Today one year ago, I got an email from my mother stating that my father would move out. My world collapsed because the worst case that could happen – my family breaking apart – became real. I was without words, crying, angry and was totally telling myself it was because of me being a bad daughter. Despite all therapies I fell back in my childish behaviour and became so tense that I just could deal with it by cutting myself. I never would have thought that this incident would change me to the better in the end. I haven’t performed any self-harm since that day, which makes me without self-harm for one year now, the longest time ever. I haven’t always been cutting, it all started with scratching until I was bleeding, still that counts for self-harm as well. It doesn’t always have to be a knife or razorblade.
After I calmed down last year – despite lots of things happened – something changed within me. I didn’t take everything so serious anymore, I didn’t just act and live to please my family (or anyone else for that matter) – I started to follow up with things I’d like doing. The relationship to my father improved majorly, my brother and I started talking again (well writing emails). I even have to admit my choice of colour brightened. My clothes are not all black anymore (no kidding). The relationship to my mother became worse, though, but we still talk and see each other. I realised I tried to protect something, that wasn’t even there – a loving family. So much went wrong, still I felt obliged to keep the picture to the outside alive. Of course the therapies I’ve been through the previous years helped to realise that, however it needed that event to not only realise it but also feel it.
I don’t want to say my family is only bad. I probably have a better family than many do, still it made me develop a disorder – Borderline Personality Disorder. Even though it would be easy to blame everything on my parents and grandparents, but especially my parents were really young when they got me and my brother. They did what they felt was best, probably most parents do, but where to take the experience from? You are thrown into being a parent just when it happens, no way to prepare for it and knowing exactly what is the right thing. I understand that and it is up to me now to deal with what became of me. It is a lot of work, more work than others may have that grew up without that burden. And just because I have that personality disorder it doesn’t make me a bad or unlovable person.
Click here to find out what Borderline means and how I deal with it.
