“Surely there is someone who will take me for who I am. One human being who accepts the two people in you.”
– Lexi (Modern Love)
What if destiny is just how we tell ourselves the story of our lives? Or the choices we make are not ours but of our circumstances? It’s good to put these things in perspective but sometimes, the only perspective that counts is to just really be there.
Living with someone afflicted with Borderline Personality Disorder means anything but going by a sole realization. Especially, when the afflicted grew up with no knowledge or belief of the existence of such things. The veil of deniability or ignorance disguises the psychological whirlwind as simply the endless string of consequences that results from the daily battle with human consciousness. As there is no one state to adapt to, the disorder ends with two opposite extremes of behavior: mania and depression. They have very distinctive characteristics, both of which can be damaging for the immediate family.
It also involves learning how to cope with the difficulties that symptoms can create, supporting the person who is ill, and finding effective ways to cope. When they’re in a manic state, it can be impossible to get a word in edgewise. Being in sync with their reality is the first step to deal with the episodes. Otherwise, the person can turn on you in a fraction of a second. It takes time to come to terms with the intangibility of this situation as there is no right or wrong emotion to feel, the only thing that really counts is how to deal with them.
Although the life of an individual continues to move forward with their existence, that doesn’t mean it they are living it. The people that surround you are not the ones keeping you alive. Your life is not about who is standing behind or for you. Yet, it is this village of people who can ground you and make you feel that maybe your life could turn out to be a Nicholas Sparks novel. Or perhaps it doesn’t even need to be a village, it could be just that one person who will take you as who you are, whose constant friendship and support won’t make you feel that to know you more is to love you less. The one who will notice the little idiosyncrasies with downright respect and affection, and for whom you would be enough even if you could never bring them “peace.”
A person dealing with Borderline Personality Disorder tends to spend their whole life trying to trial and error through it, seeking to find a place or a passion that will make the chaos count. But as said above, it never ends with a sole realization. “But there must be a reason for it!” one may ask. The sudden spike of apathy (within the generation that normalized eating tide pods) for people with Bipolar Disorder was enough to label it as “mood swings” or “phases”.
I believe at this point, there is enough room to acknowledge it without any preconceived stigmatization. To this date, people need to believe that a person needs to go through a terrible state of affairs to be experiencing the feeling of disassociation and mania. The family history of the afflicted has been known to be one of the primary risk factors owing to the connection of the disorder to certain genes. Brain structure and heredity are still being studied by researchers as they account for more than 80% of the causes. For a person to experience the symptoms of the disorder from the age of being a toddler is as possible as the next person being diagnosed at 40.
People in current times need to understand that there doesn’t need to be a big life-altering situation for such things to happen. Sometimes, we’re born or brought up in a way that we are more susceptible to the pressures of mania, and possibly, no amount or variation of therapy can cure it. Maybe planners can keep us more stable or the cocktail of medications can help in some ways, but the only way to go on with life is to live with it and not let half of you disappear in the tornado of thoughts or the fog of disassociation.
One way or the other, dealing with Borderline Personality Disorder feels like randomly picking a thought and pulling it out of the haystack just to hope it is the right thing to do in the right situation.