Trigger warning: Mentions of sexual abuse, suicide and self harm
I remember when I first realized I had borderline personality disorder (BPD).
Sitting in my friend’s apartment in the aftermath of a party, I was listening to a friend speak on their experience with BPD, and the more they spoke on their symptoms, the more this sounded eerily similar to me.
Symptoms such as: intense fear of abandonment, a distorted sense of self, not really knowing who you are, self harm and suicidal ideation, not being able to regulate your emotions well.
The year of 2019 was the year of realization for me, or really the year before I fully figured out the dealings of what was going on in my life.
Everything that happened before wasn’t just me being a crazy teeanger.
It wasn’t just depression.
It was something a lot more severe, and it got me to that realization of finally pursuing a romantic relationship.
When I was 23, I had finally experienced my first dating experience, what one would call a “situationship.”
Not a relationship, not friends with benefits, and nothing in between, just… a situation.
It was my first time experiencing any type of romantic relationship, and the way he made it seem, as my friend, made it feel like it was going pretty well.
Until he ghosted me.
No contact, ignoring any message I sent, isolating me away from our mutual friends, while I was in L.A. dealing with the end of another friendship awkwardly for a week.
It took me a month to finally confront the situation, and unfortunately I went straight back into his arms.
Desperately trying to cling onto what I thought felt safe, what I thought I could save, put me through one of the most emotionally manipulative moments I’ve ever experienced.
And considering I’m the daughter of traumatized refugee parents, that’s saying a lot.
I had found out he went back to another girl. He did the same exact thing to pursue a relationship with her, and it completely destroyed any perception of love or relationships I had.
It was not a great start to how I experience relationships and intimacy, and it didn’t set a fantastic foundation for the future either.
During this time, I was also experiencing houselessness with my parents, which I spoke about in my previous special issue column.
I clinged onto what happened with my former friend because it was an escape from the horrible reality I was living in, sleeping in the backseat of my parents’ car in a Starbucks parking lot .
When I finally got my own apartment that I shared with my roommate and now close friend, it gave me a freedom I’ve never experienced before.
I’m the only daughter of Bosnian refugees who have experienced unimaginable situations that no one deserves to go through.
Losing everything, watching loved ones die, having war and genocide take over their home country, added on top of the generational trauma they faced from their own parents who also experienced war and genocide.
This also didn’t set up a strong foundation for me to have a healthy relationship with my emotional well-being.
It also means I was under close watch at all times, moving to the U.S. where my mother knew nothing was scared of the unknown, I grew up in a very strict environment.
A strict environment where my mom still wanted to be my friend, but if I ever expressed emotions of stress, sadness and anger, I would be yelled at, hit or punished for expressing anything negative.
As I got older, my junior year of high school was when I fell into a severe depression.
I felt like a failure, the weight of my parents’ expectations of success weighed heavily as their only child. I was their hope and future, while not even knowing what my future looked like.
I didn’t have good friends during this period.
People constantly made fun of me and my identity as a Bosnian woman, my friends being friends with people making jokes about how I would burn in concentration camps, sniffing me as though something was burning, saying I looked like Anne Frank, horrific things for any teenager to hear and face.
I would lie to protect myself to seem cool, I was never in a romantic relationship? Time to lie about it!
I would wear bigger bras to make my body seem more curvaceous, I would straighten my hair until my ends would fry off to hide my curly hair, I would do anything to change how people perceived me.
Looking back, I didn’t realize how much this messed with my perception of identity until I went to therapy for it.
All of these factors eventually led to my diagnosis of having BPD.
During this time, my relationship with my mother worsened, and as she dealt with her own undiagnosed mental illness, it turned into abuse towards me.
I remember helping her on the computer, normally and calmly. I remember putting my hand on her back, and she flung me to the floor, hitting me.
All I remember is my dad coming to my defense as I screamed in Bosnian, I didn’t do anything wrong. All I did was put my hand on her back.
I remember her getting up and going fully out of control, slamming me into the wall telling me to stop.
Locking myself in the bathroom saying I was going to do it, I was going to take my life.
This was one of many times I expressed the desire to commit suicide, and it triggered a long battle with suicidal ideation.
Suicidal ideation is is a broad term used to describe a range of contemplations, wishes and preoccupations with death and suicide, according to the National Library of Medicine.
I knew I was depressed after this, but I didn’t know there was more to it than just depression.
Growing up in a Bosnian household, I was always told that depression didn’t exist. I was told that being sad doesn’t run in our family, and no one in our family deals with mental illness or mental health issues.
For a while, I believed my mom when she said that. I really thought I was the only one who had something wrong with me.
Then in my freedom of living on my own, I realized how severely traumatized my parents were in their own personal lives. They didn’t have the words for it, just like I didn’t.
They didn’t grow up with families that were able to focus on healing and mental health, that they were just as severely affected as I was.
Generational trauma is the transference of traumatic experiences or stressors from one generation to the next, it can happen through direct experience, witnessing violence or living in an environment where violence constantly looming, according to Duke University’s Office for Institutional Equity webpage.
It is a concept to help explain years of generational challenges within families, it can be genetic and become part of the very fabric of how we exist as people.
During this time, I also got into my first serious romantic relationship with my current partner. It hasn’t been an easy relationship because of all of the stressors affecting us in our own respective lives.
I remember thinking, with all this newfound freedom I had, I would know how to navigate this relationship better and I wouldn’t let what happened to me affect what I have now, I definitely thought wrong.
I remember sitting with him one day, and asked him if he thought if this sounded like me.
“Intense fear of abandonment, unclear or shifting self-image, extreme emotional mood swings, explosive anger, constant feeling of emptiness, impulsive self-destructive behaviors, unstable relationships, feeling suspicious or out of touch with reality.”
He sat across from me as I said it out loud, and when I finally looked up at him and he told me it sounded like me, I knew that I had BPD.
There was finally a name to what I was feeling for so long, but what I didn’t realize was that it wasn't my romantic relationships that led me to having BPD.
It was every single traumatic experience I had gone through with my parents, the original foundation of life, the people who brought me in this world, and their experiences as well.
It felt like the second I took my first breath, the cards were stacked against me.
The further I went into my journey with BPD, while going back to therapy, speaking to my therapist also made me realize not only did I deal with BPD, but also had a severe mood disorder, bipolar disorder.
Bipolar disorder is characterized by unusual shifts in a person’s mood, energy and activity, while also affecting concentration.
People diagnosed with bipolar experience high and low moods, known as mania and depression.
Mania are episodes of high moods that vary in severity. Most of the time people are usually unaware they’re manic, finding the elevated mood appealing since they’re not experiencing severe depression.
Moods can become irritable and unpredictable, with judgment becoming more impaired.
Speaking to my therapist about all of the self-destructive behaviors I engaged in a short two-year period, I realized this wasn’t just me happy, young and fun, it was severe mental illness.
Whether it be driving my car on the freeway at 110 miles an hour because a guy broke my heart, or having random hookups to fill the void of feeling alone, it didn’t contribute to the betterment of my well-being.
Symptoms of bipolar and BPD overlap, so it wasn’t a surprise that me being diagnosed with BPD also turned into me being diagnosed with bipolar.
I feel free in knowing that I have these disorders, freer than I did when I didn’t know what I was actually going through.
While my disorders are not who I am, they are part of me, they physically and literally mentally affect me every day, even when I think they don't.
I want people to know that this is real, that when I’m emotional or hurt that my feelings are real, and it isn’t just me exaggerating what I’m feeling in my head.
I have disorders that literally change my perception of the world, myself and others.
It physically affects me in how I take care of myself and my stress levels.
Just because I have something that changes the perception of how I see the world, doesn’t mean that perception isn’t valid.
It means I need support and help, kindness and understanding and guidance in my healing journey.
