I'm Not Scared of Much, But I'm Afraid of Losing You Draft 1

There was a time when I was afraid of the dark, as most children are. It wasn't the lack of light so much as simply the unknown since I could no longer see. I had to learn to go on blind trust that things would be okay, even when the last bits of light disappeared from the windows. As I grew, I learned to almost embrace the darkness in a different sort of way. It's almost as if I connected the darkness to you, like I connected it to the loss of innocence and the feelings that came with age. I found a comfort in what you offered, in what we both had inside. But as the sun rose each morning, it was time for you to hide. I'm not scared of the darkness now, but I was afriad I'd lose you then.

There was a time when I was afraid of elevators after we watched that episode of "Fresh Prince of Bel Air." Oh, come on, you know that one! I think it was the panic, the thought of being trapped, that made me terrified. As time passed, I found myself getting trapped in other ways, ways that didn't involve walls at all: I became trapped inside my mind. Sometimes it would be replaying the day's events, someone's voice, the way I felt when they'd all throw me aside. I learned that the only time I felt free was with you, and together we learned how to really hide. Now I'm not scared of elevators all that much, but I was afraid I'd lose you then.

There was a time when I was afraid of men, specifically, well, you know who. At first I tried to be brave, but everyone either laughed or said I'd told lies. So my only choice was to let you lead, let you decide. You showed me how to shut it down, how to be the doormat. "It's better this way," you'd say, and even in those most difficult moments I wanted to believe you because I couldn't afford for you to leave. I'm still a little scared of men, but not as afraid as I was that I might lose you then.

Now I'm 30, and here we are: we've come to a crossroads. I've spent my entire life trying to be this perfect person while inside I'm screaming in the dark. I've never known who I really am or why I'm even alive. There's always been that part of me, though, that I knew was mine: and that was you. You are the scars all over my arms and some parts of my legs. You are the secrets and the fears, you are the calm but also the storm. They've given you a name, initials BPD. Apparently this entire time what I thought was me was actually a personality disorder. So was any of it ever real, what was you and what was me? Although most of the world is black and white, we've always been blurred together with shades of grey. Now that I'm finally aware, and working on improving me, I'm terrified that recovery means losing you, which is really losing me. Does practicing these skills and the knowledge that helps make "life worth living" mean that I have to give up on you? Does this mean the end? What if all I've ever known crumbles and falls into the sea? I'm not afraid of much at all, not even my own death, but I'm so fucking scared of losing myself today.

What My Borderline Personality Disorder "Fear of Abandonment" Looks Like

One of the major struggles for people with borderline personality disorder is the fear of abandonment. We go to sometimes extreme efforts to avoid abandonment. This seems to often be one of the most misunderstood aspects of the borderline: to many we are seen as selfish, manipulative, demanding, and unpredictable. The truth is we are just constantly living our lives in fear of ourselves and others; we are afraid to be heartbroken but we are afraid to be alone. It's literally the title of a book: "I hate you; don't leave me."

My fear of abandonment runs deep and impacts much of what I say or how I spend my time. I will sometimes ask lots of confusing, vague, or repetitive questions because I just need my friends to talk to me, comfort me, or reassure me that they aren't going to abandon me. I'll constantly ask what they see in me, why they are friends with me, or what they think about me. I will often suggest that my friends would be better without me, that I don't actually do anything for them, or that I am needy. I constantly thank my friends for even the smallest of things, send them random cards or gifts just to remind them I care, and send them text messages that say things like, "Happy Monday!" or "Haven't talked to you in a few days and just wanted to say that I love you!"

My friends have referred to the questions and some of the other extreme measures as "fishing," "testing," or "manipulating" them. To my friends, my constant pushes to get them to either remind me of my good points or somehow support me in my own self-destruction is very stressful and extremely unfair. I've lost friends due to this inability to rein in my fears of abandonment and the impulsivity it causes. I've also had friends simply tell me that they are not qualified to deal with me when I do these things. They say that it puts them in a difficult place that there is no way for them to navigate through, but to me it is just that desire to have someone care about me and that fear that nobody does that pushes me to do what I do.

The actions I take because of my fear of abandonment are exactly what fuels the fire; my constant reaching and questioning are the cause of most of the falling outs that happen in my life. When I don't get the responses I feel that I need, I sometimes either become more aggressive in my quest to get them or I turn to violence on myself. This means self-harm, other unhealthy coping mechanisms, or even suicidal ideation. Instead of finding relief, though, these actions only perpetuate the cycle and fuel my quest for attention even more.

Here's the thing: I don't want to be this way. I don't want to be manipulative, selfish, or harmful to those that I love. I don't want to live my life this way forever, but I also don't see the exit strategy currently. I'm pushing myself to see both sides of the coin, to find the truth in all perspectives. My dialectical behavior therapy is trying to teach me that there is truth in everything, that all perspectives are valid and can co-exist. My therapist reminds me multiple times each week that "everything in this moment is just as it should be." Currently this means accepting that my fear of abandonment does make me seem manipulative. It also means recognizing and accepting this means I am making progress towards a healthier version of myself: a version of myself that someday may not be constantly afraid of being alone.

Walking the Borderline

The word “borderline” was used in first labeling borderline personality disorder because it was thought to be “on the borderline” between psychosis and neurosis. While it’s not an entirely accurate description now that more research has been done on the disorder, it seems to be accurate for me to say I’m “on the borderline.” I feel that in many aspects of my life, I’m constantly pushing towards the edge, walking the tightrope, or standing with each foot planted in contradiction.

I may seem organized and well prepared to the outside world, but inside I constantly find myself one wrong move away from falling from the edge, one small alteration away from throwing myself onto the ground kicking and screaming. I am constantly on the borderline between stability and chaos, success and failure. I can’t think on my feet because there’s always disagreement in my body or the fight between irrational impulsivity and playing it safe. Asking me to be flexible is like asking me to break myself into pieces, like throwing a ball at a window.

I feel like a walking contradiction inside myself, in my life. With friends I try to be the comical, helpful, supportive. With my husband I also try to support, but I also try to stay in my lane and allow him to have the control, trying to be the submissive one, the one that lets him have all the credit. At work I must be the one in control, the one with all the ideas, the authority. But which version of me is the truth? I constantly feel I’m on another borderline: between who I must be and who I really want to show, the version of myself I’ve built and the version of myself that’s hiding in the shadows. I’ve reinvented myself so many times in my life that I’m not even certain what that person in the shadows really looks like.

Then there’s the emotional borderline: the one that is the most dangerous, the one that can do the most damage. I walk the tightrope constantly, attempting to maintain my balance because falling means losing control. It could be said that this borderline is the one between health and illness, between safety and harm, between life and death. Falling from this height could mean self-destruction, going back to the hospital, or never walking any tightropes ever again.

How do those of us with BPD come away from the edge, how do we keep ourselves from falling off the cliff and drowning in the waters below? I can tell you that pretending to be okay doesn’t work: “fake it ‘til you make it” isn’t in our body. For Kiera Van Gelder, author of “The Buddha and the Borderline,” it takes years of dialectical behavior therapy and “taking refuge” in Buddhism to find the beginnings of recovery. I can only hope that by jumping in head first to DBT helps me step back from that cliff as well because I’m seriously scared of drowning.