So now I'm freaking out

The full force of my decision to move home just hit me. What the hell was I thinking? I moved away because that whole town makes me an emotional wreck. My "friends" are all the people I used to party with. They probably expect me to be the same person I was back then. The girl who will sleep with anyone if she gets drunk enough.

Then there's my ex. He's going to use my kids to hurt me every chance he gets. And in doing so, he's going to break their hearts and probably mess their heads up so much they'll end up with their own mental disorder. Part of the reason I moved away was because he told me the only way I could see the kids was if I slept with him. That's just the kind of person he is.

And there's my Grandma. I love her and I wouldn't trade her for the world, but she's manipulative. She lies and then lies about lying. She tries to play people against each other. She's just too much to handle sometimes.

And of course there's my Dad. My Dad makes me feel inadequate, like I'm just not good enough. When I tell him something, he looks at me like I'm lying (even though I'm not). He acts like I never do anything right. He never tells me he's proud of me. And he's disowned me 3 times. When I try to talk to him about the things Patti did to me and Lisa when we were little, he won't listen. He denies everything. I understand that denying what happened is his way of telling himself he's not responsible. But how can he deny coming home and seeing me covered in blood? How can he deny Patti hitting me so hard that she sprained her hand? How can he deny picking me up from the hospital after her actions caused my hand to be cut in half? He moved me out of her house that night so he must have suspected something. But I lived with him for months after that and he never said anything, He was with me through the reattachment surgery, doctors visits, physical therapy, and he never even asked what happened. I guess the denial was present even back then. I just get so tired of hearing "You remember it worse than it really was".

And last but not least, there's Patti. She made my life a living hell. She beat me for no reason. She gave us so many little rules, they were impossible to follow. It was like she wanted to control everything about us, no matter how small. I can't tell you how many times I got in trouble for drinking wrong. How does a person drink wrong? She treated me and Lisa like crap just because she wasn't happy with my Dad. It wasn't our fault he cheated on her. And when I got out of the girls home at 17, she tried to play the victim. She said I should feel sorry for her because she had to put up with me and Lisa. Screw that. I can't stand her. I hate her. I don't want to be around her and I definitely don't want to live with her.

When I step into my parents house, I turn back into a scared little girl. I remember all the rules. Ask before getting a drink of water. Ask to go to the bathroom. We only eat at designated times. No humming. Don't touch anything. No gum or candy. Ask to use the phone. I still follow them. I shake with fear (literally, my body trembles) that I'll break a rule. When my husband ate a banana without permission, I totally freaked. And it's silly because I know Patti can't do anything to me anymore. After surviving for 4 years with an abusive husband who outweighed me by a hundred pounds, Patti's nothing. I'm not scared of her. So I don't know why my head goes all screwy whenever I'm over there. But the point is that it does go all screwy....and I'm supposed to go back there and live?

How?

What causes Borderline Personality Disorder?

When someone is diagnosed with BPD, one of the first questions they ask is "Why?".

What causes BPD?
Some of it's genetics. Like most mental illnesses, if someone in your family has it, that puts you at a higher risk of getting it. It's estimated that about 35% of Borderline patients have a close family member diagnosed with BPD.

The bigger cause of Borderline Personality Disorder is living through an extremely traumatic childhood. Sadly, that accounts for about 75% of all cases.  When a child is forced to endure so much abuse, their brain does what it can to cope. And since the brain is doing all this coping during the time that it's also developing and growing, the pathways end up getting all screwy. And that affects the way we think, feel and react for the rest of our lives.