Ok, yes I love Mexican food. The best in a healthy (um, yeah) diet.
But the irony is that I've spent the better part of my life "on the border".
Have you ever had a friend that hurt themselves with cutting or half-hearted suicide attempts? Who seemed to delight in taking THEIR fault and somehow transferring it to you... so all was YOUR fault? Who flew into blistering rages, their eyes glazing over and seeming to lose touch with reality? Seemingly willing to do ANYTHING when in a rage to lash out and hurt? Nursing and cherishing perceived wrongs almost as though they were trophies?
If you have ever had a friend (most generally a woman) who was like that, you've lived as I have for almost all of my life.
The syndrome has a name. To those who have lived it it's name is horror, confusion. Some call it living in Oz.
But to therapists it's called Borderline Personality Disorder. BPD for short.
Where's the border and what's the disorder? All that in due time.
I first became aware of BPD when my now-estranged wife decided I had it. It was the perfect explanation at that time for the wrongs she "perceived" in me.
Anxious to somehow "fix" the mess our marriage and family had become, I attempted to own the latest diagnosis made over me.
As an aside, I must relay what my oldest kiddo and I used to call "The Oprah Syndrome". Oprah was on at 4pm I believe. I'd call home and talk to my daughter and ask what was on Oprah. It was self-defense. Because if some deviant male was on, I was in for a rough time when I got home... a new diagnosis of my deficient character.
So this diagnosis was not a new thing, just a new "wrapper" for that accusation that I was an unfit human being. If I could somehow muster a "fix" to this horrible wrong that I was, we would be living in harmony.
I spent a lot of time on the site www.bpdcentral.com . There were small pieces here and there that kinda sorta sounded like me, but it just didn't fit. I had an ability at that time to be able to spend 3 or 4 weeks wrestling with a "diagnosis" and eventually owning it. It almost made me crazy.
The worst part was that because I didn't REALLY fit the diagnosis, I couldn't STAY in the diagnosis. That "convinced repentant" state was required for our marriage to function. But I'd slip up and act normally and not like a sick person trying to get well.
(If you've stuck with me, this may be getting confusing. I'll keep posting these for a while to further explain all this, so it may get clear eventually. I hope.)
At the same time I was in therapy. I'd gone in for therapy because of my wife. She was continually "harming" herself in front of the kids. There was plenty I DID need to work on, and I knew it, but primarily I needed to know how to cope with this. With kids who themselves (at 3 and 4 years old) were saying they "wanted to kill themselves like Mommy".
The day in 2001 that she played like she was going to jump out of a moving car on the F E Everett Turnpike was the day I started looking for a therapist in earnest.
Thank God I found a good one. He not only dealt with me over the long term, but he convinced her to come in and begin a course of treatment for depression (the only diagnosis we had at that time).
My therapist continually sanity checked (for the first time in my life) the outrageous behavior I was living with (more on that later). I'd lived with stuff like this since I can remember, in my own family, and now in my marriage. This hardly seemed outrageous.
But he told me again and again that her behavior was as extreme as it gets. He used the word "psychotic".
As I described her behavior, he started thinking perhaps Bi-polar characteristics were in play. She responded to anti-depressants by becoming far more violent. He suggested Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but as I studied, it just didn't quite fit (close though).
When I suggested the Borderline diagnosis she had made of me, he started chuckling, then apologized and said, "Of course!". Turns out a key trait of the "disorder" is "splitting". Transferring the blackness in their own souls to others so they don't have to own it. She actually found her own diagnosis, then pushed it onto me.
It's a horror to live with. It's impossible to live with if it's full blown. I am the cause of any ill she feels. She is the cause of any good I have or feel. It's like living with a constant ego-suck. If I'm ok, I won't be for long, because she feeds on that. If she's cruddy, she won't be for long, because she vomits that out onto me and our kids (a couple in particular).
I'll stop this overlong post for now, but ask the reader to reflect on this passage from the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. Chapter 12:
On the Border. Not a nice place to live. No love there, no matter what promises were given. A lousy place to be a kid.
4 Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: 15 looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled; 16 lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. 17 For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.
D
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