Borderline Personality Disorder?

A few weeks ago, I was emailing my best friend and telling her of all the turmoil in my life. She responded by saying that she has thought for a long time that I might have Borderline Personality Disorder. She said that I always seem to get myself in situations where everyone around me can see that its not good for me or in my best interest, but I can't see it until its too late. Mostly with my romantic relationships. I am either really serious with someone and realize they aren't right for me, or I am with someone who I am just head over heels in love with and they break my heart, only to find out later that we weren't really a good match to begin with, but I was too blinded by 'love' to see it. In hindsight, there were red flags all over the place that I just overlooked and ignored. And if it is the first scenario, I find it hard to get out of the relationship because of my deep fear of conflict.

Conflict to me, feels like a knife in my chest. I can't breathe and sometimes, I can't even think. I mentally shut down. I have done this since I was a child. Dad would get drunk and scream and yell at me and make me feel like the worst person to ever walk the earth. Its like he knew the exact things to say to break me down to the point of not being able to speak : I would just sit there and wait for him to stop, even though he was a broken record when he was drinking, so he would repeat himself over and over. He would get frustrated when I wouldn't say anything sometimes, so I would just say whatever I thought he wanted to hear. I sometimes wished he would've physically abused me over the mental abuse. It would have hurt, but not as bad as his words did.

I feel that I have opened a box that I can't close. I have been reading a BPD blog and everything she is saying sounds exactly like me. I thought that this would be a grand revelation, and it is, like when I found my first sober blog, but its different. It does make things more clear as to why I am this way and why I react to certain situations like I do, but it also makes me sad. I really just want to be normal and balanced and not have this 'thing' hanging over me like a cloud. I no longer see a bright beautiful future full of love and laughter. I see a future full of struggle and pain. I thought I could out smart it or possibly find a short cut to happiness, but those are a child's dreams. This is the real world and its just not that simplistic. Life is complicated and painful, no matter if you have a mental disorder or not. I guess it does feel good to finally know that I am not just a fuck up.

It also makes me angry at my Dad. I am angry because I feel that this could've been prevented if he would've just let me be who I am and not always trying to be who he wanted me to be. If he would've allowed me to have feelings and not just be some robot that does whatever he asks me to do whether I want to or not. I am not saying people should let their children run wild, but a parent should allow their children to express how they feel. Actually, they should encourage it. Or maybe this happened because of my mother abandoning us. I never had that close mother/daughter connection. Even as a child, I didn't trust anyone, especially not my Dad. When he married my step mom, I resented her. I was angry because Dad was still sweet and loving at times and made me feel safe, but when she entered the picture, all that changed. She changed too. She was my friend at first, but then she flipped and became just like him, afraid to stand up to him and went along with his way of raising us. I have realized that because I wasn't allowed to have a voice, that is when my feelings of being misunderstood started. I pretended to be who I thought they wanted me to be to avoid conflict. It didn't work though. I was talked down to and was made to feel like I was different in a bad way. I never felt like they ever saw the real me. I still don't. I wear this mask to try and fool the world that I am okay, but the mask is wearing thin these days. I am just exhausted by all of it. I just want to be able to tell the truth, my truth. I don't want to wear the mask anymore. Why can't I just be Me without feeling like I am “too much”, “too dramatic”, or“too intense” for the world?

All that being said, I know that I need to start seeing a therapist because this is just too big to work out on my own. It's terrifying, because for the first time in my life, I feel like I can't trust myself anymore. I realize that all of this started from early childhood trauma and that I wasn't able to develop emotionally like “normal” children with a stable and loving childhood. But, I'm sure most of us are traumatized by something in our past, no matter how perfect our lives seem.