#elixir.txt

All of the adopts on my Ko-fi shop are now on sale (half their price) as they have not been sold yet!

So as I mentioned last week, I got diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Alongside that I need treatment for my ed and I also have ptsd. 

 I have a psychiatrist appointment next week and they’re gonna try to put me on mood stabilizers. On one hand, I’m excited because my research explains why anti-depressants never worked with me and why I became frustrated enough to stop taking my medication. On the other hand I’m nervous about what could happen if that medication doesn’t work. Or if it does and then I somehow get taken off of it. 

  I’ve learned a lot about my diagnosis in the past week. The first time I tried to research I broke down crying. I stumbled on questions like “is it possible to love someone with bpd” or “can someone with bpd ever be in a long-term relationship?” or worse, “are people with bpd dangerous?” The next time I decided to do research, I was quick to click the wikipedia link that showed up so I could avoid the bias and stigma. 

  It opened my eyes. I was questioning of my diagnosis but not fully in denial, as I had suspicions before. I’d been diagnosed with a lot of other problems before, and I found that to be,,,normal for ppl with bpd? When it was first discovered, it was even thought to be a type of bipolar disorder, which seems to explain the sequence of diagnoses I had previously. 

 First I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder after my second hospitalization. I was put on prozac, zoloft, wellbutrin, busperone, etc. Many didn’t work and the ones that suppressed my depressive symptoms brought out something different. Mania. Fast forward to my first therapist who “avoided labels” and thought that diagnosis was bad, implying that I was bipolar. 

  I stumbled around for months in constant confusion about what was wrong with me. MDD only covered a really tiny fraction of what I experienced, and Bipolar seemed to cover a larger chunk but there were some things that still went unexplained. Why do I think the way that I do? Why do I constantly question the validity of my diagnosis? Why am I not like other people with the same problems? I felt like even with the same disorders, that I was different from others and I couldn’t figure out why. I thought I was trapped in my own bubble of negative, terrifying thoughts. I was special, I was more broken off than the other people I knew. 

  Last week my current therapist, whom I’ve been seeing for two months, longer than any other that I’ve seen, told me that from everything I had told her, it seemed extremely likely I was borderline. For the first few days a constant stream of questioning and thought about it wouldn’t stop pestering me and after the first research attempt was unsuccessful, the second one was extremely enlightening. 

  When I looked into the unbiased explanation of bpd, all I could see was myself. Everything I read took me back to some memory of an instance, or feeling relating to what I read. There was no doubt in my mind that this was true. All my life I questioned the validity of my mental illness and my abusive childhood. “I had it too good” “I’m faking it for attention” “I’m just being overlydramatic” but bpd validates all of my feelings. Most borderlines have the EXACT same childhood I did, down to the finer details of the parental abuse and social rejection. Which means, I wasn’t being dramatic and I didn’t have it too good. Most borderlines seemed to experience feelings and thoughts, the exact same way I did, to an uncanny point. Which meant I wasn’t faking it, and there really was something wrong. 

  All my life I’ve wondered what’s wrong with me and now that I have it figured out I’m on a fucking roll. I bought a book called “I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me.” So far, some of the info seems to be a bit outdated, but it seems so far to hold a somewhat unbiased view point and for many of the example scenarios, my situation was described down the the letter. I’m not alone anymore. Not only am I not alone but I have a direction to go into. 

  My therapist is going to refer me to group therapy/support group options. Alongside that I’m on a waiting list to see an ed therapist so I will be doing therapy three times a week and I’ll be on medication. I’ve always been too career focused to ever let myself do anything like this, but after being robbed of my childhood and of my development, after wandering around so lost and confused for all these years, after all the abuse and unstable relationships I’ve experienced all my life, I deserve this. I deserve to feel better and to treat myself better. 

And to anyone who could have bpd, or does have bpd if you’ve read this far down, you deserve it too. You deserve to feel good and you deserve to feel loved, even if you’ve convinced yourself you don’t. You are you, and even with your lack of identity, you don’t need to be anymore than what you are.