Do you ever feel like all the pain in the world is yours, and yours alone, to bear?
Besides rage/anger issues, I would say the strongest hold BPD has on me is my addiction to suffering. I don’t know what else to call it. It’s an addiction in the sense that I can’t picture life without it, I don’t know who or what I would be without the portion of pain I keep hanging onto, and I don’t know the first thing about getting rid of it. I don’t even think it can be ‘gotten rid of.’
It’s as if the grief of every parent who has lost a child is deep in your gut; the broken heart of every desolate lover flooding your chest; the pain of every tortured lab animal pulling your nerves to breaking; the shame and self-hatred of every rapist and abuser eating its way out of your stomach.
I think of Moses and the Egyptians, luring them into the ocean to drown as God closed it behind them. I often feel like a tiny spot has been cleared of water for me in the midst of the Pacific; the agony of existence in this world is the ocean all around me. I can feel the damp, cool threat of the water, hear the rush of it, know that at some point, it will crash down and swallow me without a trace.
I used to wonder if everyone felt that way. Was I the only one that couldn’t handle it?
My therapist says (there’s a blog title right there…) that people with BPD have a poor sense of self and no boundaries, so the walls that should be there to protect us from others’ suffering are not. We take on the burdens, the worries, the pain, the memories, the traumas of other human beings the way other people pick up style tips.
I’m not sure I buy that. I’m sure that I do have boundary issues and my mental/emotional walls need to be better defined. But I can’t help but weep for griefs that are not my own – even though sometimes they are all tangled up with mine, almost as if it’s only “okay” for me to cry for myself as a side note to someone else’s pain.
Long ago I stopped crying for the pain. It’s only within the last year or so that I could start again. It feels like trying to empty said ocean with a teaspoon. I don’t really know how to feel about the truth that I know in my gut: Life is pain. There’s no exorcising it, no releasing it for good, no total healing, no ultimate catharsis, no leaving it behind. Not really. Our choices are to live with it or to not live. That choice is a lot to bear sometimes.
Half of a Soul - Life with BPD 
The endless argument over living with the pain or just plain not living. We’re driven insane by debating it over and over again, because we don’t see a life without the pain. It seems like such a no-win kind of game, and it’s so fucking frustrating. The decision whether to live or die, it’s just impossible. Here’s hoping that there’s a third option. Also, this comment is just a bunch of angry, empty feelings that’s probably unintelligible, so don’t feel like you have to reply.
The only really bad thing to me about that, is that then I’m looking at other people wondering why they don’t seem to care much. Then my rational tries to keep up with my emotional, and leads me down a path of criticism of the nature of the ‘ way people ought to be ‘, and I have to fight hard to keep the intense self pressure feelings from turning outwards towards other people. It’s too easy sometimes to feel like the only sane one around, and it takes more out of me to stop there than anything else. Wrestling with how I feel, I can take, but I feel worse the times that particular combination surfaces and starts to turn towards other people.
I feel like my own self harm sometimes is looking at things going on in the world and not looking away.
On the positive side (I’ve just woke up and this is usually my period of time of best self analysis, before things get out of whack the rest of the day lol), in moderation I feel it’s not a bad thing to be overly empathizing. There’s a lot of things in the world that do need help and attention, and the rare times I”m able to actually do something to help and it not blow up in my face, or make things worse, makes it all worth it to have gone through the process.
For a short time, I feel redeemed. Though I do a lot of self therapy to try and quiet things down, I don’t ever want to lose the ability to be that connected with things, though I know the more connected I am with myself, the less that is. Still looking for the better combination that doesn’t compromise the moral and ethical structure I’ve built around taking on the world, and also lets me feel enough about myself that I don’t feel like a wreck for having done so.
Thank you for the comment, guys. Yes, I agree that there must be a third option (other than 1) painful life or 2) death) – at least I continue to hope there is a third option. And Macroflux, you are so right, it’s not enough to have the pain, on top of that we further torture ourselves by turning the pain into an isolating experience – well, because it feels like/is such an isolating experience when no one else seems to notice or care. Also, I do value my emotional sensitivity (some of the time) but lately I’m starting to think it’s not quite as helpful or admirable a trait as I once thought. Maybe I just need to get a better handle on it. xxxx