The Pros & Cons of Growing Up w/ Crazy Parents

An estimated 1 in 4 people are affected by mental illness sometime in their lives. As a result, a shit-ton of children grow up with parents who suffer from mental illness like I did, whether it’s a personality disorder, affective disorder, or a more severe mental illness. When this happens, sometimes it falls on the kids to take on inappropriate responsibilities and roles, which, I argue, provides both advantages and disadvantages.

+ You will never be boring.

When you grow up with crazy people, crazy things happen. You develop a thick skin and a sense of humor because you have to. I swear, the jokester in every circle of friends is the one with an asshole alcoholic father. You’ve got stories. Lots of ‘em. Funny ones, like that time your paranoid mother wrapped the computer in tinfoil to protect it from government hackers. Happy ones, like that time your sister called the parents of your bully, Bitchgirl, to tell them that Bitchgirl was a downright lousy coke dealer and if there wasn’t better quality shit next time, she would buy from Crazy J instead. Sad ones, like that time your father dragged you down the stairs by the hair for telling him you’d rather eat shit than go to the beach. Your life has been interesting and will probably always be interesting. Remember this when you feel upset about your circumstances. No matter how crappy you feel or how bad it gets, you have stories, so you have something to give this world.

-You learn how to be an adult on your own.

If your parents are mentally ill and haven’t sought treatment or even acknowledge their own illness, it’s very likely that they don’t quite have the “adult stuff” 100% figured out. Maybe your mom doesn’t know how to manage her money. Maybe your dad doesn’t know how to control his temper in public. Our parents are the first models we have for knowing how to live and one of the primary ways we learn is through imitation. When you have crazy parents, you have to learn & un-learn a lot of things on the road to adulthood. For example, one of the biggest things I struggle with as an adult is money. Growing up, my mother dealt with bill collectors the way she dealt with any entity she considered powerful and malevolent: routine avoidance. A credit score was an arbitrary number that “the man” used to keep you fearful and submissive. As an adult, I don’t know how to save my money. I don’t know how to keep up with bills. It’s something I’m learning little by little by trial and error, which sucks, but hey, it’s what you have to do to survive.

+ You know how to deal with crazy situations.

You’ve certainly witnessed enough of them. I know so many people who would not know how to handle it if they were in a crisis situation. When you have crazy parents, that shit’s old meme. If you grow up in a household that is erratic and/or hostile, you quickly come to view the whole world as such and you act accordingly. I’ve experienced robberies, homelessness, divorce, drug deals, custody battles, repossession, being arrested, being harassed, being assaulted. I’ve witnessed apartments burning down, people overdosing, people getting murdered, people committing suicide. Yes, over time you might come to understand the nature of the world as cruel and apathetic to you, to human beings—and this is undoubtedly a painful and terribly hard thing to accept—but honestly, it’s the truth, the way it really is, and once you make peace with this realization, you’ll surprisingly find that life is a lot easier to live. We are just chemicals, products of our environment; nothing is our fault but there is no one to blame. Things sometimes happen and you don’t know why. I feel like people who have crazy parents come to this realization a lot sooner than those who don’t.

-You are bitter.

Life handed you a shit sandwich. It’s not fair. Why me? Everything sucks. No one understands. Etc, etc. We all feel like that at some point. I felt like that for years. Aw, fuck it, I still secretly feel like that sometimes. This is truly poisonous thinking and it can prevent you from getting better. For years I felt like it wasn’t my responsibility to fight off my natural, unhealthy ways, because goddamnit, I didn’t choose to be this way, I had nothing to do with the shit-show of genetics I inherited, nor would it have been humanly possible for me to have had the maturity in my developmental stages to realize that “Hey, Mom and Dad probably aren’t acting the way healthy folks act.”

If you spend your whole life being bitter about your shitty circumstances, your shitty circumstances probably won’t improve. Sometimes when I think about my mom and dad, I get really fucking sad, because they’re still in the throes of their respective mental illnesses and maybe they always will be. That doesn’t mean I have to be. With bitterness comes an unconscious understanding that it could’ve been different, which means that it CAN be different.

+/- You’re probably also crazy.

Who we are is determined by our experiences and more importantly, our brains. It’s not faaaair, we can’t hellllllp it, wah wah wah, but that’s the way it is. Your self-esteem comes from your prefrontal cortex. Your memory comes from your hippocampus. Your emotional tendencies? Oh hey, amygdala. Not only are you born with the burden of your parents’ shitty genetics, which determine the hardwiring of your brain, but you’re also more likely to develop behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and personality traits that are unhealthy if you’re subject to harmful behavior when growing up. Therefore, you’re probably crazy, too. However, nothing is permanent; your biological tendencies can make you predisposed to the crazy but guess what? Our brains can change. How, you ask? Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Once you’ve determined your specific brand of crazy, the next step is to distinguish what you do and feel that is healthy and what is not. Therapy can help with that. A fresh set of eyes when trying to solve a complicated puzzle can work wonders. Mental illness has caused you a lot of pain over the years, but there’s a reason that natural selection hasn’t voted it off the humanity island and I’ll bet you a shot of whiskey that your own family brand of crazy has made you stronger in some way. For the children of crazy parents, in chaos is where we feel comfortable. And that’s what life is. Chaos, baby. ;)

15 Songs 

    for When You're Depressed as Fuck

(or: Songs I Will Pretty Much Always Relate to on an Intimate Level)

01. A Better Son/Daughter by Rilo Kiley

Your mother's still calling you, insane and high, swearing it's different this time,  and you tell her to give in to the demons that possess her & that god never blessed her  insides. Then you hang up the phone and feel badly for upsetting things, and crawl back  into bed to dream of a time when your heart was open wide and you loved things just because, like the sick and the dying...  
02. Going for the Gold by Bright Eyes

They will detail their pain  In some standard refrain.  They will recite their sadness  Like it's some kind of contest.  Well, if it is, I think I am winning it,  All beaming with confidence as I make my final lap.  
03. Between the Bars by Elliott Smith

Drink up with me now and forget all about  the pressure of days; do what I say  and I'll make you okay, and drive them away:  the images stuck in your head
04. Little Person by Jon Brion

I'm just a little person, One person in a sea, Of many little people  Who are not aware of me   05. Holocaust by Big Star

Your eyes are almost dead, can't get out of bed, 
and you can't sleep. You're sitting down to dress, and you're a mess , 
you look in the mirror--you look in your eyes, say you realize Everybody goes, leaving those 

who fall behind. Everybody goes, as far as they can; they don't just care 

06. Hope There's Someone by Antony & the Johnsons

How can I fall asleep at night
How will I rest my head?
Oh, I'm scared of the middle place
Between light and nowhere
I don't want to be the one
Left in there, left in there

07. Mad World by Gary Jules

And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had

08. John Wayne Gacy Jr. by Sufjan Stevens

He dressed up like a clown for them
With his face paint white and red
And on his best behavior
In a dark room on the bed he kissed them all--
he'd kill ten thousand people
with a sleight of his hand

09. Good Woman by Cat Power

I don't want be a bad woman
And I can't stand to see you be a bad man.
I will miss your heart so tender
And I will love this love forever.

10. Bankrupt on Selling by Modest Mouse

Well, i'll go to college and i'll learn some big words, and i'll talk real loud,
goddamn right, i'll be heard, you'll remember all the guys that said all those big words
 he must've learned in college and it took a long time / i came clean with myself /
i come clean out of love with my lover / i still love her /
loved her more when she used to be sober 
and i was kinder 

11. You by Amy Lee

 When we're together, I feel perfect
When I'm pulled away from you, I fall apart...

...So many nights I cried myself to sleep
Now that you love me, I love myself

12. The Crying of Lot G by Yo La Tengo

 Sometimes I wonder why we have so much trouble
cheering each other up sometimes,
when one or the other of us is down.
Instead it's like, when you're in a bad mood
I look at you and I say, maybe she's knows something
I don't know, maybe I should be upset...

13. Radio Cure by Wilco

Cheer up, honey, I hope you can
There is something wrong with me
My mind is filled with silvery stars

14. Same Mistakes by The Echo Friendly

 I never did grow up
Feels like I never will
My friends are all adults
I'm still a teenage girl

15. Videotape by Radiohead

 This is my way of saying goodbye
Because I can't do it face to face
So I'm talking to you before it's too late
No matter what happens now
I shouldn't be afraid
Because I know today has been the most perfect day 

I've ever seen. 

____________________________________________________________________

How Carrie-Lynne Davis Learned to Tell Stories

A Story by Carrie-Lynne Davis

This is a story about me. I write stories. Let me tell you about them. The first story I ever wrote with the conscious notion that I was, in fact, writing a story for other people to read, was a long time ago, in the beginnings of elementary school. In the second grade, I was quiet, sad, and unkempt, you know, one of those ratty-haired girls who sat in the corner, cried after recess, and smelled a little bit like cat pee. My teacher, an old French lady named Mrs. LeClair, held me in class after the bell rang to talk about my writing. She told me that she had a “secret assignment” for me, and gave me a blank book with a blank cover. I was to fill the pages. So I wrote a story.

This story was called “The Vampire, by Carrie-Lynne Davis,” and it was about a Dad who got a new job. His new job was being a Vampire, and he had to suck people's blood! The Dad didn't mind doing his job, he was very good at it, and it didn't much bother him that people were dying under his fangs. That is, until he came home to his family and they smelled oh-so-good! His wife had cooked him a GINORMOUS meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans and everything! And the two nice daughters had colored him pictures of cats and houses and happy families at school and they showed him. And he said they were good, even though he couldn't pay any attention because the smell of blood was so, so, so wonderful to him. At dinner he couldn't eat. He just wanted blood. When everyone went to sleep, the Dad couldn't help himself, and he drank his wife's blood. It was so delicious! Then, he went to his daughters' bedroom and sucked their blood. It was also delicious! But then, the Dad was covered in their blood and he started crying, because he was all alone. The Dad realized then that he didn't wanna be a vampire anymore. He was sad that he killed his family, and he missed them very much, so he bit into his own hand and drank all of his blood. It tasted like the best thing he's ever tasted in his whole life. The Dad died, and he and his family lived happily ever after in heaven!

“The Vampire”, so riddled with obvious signs of depression and family troubles, won me a place in the gifted program at my school. I was excused from class in the middle of the day with the other artsy-farts in my grade and we were all put in a room with grown-up chairs and treated like we had something to say. We were given attention, and I loved it. Going to school, getting good grades in school, being creative in school, became a way for me to not only express the inner sadness I felt as a child, but gave me the attention that I sorely lacked at home. How well I did in school became a measure by which I could determine my own value. I was very fortunate that this occurred, because even as a nine year-old, before I learned that creative expression was a way to deal with the chaos in my life, waking up, getting dressed, and going to school was a terribly overwhelming process that seemed entirely futile. Childhood depression is serious and troubling, particularly when undiagnosed, because the child may develop into adolescence and adulthood without a sense of what the world is like (or could be) free of the tangled, black veil that is depression. Without therapy or some sort of guidance, they may not acquire the tools needed to live a functional life despite the illness. Thus, creativity has allowed me to live.

I hear similar stories from a good bulk of my other writing-major friends, a lot of whom have mental illness of some sort, particularly forms of depression. Why do we sad artists commit ourselves to writing? Why do we spend so much money on a degree that promises nothing? We write because we have to—it's become not merely a way to tell stories, but a way to deal with life itself. Writing, like any form of creative expression, can be a tool for artists to sort out, understand, and articulate the complex inner turmoil that depression brews, which can then allow the afflicted to develop skills to better handle it.

The notion of writing as a coping mechanism can be either supported or denied based on first experiences with writing. Deborah Brandt, in “Remembering Writing, Remembering Reading,” interviewed four hundred people about such experiences and found that most memories of writing were characterized by “loneliness, secrecy, and resistance” (461), whereas reading was considered more of a family activity and was therefore not only more memorable, but defined by moments of joy, interactivity, and social bonding. My own first experiences with writing were very private—it was something I could have all to myself, so I could be as honest as I wanted. My first journal was a cute little Winnie the Pooh diary with one of those impossible locks and a baby key. In it, I practiced writing my name, drew pictures of my family, and recounted my day. Since then, I have kept journals for nearly every year of my life; I found one from the sixth grade the other day while rummaging through old boxes under my bed. Here's the first entry:

Carrie-Lynne Davis, age 11.
I have chosen to write my feelings. Today is January 7th, 2001. I am sad. I know that sound so childish, but that is the only word I can describe myself. I'm sitting on my porch, on the third floor Pine Street apartment. The rent is ridiculius, its on a bad street, and most of our neighbors have children that smoke, drink beer or have been in jail.
Mom says the sky is a polluted light and color show, with dark blue clouds in its whole surrounding. She asked me and Tonya if we thought that was normal, and I said no.
I have never lived in a house in my life. I would like to though.
Anyway. I have (think) I have a hard time expressing my feelings, so I have decided to keep a diary of whats going on, what I think, and what (especially) I feel.


I remember how serious everything had seemed when I was eleven. It was the beginning of my intense relationship with reading. The sixth grade. Overweight, bespectacled, unpopular. Mrs. St. Andre wrote “Minutes Marathon” on the chalkboard. This was a contest, she said, a reading contest for everyone in the elementary school. You'd read books and log the amount of minutes you spent reading in a log. At the end of the quarter, whoever won would receive an award and get a limo ride with the principal. Big deal, a lot of 'em thought, but my eyes widened and I decided that this was an opportunity to kick some ass in the only way I felt that I could—escaping into imaginary worlds and timing myself while doing it. Reading was not an experience characterized by joy or family-togetherness or leisure, like Brandt, in her article, suggested it was for most individuals. It was a competitive obsession, something I must do to win and beat all those other kids and be the best there ever was! I'd show those fuckers, and give 'em the peace sign out the window of the limo as we'd drive away from the school. That year, my desperation for attention and notoriety pushed me to read works that were far beyond my comprehension—Orwell, Huxley, Vonnegut, Salinger—new concepts, ideas, philosophies unfolded before me and I barely knew how to interpret any of it. I won the Minutes Marathon and I got my damned limo ride.

My award hung on the wall over my bed in a frame that my mother bought because, she said, she was proud of me. Winning was something that would garner me attention from my parents, my peers, and most importantly, my teachers. Richard Rodriguez, in his literacy autobiography, “Hunger of Memory,” writes that as he became more successful in school, academic activities like writing and reading became all the more distanced from his family. His teachers, rather than his parents, became the adult figures he was fervent to impress, and succeeding academically became his primary focus. My experience very much mirrors his—my mother, who, throughout my childhood, suffered from intense bouts of major depression, was often as uninterested in reading my writing as she was in brushing her hair, paying bills, or doing the dishes. I would, however, find new audiences. Inspired by Louis Sachar’s Wayside School books and Marcia Thornton Jones’ Bailey School Kids, both popular series at my elementary school, I discovered the joy of character development and reader identification. I started writing stories for my classmates about my classmates, and I’d print out copies for each person to read their own dialogue with each other. From grades five to seven, my teachers would take breaks in the class to have everyone read my stories, which satisfied my yearning for notice as well as my need for creative expression. Pleasing my classmates and showing off my narratives forced me to observe how each one of them were characters—I studied them and figuratively made caricatures out of their behaviors. Taking note of individual and group reactions, I would tweak characters based on how it appeared the classmates thought of themselves and of each other. The most difficult aspect of this process was watching me in relation to others, thus identifying my own character.

This would come to be a consistent struggle throughout my adolescence and even now, as an adult. I was a watcher, an observer, a writer, and a learner, undoubtedly an active participant in school, yet I was still socially-withdrawn, self-loathing, publicly crippled by fleeting attacks of anxiety. How could I feel as if I knew so much about people and the way they interact, yet know nothing about how I could or should interact with them? In high school I started joining after-school clubs and if I was interested in something that didn’t exist, I’d create them in hopes that other like-minded people would come together and I could discover people to befriend. Founder and President of the Art Club. Founder and President of the Spanish Club. Arts Editor of the school newspaper. Vice President of the Environmental Club. Young Writers. Collage Magazine. I fostered friendships through activities, goals, group-activities. It was all very academic, but school was the only arena through which I could express myself.

My friends became the artists, the fuck-ups, the druggies, the screamers, the passive dreamers. We felt we had something to say but not the words to say it; we wrote bad poetry on napkins at the diner and played shows in basements and spread graffiti under the Androscoggin bridge because we were too young and too angry to know how to fix the mess we were about to march into. We felt our parents selfish and drunk and sad, our teachers rigid and unwilling to teach us what really mattered. We found solace in the loneliness of each other. We sat in circles with nothing to say but always talking. We cried in bed, or the shower. Some of us were fast food workers, some of us were chained to cubicles, and some of us would just lie in bed and wait for the time to pass.

The ashes of our adolescence scattered over America. Danica became a morphine addict in Portland, Oregon. Ellis, in a manic frenzy, was kicked out of Evergreen from trying to incite a violent transgendered revolution on campus in Washington. Courtney grew sick of watching herself snort amphetamines off a dirty mirror in her art school dorm room in Boston. They all came back, and the rest never left, except for me. I fell in love with these characters and now I tell stories about them. I write about a beautiful woman who falls in love with a beautiful God called Morpheus. He sings her to sleep and makes everything feel okay. I write about people forever in transition and the violent struggle to remain in the center of a seemingly binary spectrum. I write about a quiet girl who grew older too quickly in the cold, how she stays warm in her fishnets because there’s nothing colder than being alone and absent the sweet-sticky drip of the night, the fast-talking friends, the wide eyes, and the frenzied laughs. I write about a father, too, who’d always suck the red out of wine glasses and hide until he goes to work, whose wife called him once an emotional vampire. I write about these people. And now I write about myself.

On Having Borderline Personality Disorder:

10 Things You Discover About Your Crazy Self

            You must meet 5 out of 9 criteria to be diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder:

1.        Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in (5).

2.        A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. This is called "splitting."

3.        Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.

4.        Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in (5).

5.        Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior.

6.        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).

7.        Chronic feelings of emptiness.

8.        Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).

9.        Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

-DSM-IV

1.  People will not understand you. Or your diagnosis. If you tell a friend you have Borderline Personality Disorder, I guarantee that, if they’re not a psych major or a fellow member of the Krazy Klub, they’ll mention “Girl, Interrupted,” Jodi Arias, or that football guy. I’ve even heard, “Oh… like Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction?” And they step away from you ever-so-slowly. Hell no. Just because we have BPD does not mean we are inherently evil, future murderers, or out to get you, my pretties, and your sexy boyfriends, too! The media, medical community, and even the very researchers that have written about BPD have contributed to the negative stigma attached to the Borderline diagnosis. Most of this is fueled by misinformation. What most people don’t realize about people with BPD is that above all else, we just want to be loved, understood, and respected. We want to be happy and healthy, just like the rest of you freaks. 

2.  What feels right at first is usually wrong, wrong, wrong. Your natural reactions to stressful events tend to exacerbate the stress of that event. Borderlines often feel the most extreme version of a feeling. A fight with the bf/gf can almost instantly send you into a head-exploding rage or a major, debilitating depression – either he/she is the Anti-Christ / Torturer of You 4Ever / User & Abuser Extraordinaire, or you just destroyed the best and only relationship your sorry ass will ever have and omghowfuckingstupidareyou and you’re never going to find someone that loved you the way that he/she loved you and so you have no reason to live and maybe you should just text them and ask them to forgive you-- pleasepleasepleaseOMGyou’lldoANYTHING! It’s okay to feel extremely. It’s not okay to recklessly act on those extreme feelings. Certain therapies (CBT, DBT) are great for identifying and extinguishing chaotic, seemingly uncontrollable emotions when they arise before they cause you to use That-Professor-Who-Criticized-You’s email address to sign them up for a tentacle porn website’s email updates or tell a good friend who forgot your birthday that it’s fine, really, you knew they didn’t give a shit about you anyway. 

3.      Sometimes you’re the villain. After finding out you have BPD, it’s necessary to review your life, particularly those times when you felt wronged. Some of those “So-and-So fucked me over royally” moments from your past suddenly seem to have new meaning. The first time it happened to me, it felt like when a game-changing piece of evidence surfaced on a Law & Order episode and the whole nature of the crime had consequently changed. Except I was both the unknowing audience and the criminal the audience had never suspected.
Did my best friend actually betray me by calling the cops after I told her I was suicidally depressed in order to get her attention, or was she genuinely concerned for my life and did what she thought was best? Did my boyfriend really break up with me because he never cared about me, never loved me, and always hated me, or was it because I drove him away with my incessant accusations fueled by the fear of those accusations being true?
These new realizations about some of the most painful moments in your life can be bitter pills to swallow, but those pills are the medicine that will help you get better.

4. You have a love/hate relationship with your diagnosis. Your life has most likely been, well, hellish. Finally knowing what your role is in the insufferable pain you feel (and sometimes cause) can be a massive relief. One of the most helpful practices for improving your life after you’ve been accurately diagnosed is consistent therapy with a professional you trust and to be 100% honest with them about your life. That can be super fucking hard to do at first. Therapy flipped my whole shit upside down. I used to truly, madly, deeply believe that I was the victim in almost every situation, completely justified in taking from someone who I thought didn’t deserve what I wanted, and I felt it was normal to constantly require praise because that was how I’d learned to value myself as a human being.
After years of therapy, when I find myself daydreaming about that cute-ass bartender I’ve had a couple dates with and suddenly feel the overwhelming urge to text him a craaaazy amount of times just to reassure myself that he’s still into me and I’m still worthy of being liked, I am able to stop myself. As a teenager, that was nearly impossible. Now I can catch myself before I let the batshit-bullshit torpedo out of my brain and subsequently scare people away that I’m trying to befriend or love. Once you recognize that a thought or behavior is a manifestation of your disorder and not how you actually want to act/feel/think, it’s easier to be in get your shit together. 

5. You’ve got some extra baggage. Statistically, you’re more likely to also be an alcoholic, cutter, habitual shoplifter, gambler, pill-popper, frequent overdrafter, Adderall sniffer, reckless driver, dope-copper, or compulsive woo-hoo’er. You’re more likely to eat way too much, way too little, or be an active member of the double-finger diet club like I was for a near-decade.
Many of us are hard-wired for impulsivity; we experience intense, unbearable emotions and have—err—differently-abled “stop and go” receptors in our brains that are fucking terrible at their job, which is to remind us about things like how binge-drinking at a party where you don’t know anyone will make you feel less anxious in the short term, until you get so shit-canned that you become “That Hot Mess at that Party Last Night” and you don’t remember what you did or who you backed dat ass up on or when that humiliating Facebook photo was taken or why the hell you now have two mismatched black boots that are clearly different brands, sizes, and styles.
The most detrimental aspect of this impulsivity is that we consistently fail to remember what happens when the chase ends and we’re left feeling even lower and emptier than ever. The desire for pleasure becomes even more enthralling in this state. And so, the chase becomes cyclical and has no end. This is the biggest complication in getting better. Most Borderlines who committed suicide had a longstanding addiction they were unable to shake. Programs like AA and NA can be quite therapeutic for Borderlines because they’re so inclusive, saccharinely positive about living one day at a time, the meetings are run by a familiar set of routines, and the program itself offers a set of principles by which you can live until you get healthier and feel enough strength and conviction to develop your own. 

6.  It’s not your fault! Most folks are under the impression that “personality disorder” is just headshrinker jargon for “shitty person.” People tend to equate personality with identity. Rah, rah, rah, if the problem’s with your personality, then it must be a choice! Right? No, not really. Or at all. There are many different players in the development of BPD. Research suggests that it can be attributed to both biological factors and your shitty-ass childhood. Nature and nurture double-teamed us. And it hurts. Biologically, genetics, neurobiological factors, and irregularities in certain areas of the brain can all contribute to the development of BPD in a child. A good 65% of us with BPD have a mother or father who also has it.
Hint: It’s probably the one you both calls you and fights with you the most.
A lot of us were abused as kids. A lot of us had at least one parent who continuously shamed us for expressing emotions. A lot of us never had a stable parental figure that we could rely on to be there and not disappear. These are all things that can drive identity disturbance, fear of abandonment, emotional extremes, “splitting”, etc.

I’m not saying any of this shit is an excuse to act out, however. Just because it’s not our fault that we have this disorder does not mean we are not responsible for our actions, especially when they hurt others or ourselves. Living with BPD means having to evaluate your intentions, feelings, and actions on a regular basis until the healthy ways become the natural ways.

7.  You’re interesting and exciting to others. If there exists any kind of “upside” to the behaviors I described above, it could be that to those we meet for the first time, we often exude a mysterious passion and insatiable lust for life that both men and women find pretty alluring. Most high-functioning Borderlines I’ve met have been intelligent, artistic, and overwhelmingly charming, despite their issues. We can be some of the most entertaining people at parties. We’ve got some of the best stories because we’ve experienced some crazy shit and the attention of a crowd fuels our performance of such stories. People tend to be drawn to us, entertained by us, romanced by us. Our [American] culture has glamorized being whimsically impulsive, thrill-seeking, and acutely intuitive, e.g. the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” craze. Most artistic muses I’ve met and read about exhibit a number of Borderline traits. There’s just something arresting about our oceanic moods, lust for pleasure, and that dreamy way in which we drift with obstinacy from genre to genre, scene to scene, person to person, desperately searching for who we really are.
Tell me that isn’t romantic as hell. 

8. You’re crazy in bed. Alright, alright. This is purely a theory I have based on all the Borderlines I’ve known personally, my own experiences, and research. Maybe the old wives’ tale is true: insecure girls are just good in the sack. Why, you ask? We have an insatiable desire to please those who want to please us, we’re eerily intuitive (particularly if we grew up in scary and/or unpredictable households wherein we had to figure out how to act all the time to avoid explosive conflict), and some of us have some serious Daddy/Mommy/Authority issues, which can certainly make for, well, interesting sex. The finely-tuned Borderline intuition is an example of what I like to call a “mental illness gift” that can be used for good or evil. It’s what can make us good at manipulation, invalidation, or thought policing. But it can also be used to pick up on how your loved ones are feeling even if they’re trying to hide it, be insanely good at gift-giving, know intrinsically how to act around different people, and decipher exactly what it is that makes your lover tick sexually. 

9. Your best friend/partner is one strong motherfucker. You have both preciously loved and vehemently hated them. You’ve probably accused them of not caring about you and maybe even caused a fight based on your feelings, not fact. One particularly damaging feature of BPD is what’s called “splitting,” which is when you alternate between idealizing and devaluing a person. Way more often than not, you don’t even know you’re doing it and it can occur over anything from a full-on blowout to a perceived slight, regardless of the other person’s true intentions. For me, I tend to experience splitting with the people I care about most and have the greatest fear of losing. The intense Borderline fear of being abandoned by someone you love can drive you to both obsess over their involvement in your life and also push them away in response to perceived or anticipated rejection. My favorite BPD book is appropriately called, “I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me,” and the title, though a little cheesebally, accurately describes how splitting feels. You both love the person for the fuzzy feelings that the close relationship fosters and hate them for the equally unfuzzy and scary feelings that losing that close relationship provokes. 

10. You are also one strong motherfucker. Having BPD pretty much guarantees you a rough time in maintaining healthy, stable relationships, regulating your emotions, reacting to stress, subduing your impulsive whims, and remembering who you are and what you value at all times. It’s a hard disorder to live with. But it gets easier with the more awareness you have about yourself and the more willing you are to act in healthy ways, despite how it goes against everything that comes naturally to you. It gets better, Borderlines! And then it gets worse. But then it gets better again! And so on, until you’ve got a firm grasp on identifying the BPD parts of your personality and knowing how to use what you know to be the best person you can be. Because honestly, that’s how we’re going to successfully love someone healthily and be loved back, to give respect and be respected, to understand and be understood. As a person with Borderline Personality Disorder, I spent most of my life feeling like the weary captain of a damaged ship, trying to stay afloat in a treacherous storm. I spent years wallowing in despair about my situation instead of working to save myself from myself. If you have BPD, you’ve probably unknowingly spent your life trying to get others to save you, but this simply isn’t possible. Please remember: yes, the storm within you is raging, chaotic, and seemingly endless, but all you must do is hold on and navigate your way out of the storm. A happy, healthy life does exist beyond.

A collection of short fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. I also write short humor pieces, academic essays, and novellas.

Feel free to contact me at carrielynnedavis@gmail.com.