He abandoned me. And I had no idea why. He wasn’t answering my calls or texts. I was so hurt. And I knew he didn’t care. Obviously he didn’t care. He straight up abandoned me when I needed him the most. What the hell. After a whole day of him ignoring me, I began to feel angry, and the longer it went on that he wasn’t contacting me, the madder I got. I tried to be okay, but the anger took over. I was in a rage. I dissociated, blacked out. I don’t know what I did. But whatever it was, it was fueled by rage, so it couldn’t have been good. The rage came from the hurt. The hurt came from being abandoned. I found out later the things that I had done. Added him to email lists, signed him up for gay porn and funeral home emails, and I’m not even sure what else. He abandoned me. I felt that my actions were justified. But I know they weren’t.
The Characteristics
The following are some basic characteristics of Borderline Personality Disorder.
Swinging from emotion to emotion. We can go from happy to sad to anger to rage in a matter of seconds. We can be depressed and hopeless one day and be upbeat and irritated the next. We never know what emotions are going to spring up or when. We cannot help this. It is an instantaneous reaction. And there are many reasons this can happen. We may get insulted by someone. We may even imagine that we get insulted. Or there may be no reason at all.
Acting impulsively. Yes, we tend to act impulsively, especially when we are in an episode, or when we have stressful or traumatic times. We dye or cut our hair, we drive recklessly, we are sexually promiscuous, we gamble or spend money. We do anything we feel we want to do at the moment.
Angry outbursts. Sometimes our triggers get the best of us, and we act without thinking. We may react instantly in an angry way, we may yell or curse, we may scream or throw things, we may put our fist through a wall, we may hit or get physical with another person. I have broken my own things before-glasses and cell phones. I have thrown lit cigarettes at people. I have blacked out from anger and done things that I did not remember.
Emotional episodes. We are very emotional people. We have high highs and low lows. And our emotions are always extreme, whether it be love, hate, apathy, or anything else. The littlest things can set us off down the winding path of insanity. It can also lead to making impulsive decisions. Which leads us to our next characteristic.
Decisions and actions made with little or no thought. Impulsive behavior. When we get into an episode, sometimes we tend to act impulsively. When this occurs we do not take into account the consequences of our actions. Some examples of impulsive behavior are driving recklessly, promiscuous sex, spending sprees, threatening others, self-mutilation, shoplifting, and physically fighting with others. Another major impulsive behavior is suicidal thoughts, behaviors, and actions. Statistics show that seventy five percent of BPD people attempt suicide, with an astonishing ten percent succeeding.
Low self-esteem. We feel worthless and unlovable. We are hopeless about our future. We have very bad self-image issues. All those things equal low self-esteem. I always said that I had less than zero self-esteem. And, even now, even though I am in the process of healing, it is very hard to raise my self-esteem. I know I am worthy of happiness and success, but it’s still a struggle.
Strong need for relationship. We want to have a mate, a soulmate to be exact. We want that fairy tale ending. So when we first meet someone we like, we immediately put them on a pedestal, thinking that they are that knight in shining armor, that princess that will make us whole and prove to ourselves that we are actually worthy of love. But that will surely not be the case, according to the DSM-5, which states one of the symptoms of BPD is “intense, unstable, and conflicted personal relationships.
Desperation. When an issue arises and conflict begins in our relationships, we may become desperate to fix what is wrong. We take extreme measures to make sure the other person does not leave or abandon us. This is the result of years of trauma and abuse. We don’t know how to have normal relationships, how to live with others, or how to get our needs met the normal way.
Strong need for love and approval. We need a lot of reassurance, to the point of needing it constantly. If we don’t receive these reassurances to our standard, we end up feeling worthless.
Perceives rejection easily. One word, one look, one day of silence; we perceive this as rejection. It makes us feel worthless and unlovable. And we don’t like this feeling. We act upon this feeling, usually impulsively. We obsess over the rejection for hours, or days. It takes over our mind. We feel so rejected that we start to think about suicide. It just takes over.
Tends to obsess. Yes, we definitely obsess! We obsess over anything and sometimes everything. If we feel rejected, as explained above, if we feel slighted, if we feel suicidal, if we feel overwhelmed, if we feel worthless or unloved, if we feel sad or upset. There are many different things we obsess about.
Easily sees criticism. We see criticism even when there is no criticism present. Someone may say something that is not necessarily critical toward us, but we take it as a jab, a criticism. We feel that person hates us, that we are unlovable, and that the world would be better off without us in it. Yes, we end up feeling suicidal even when there is no reason to.
Sensitive. We are sensitive creatures. We have no emotional skin, so we feel things much more than everyone else. When people we love hurt us, or we perceive hurt, we suddenly and instantaneously feel worthless, unlovable, and sad.
Episodes of anger, rage, and depression. When we get hurt over and over by the people that we love, that sadness will eventually turn into anger, and that anger, when we feel it time and time again, will turn into rage. We will have recurring episodes of anger and rage, and depression and sadness. We will act erratically and impulsively, not caring about the consequences. We will scare the people closest to us. They will not know what to do with us.
Strong risk for suicide/suicide attempts. About seventy-five percent of people with BPD will attempt suicide, with ten percent achieving success. The reason we are so at risk for suicide is because we tend to feel worthless and suicidal so easily. All it could take is one word, one look, one day of ignoring us, if we don’t receive a text back or an expected phone call. All of these things can make us feel worthless, unloved, and suicidal. It can be an instantaneous feeling, which leads us to impulsive reckless behavior, which can lead us to act in suicidal ways.
Separation anxiety. When we aren’t with the person or people that we love, we tend to feel anxiety. We may feel anxiety because we miss them, because we don’t trust them, because we think they are hurting us, because they aren’t texting us like we’d like, or calling when we want. We cannot be separated from them. We want to be with them all the time. There are many reasons why. It could be so many different things. When we are separated, we tend to obsess about what is happening without us and why they are not with us. Obsessing can lead to feelings of rejection, which can lead to depression and anger, which can lead to suicidal feelings and behaviors. We feel that the people or person we love are the only thing that can save our life, but they are also the reason we want to die. Without the people we love, we cannot survive.
Intense abandonment fears. We feel abandoned at the slightest of movements. We feel abandoned when someone says something bad about us, or we think they meant something bad, we feel abandoned when our lover or loved ones reject us, or we feel they are rejecting us, we feel abandoned when someone actually does abandon us, when they don’t text or call us like we think they should, when they give us the silent treatment, when they talk bad about us behind our backs, when they talk bad about us to our faces, when they leave us alone and lonely. And when they are not doing the things mentioned above, we fear them doing those things. We are fearful all of the time.
Feel they need to prevent abandonment. We will do whatever it takes to prevent feeling abandoned. We will make plans, have strategies, make compromises, have lists of things to do, and go over these plans with our loved ones over and over, hoping that they will follow our plan so that they don’t abandon us. Because we know what will happen if they don’t do what we ask, we know we will end up feeling abandoned, worthless, and want to kill ourselves. We will do anything to avoid these feelings.
Self-image is highly unstable and highly guarded behind strong defense mechanisms. Yes, we do not know who we are exactly. We are not sure of what our ideals are, and we do not know how to set boundaries. We hide behind some very interesting things. We can change our image depending on who we are with. This is a defense mechanism because we don’t want anyone to not like us or to say bad things about us, so we become chameleons. We change when we want to, and it’s okay because we don’t really know ourselves .
The Start
Experts tend to agree that it is a mixture of psychological, social, biological, and environmental factors that help form Borderline Personality Disorder. For me, I believe it was a mixture of all of the above. I have blocked out many parts of my childhood, but I will recollect all that I can. My earliest memory was learning to ride a bike at 5 years old. My dad was helping me and my mom was behind him yelling at him to help me better, and ruining the moment. He was probably drinking, something my mom hates. She loves to fuck with him when he’s drunk. And I believe he drank everyday. That didn’t matter to me. He was fun. He was the good parent. Although he was the better parent, he also did ignore every sign of my mom’s abuse towards me. I think he just thought I was a bad kid. He didn’t realize, or even know, that I was enduring trauma and abuse while he was at work everyday. This is an example of social factor. My mom neglected and abused me and my dad ignored the problem. So I was let down in more than one way. My thoughts and feelings as a child were not validated by either of my parents. Nor were they validated by others, such as teachers and authority figures. And just like the situation in fourth grade, I couldn’t help but have a sour taste in my mouth for these teachers. And the worst part of it all was that I attended a Catholic grade school. The whole situation made me question religion. I decided that I was no longer Catholic. Too many hypocrites, not that I knew what a hypocrite was at that age, I just knew something wasn’t right. SOMETHING wasn’t right. Why was this happening to me? I was so vulnerable. I was a child. I shouldn’t have had to endure that trauma.
In a nutshell, my childhood wasn’t what it should have been. It was dark.
It was disturbed. I was scared all the time. I cried all the time. I knew what was happening was wrong. I tried to stop it. But they were too strong to fight. I was just a scared little girl. People were mean to me. My mom was mean to me. She would tell me all the time that she wished I was never born. She would drive me to school and hit me right before I got out of the car, so my eyes would be all red when I went inside. Mean. Cruel really. That was my life. And as the years went on and the abuse went on I grew more and more rebellious. I would yell back. Not a good idea. I would get thrown down the stairs. I remember feeling very suicidal. That’s when I turned to art. Creating something out of nothing helped me, made me feel better. I threw myself into it. Anything to not have to think about what I was going through. I was constantly trying to come up with new ideas. I wrote poetry. I was in the choir at school. I was in every play and musical they had. I think I was constantly blocking out the bad things that were happening to me by keeping myself busy and distracted. I often dissociated. My mind couldn’t handle the abuse and the feelings I was having. So I became that other part of me. And it helped me to not remember. I didn’t want to remember. I cry as I write this because the feelings I had then started coming back to me. It’s a familiar feeling, and one that I despise.
When I was sixteen I had my first real boyfriend and he listened to me and comforted me. That helped me. The next time my mom hit me I called the police. I told them everything. They told me that because I was white and lived in a good neighborhood that the abuse wasn’t happening, that I was wrong. They didn’t listen. I ran away. I went to my boyfriend’s house. I told his mom and dad all the things that I was having to deal with. They listened to me. I couldn’t believe it. The police called them and asked if they had seen me. They said no. They helped me. There was a hearing at children’s court. The judge ordered that I go live with my grandma. I was happy. She was my mom’s mom, but she was the most caring person I’ve ever met in my life. The exact opposite of my mom. She loved me. She helped me. That is why my grandma means so much to me. She saved me. I loved living with her, There was no fear, no waiting for the next bad thing. I finally had a little peace. But the damage was already done. I was a victim of child abuse. I live with that everyday.. Somebody who was supposed to love me didn’t. And now I crave that love, and it’s never been satisfied. And that leads me to the next chapter of my life.
The Circumstances
I moved out on my own when I was eighteen. I was going to art school, I worked a good job, and I had good friends. I worked at a coffee shop. And I loved it. That’s where I met Sharon S. She was my co-worker. And she was twice my age. But she was very cool. I developed a crush on her. And she knew it. And she encouraged it. She would have me come over to her house and hang out all the time with her and her husband. That’s when the trouble started. Her husband liked me. Who wouldn’t like a cute little eighteen year old girl being over at their house every other day. He certainly liked it. And I didn’t know any better. Sharon had told me that her and her husband had formerly been in a three way relationship. So what was I to think? I wanted that with them. But her husband’s like for me won out, and ruined everything. He asked Sharon if it was okay that he fucked me. She said to go ahead and do it. So we did. Later in my life I talked to Sharon and she told me that while her husband and I were having sex, she was sitting at the top of the stairs, gun in hand, contemplating whether to come kill us. I had no idea. She had told us to go ahead, so I was confused. Oh well. After that situation Sharon got promoted to manager and transferred to a different store, and I never saw her again. So I continued to work and go to school like usual. Things got back to normal. That’s when I met Allie Ann B. She was fun. She was different. Unique. I liked that. We decided to be roommates. It was cool…at first. Then Allie Ann decided that buying weed was more important than paying her half of the bills. I don’t really remember what happened next. I know that we weren’t talking to each other. Then one day she asked me if I wanted to do acid with her. So I said okay. And it was really fun. We were okay for those 12 hours. Then it was back to not talking to each other. We did this a few times. Those were the fun times. Everything else was bad. I remember her calling the police on me. I was sleeping in my room when somebody knocked at the door. Before I had a chance to answer, a cop comes walking into my room. He said that my roommate told them that I was doing drugs and that they should search my room. I told him to go ahead and search. He found nothing. Little did he know that in the next room my roommate had an ounce of weed. Ridiculous. I was pissed. Again, I don’t remember what happened next. Meanwhile I was still working and going to school. Then I ran out of money for my tuition, so I just kept working. We had a regular customer who was a Sargent in the Army. He would talk about the Army and the adventures he had, and it sounded intriguing. And I wasn’t really doing anything else. So I decided to enlist. I was needing a challenge in my life, and this sounded perfect. For the next six months I was at basic training and AIT. It was definitely a challenge. I cried a few times. I remember just doing what I was told. But as life goes, there was some discord. I remembered some guy told me he liked me and then he kept badgering me. And I did not like it, and I did not like him. It got to the point that I felt like he was harassing me. So I decided to let him know in a very creative way to leave me alone. I cut out pictures and letters from magazines and put together a little letter for him. I included pictures of Hitler, and the burning fires of hell. He got the message. What I did wasn’t nice, but I had to let him know that his advances were unwanted. Not that I didn’t like any guys while I was there. I did. And I even had sex with a few of them. My rebelliousness did come out a little bit while I was there. I smoked. That was a big no-no. But I did anyway. I left and went off base one night, which I did not have permission to do. But I miraculously did not get caught doing any of these things. I ended up graduating with honors, and I was sure damn proud of myself. After that I went back to work again. That’s when I met my now ex-husband. He was a customer at the store I worked at. He was charming. He wrote me a note and handed it to me. I called him two weeks later. We went out. Bam! Whirlwind romance. I fell hard for him. And him for me. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.
We got married four months later. That’s when it all started to go downhill. Brian, my now ex-husband, started drinking. At twenty years old I was very naïve. I didn’t know what I was in for. I was used to my dad drinking. But my dad was fun and funny when he was drunk. Brian was the exact opposite. He was verbally abusive, calling me a bitch and saying how I was worthless and that my feelings didn’t matter. He was very cruel. I cried all the time. Then he started to get physical. I remember the first time. He was drunk. He was yelling at me. Then he grabbed me by the throat and threw me against the wall. I hit my head on the edge of the window frame. I was stunned. I had flashbacks of my mom. He must have realized what he had done, because he immediately apologized and said how bad he felt for doing this. I don’t know why I forgave him. I probably thought that this was going to be a one time thing. But it wasn’t a one time thing. He continued to beat me.
The physical abuse was bad, but it was the mental abuse that hurt me the most. It was unbearable. I was screaming on the inside all the time. I cried myself to sleep most nights. I was so hurt. And eventually all that hurt turned into anger. I started to yell back. I got beat more. The neighbors would call the police because we were fighting so loud. I don’t remember a lot about these times because I have blocked out the majority of it. What I do remember though is how I felt. I felt like shit, I felt worthless. And Brian would reiterate this by telling me how worthless and stupid I was. I would lash out. I remember times when I would break things, my own things, such as my glasses or my cell phone. I don’t know why I did that. It was sometime around this time that Brian started using harder drugs than alcohol. I remember coming home from somewhere and the neighbor lady said something to him. I asked how he knew her. Turns out she sold crack. He was using crack, spending all the money we had on it. Several times throughout the years he did something like this. It made me very angry.
Anger and rage were predominant themes throughout our marriage. We fought all the time. About everything. It was a toxic relationship. But we both stuck it through, neither of us wanting to quit or admit that it was as bad as it was. And it was bad. The fighting was bad, the physical, mental, and psychological abuse was bad, our financial situation was bad, our living situation was bad. Everything was very negative. The next year we were living in Cudahy and there was several incidents of police involvement because of our constant fighting, there was me taking the blame for his weed the cops found, there was also the time Brian raped me. It was demeaning. I felt like nothing. I felt nothing. I was numb. It was early 2003 when I found out that I was pregnant with our first child. I think I must have had some kind of hope that this was going to make things better. But the abuse continued. I couldn’t understand how this was my life. This wasn’t who I was. My life was in a whirlwind. I blocked out bad things as soon as they happened. I had to or I wouldn’t have been able to survive. Late that year we decided we needed a change, so we moved to California. What a colossal mistake that ended up being. There was an incident. I ended up getting a domestic violence charge against me. In reality it was self-defense, but to the eyes of the court I was guilty. I was ordered to have no contact with Brian (which didn’t happen), I had to go to 52 weeks of anger management training, and I got fines upon fines. I couldn’t wait to get back to Wisconsin. Not that a move back would reunite us or help our situation. The only thing holding us together was our daughter. I held a silent rage towards Brian. Every word out of his mouth stung me like a bee. Every time he interrupted me and tell me how my feelings are stupid, I was livid.
That’s around when we found out we were going to have another baby. We lived on the far north side of Milwaukee, and had no car at the time. So I had to take the bus to my doctor appointments. Brian usually wouldn’t go with me. He stayed with our daughter Aura. We fought a lot during these times. He was drinking and doing drugs again. I couldn’t stand it. He also had a really bad addiction to porn. Which I also couldn’t stand. By the time we had our second daughter we were doing really bad. He would hit me and because I was so hurt by him and so angry towards him, I would hit back. I remember one time he was so drunk and he started beating me and I was so hurt and rageful, that I hit him in the head with a frying pan. He went down hard. When he woke up and realized what had happened, he attacked me. Keep in mind that our daughters were witnesses to all of this. We didn’t stay at that apartment for long. My friend Molly and her husband asked us to move into the second floor of a duplex they were buying, so that’s what we did. It was on 15th and Becher, the south side of Milwaukee. I hated it so much. Molly and her husband kept raising the rent on us because they couldn’t afford their mortgage payment. This started a fight between us and them. We ended up moving out shortly after. We moved to the southwest side of Milwaukee, a much better neighborhood than where we had just been. It was here that Brian got into a big coke habit. He would do it off a mirror that had been a sentimental item to me. He would do it in front of our daughters. I had to take our money and give it to Brian’s sister’s boyfriend so Brian couldn’t spend any more money. Meanwhile, I worked, I paid the bills, and he did none of those things. Our whole relationship I worked while he did not. I had lots of jobs, lots of waitressing jobs, among other things. Brian was pissed at me for taking away the money. He left. I couldn’t take it. Even though he was a giant asshole, I still felt like he was abandoning me. I freaked out. I don’t remember what happened after that. I must have blacked out.
Later that year we were all sick and so we went to the doctor. They wanted to give me some medicine and asked if I was pregnant. I said “Nooooooooo.” They wanted to check anyway. They came back later and said “Uh, yes, you are pregnant.” I couldn’t believe it. I was sitting there holding my baby daughter and I was blown away. Oh no. This was not good. Bringing another baby into this mess of a family wasn’t what I had planned. But it was what it was. Life went on. The fighting continued. The abuse, both physical and mental, continued. Then we found out something terrible. At my five month checkup the doctor told us for one thing that the baby was a boy, and for another thing that there was too much fluid around him and he could have a horrible disease and not live past a day once he’s born. Brian and I cried together. But that didn’t last long. I felt very alone. It was at this time that I started working at the South Shore Yacht Club, a private members-only club. I loved it there. The people were nice, the tips were good, and I didn’t feel alone. But the abuse at home creeped into my work life. Brian had punched me in the face and given me a black eye. I went to work. I was praying that somebody would mention it, ask me about it, but nobody did. I think they knew. I had told them that Brian was mentally abusive but was too embarrassed to tell them about the physical stuff. I worked right up to the end of my pregnancy. My baby boy was born on March 26th, and he was healthy and fine. I breathed a sigh of relief. I went back to work two weeks later. Later that year they hired somebody new to be our boss. His name was Dan. He was funny and direct. I loved going to work because every day there was a good day. Dan was a good boss. But one day he came up behind me and told me that I smelled good. Bam. Somebody was giving me positive treatment! I loved it. That was the beginning of a year and a half affair with my boss. He was nice to me. He would give me compliments and tell me how good I was. And the sex was awesome. We did it all over that yacht club. And the best part was that my husband could not come into my work, so he had no idea what was going on. I think my BPD took over at this time, because I got into having a lot of promiscuous sex with a lot of different people. Guys and girls. I had a lot of fun but I did end up feeling guilty about it all. A few years later I stopped working at the yacht club and started waitressing somewhere else. Right after I started I received a text from Mike G., a member of the club. He asked me if I wanted to hang out sometime. Hmm. I wondered what this was all about. Turned out that Mike and his wife were divorcing and I was going to be his rebound chick. I couldn’t say no for some reason. This turned into having another affair. Mike was nice to me. He made me breakfast. He fucked me for hours and made me feel so good. I would waitress at my job till nine or ten at night, then go to Mike’s place. I would stay there til two or three in the morning. I told Brian that I was working or hanging out with people from work. He had his suspicions. But he never found out. I suppose he will find out if he reads this book, but I don’t think he will.
While this was all going on, the mental abuse continued. The physical abuse had stopped but the psychological stuff just got harsher and harder to take. I did not feel guilty for cheating on Brian. I felt that he deserved it. He had cheated on me more than once, so I didn’t care. We had to move again. So we packed up the kids and moved down the street into a very nice duplex. We lived upstairs. Brian was very paranoid during this time for some reason. He blamed me for everything. He told me I was stupid. He said he wished he never met me. He said that my feelings did not matter. He told me I wasn’t smart. And he wasn’t nice about it. He was rude and cruel. I felt worthless.
The next place we lived wasn’t much better. It was still mental abuse. It was still everything that I hated. I concentrated on the kids and work. I worked at some waitressing job I’m sure. I don’t remember a lot about the next three years. It was a blur of raising kids and unhappiness. It was then that I decided I was done with this relationship. I was no longer in love with Brian. I wanted out.
To Be Continued.
Comments
Post a Comment