Borderline Personality Disorder

I can go for weeks at a time, occasionally months without feeling the shift.

For anyone who ever wants to know what Borderline Personality Disorder feels like, it feels like pain ultimately, often chronic and varying in body location from person to person.

For me it manifests in varied physical and psychological ways and often I don’t initially notice the slide as the physical pain is a constant and takes up a lot of processing power in the first place.

The dreams are a combat indicator and always go hand in hand with the reality shift that I experience, as the bearded dude in the mirror swims ever so slightly out of focus and isn’t as familiar as he once was; it’s akin to having eye lenses that distort your perceived version of reality and crank it a couple of degrees out of true.

When my azimuth is off everything gets harder; everything from swinging my legs out of bed in the morning to having the most basic conversation with my wife and son.

I feel blurry and strung out; not in a manic energistic way but in an unravelled form that struggles to retain its cohesiveness and leads to headaches, gut pain, insomnia and eventual exhaustion if I don't do the things I need to on a regular basis.

This means taking the lessons learned from decades of observation and experience, trial and error and implementing them to keep myself on course even when every fibre of my being is screaming at me to just sack it off today and huddle in bed.

Easy to allow that descent to continue as there’s a comfort in the darkness that’s almost impossible to explain unless you’ve directly experienced it for yourself and is anathema to anyone who hasn’t.

Allow the slide and then the suicidal ideation starts creeping in more from the edges as the point of existence loses any meaning and all the concepts that Humans hold dear just aren’t relevant to my mind as my endocrine system sends its flawed load into my body and alters my chemical makeup, wiping out any joy and happiness or common bonds with other members of my species.

I’ve yet to find a prescription Anti-Depressant that helps me and whenever I’ve tried that course of treatment in the past it’s led to increased exhaustion, increased fuzziness and head pain which leads to more depression ultimately.

I’m 40 now and started feeling this way from a young age but it was when I hit puberty that it really kicked in so I’ve got about 3 decades of experience to draw from, combined with a mind that doesn’t come as standard apparently.

I’m waiting out on diagnosis (a 2 year wait possibly) for Autism and Aspergers or whatever other alphabet diagnosis I may have.

I get asked a lot why it matters for me to know what label my mind is classed as and I struggle to understand the attitude that it doesn’t matter.

Why wouldn’t I want to know everything there is to know about how my mind and body works?

Why wouldn’t I want a reference label that then allows me to have a detailed conversation with a Doctor or Mental Health Practitioner or to go do my own research on my various conditions?

I’ve been criticised in the past for being hyper-critical and self-analytical which I’ve definitely taken too far but at the same time, if you don’t push your boundaries how do you find out where they are in the first place?

Lessons have come from thousands of sources but the two major things have come from simple binary choices of desiring something.

Joining the Army was the first and realising I needed help (which led eventually to Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) was the second.

I wanted to be a soldier or fill a role in the military from a young age, to the point of trying to have an Army Club in primary school and writing to Lego to request they produce military themed brick sets; I understand now that my mind can be highly obsessive compulsive and I want things to be how I see them in my mind.

This can be extremely beneficial when harnessed correctly and when in the right tribal grouping with set mission parameters and a shared ethos like the military and absolutely disastrous when allowed to turn inwards and start consuming its own structure.

I went down to the recruiting office at 16 with not a clue really as to what I wanted or how to vocalise it to Colour Sergeant Dave Falconer of 1st Battalion The Princess of Wales Royal Regiment. Dave would later go on to be the Company Sergeant Major involved in The Battle of Danny Boy and eventually my Regimental Sergeant Major when I joined 3 PWRR in my twenties.

I picked Telegrapher Operator in the Royal Signals and joined at 17 in 1998 and lasted a grand total of 6 weeks before voluntarily discharging. I’d fallen on a run and broken my left wrist and had very painful problems with my feet and ankles. I could have back-trooped and just stayed rehabbing until I was healed and then carry on and complete basic training but I was weak physically and in no way prepared for being beasted around training areas and learning about “it pays to be a winner”.

I left depressed and dejected, wondering why I’d ever thought I could possibly be a soldier as I was obviously not cut out for it.

I spent the next 9 years in a variety of jobs, met more people, travelled more places and generally started maturing and hardening myself to where I thought I needed to be for survival in The World. I hadn’t been physically prepared at all at 17, but at 26 I was a Postman so used to walking with weight and out in whatever the weather threw at me and also worked in a Hospital for 5 years as a Nursing Auxiliary and security for a time too so I’d had a multitude of experiences to draw on and I was far more ready.

I grew up on The Isle of Wight, a 24 mile long by 12 mile deep diamond shaped Island about 5 miles off the South Coast of Britain and although an individual County of England for administrative purposes it comes under Hampshire, the county where the ferries to and from the Island dock.

I’d decided I didn’t want to commit to joining the Regular Army but Iraq had kicked off 3 years before, Afghan 2 years before that and my best friend and flatmate was a Combat Med Tech with an Infantry unit so I had first hand knowledge of what it was like in Iraq and had spoken to others about Afghan. This was the start of grainy footage on YouTube and I remember watching the videos of PWRR at Cimic House in Iraq getting absolutely hammered by IDF and constant incoming fire and wanted to be there with them.

The Army Reserve was named The Territorial Army at that time so I found the details of where my local units were and looked at what was available. There was a choice of a Port Maritime Unit based on the Island with a parent unit in Southampton or D Coy 3rd Battalion PWRR in Portsmouth which was the Guns Platoon of PWRR’s reserve battalion.

I didn’t want to be loading ships during combat operations, however vital that activity actually is. I wanted to be getting shot at with the ability to shoot back at them and to do the things I’d heard about from friends who had served. I knew there’d be good and less so times to come and having lived with a CMT who had a comprehensive photo library, I knew what it looked like when the human body gets hit by very fast moving inanimate objects so I was under no illusions as to what may happen to me.

I joined 3 PWRR in May 2006 and it took until the next January/ February time for me to complete the necessary recruit training weekends and the 2 week Combat Infantry Course held at Catterick Garrison in the North of England. CIC is a compressed course that is designed to install the basics that would then be worked on more when with your own unit on drill nights and on weekend exercises.

I completed the 2 week reserves gun platoon cadre as top student in about May 2008 and already had my name down on the upcoming tour trawl for Iraq (Op Telic) and Afghanistan (Op Herrick). Like everyone else I wanted to be out on Herrick and plying my trade as part of a Fire Support Team or on an assault team hitting compounds.

Understandably the more experienced Infanteers went on Op Herrick as they’d either gone on Operational Tours before or had a lot more time in the TA and were better soldiers and those of us who hadn't been away yet were allocated to A and C Companies of 1st Battalion PWRR, one of our parent units based at Paderborn Barracks in Germany.

I left D Coy and arrived at the Reserves Training and Mobilisation Centre Nottingham (now moved to Bassingbourn) on the 15th of September 2008, the day the global recession kicked off and left there for Paderborn with 17 others from 3 Battalion two weeks later.

I joined Sgt Mike Martin’s 2 Platoon of A Coy 1 PWRR as a Rifleman and he and the other veteran NCOs proceeded to shape us and train us for the 2 months they had before deployment in November. 2 Platoon’s new Platoon Commander in the shape of Lieutenant Larry Burgess also joined A Coy and Mike would lose the plot sometimes at the state of his platoon which not only had a new Platoon Commander and 7 TA lads in it but also 2 rejoining lance jacks and guys straight from training.

Over the course of 2 months he and the other veterans molded a disparate group of men into something that looked like what we were meant to be; an Armoured Infantry Strike Company housed in Warrior IFV’s and armed with 30mm Cannon, Rifles, LMG's, GPMG's etc. and trained in Advanced Close Quarters Combat.

We learnt to cordon and approach, stack and breach, put in vehicle checkpoints, conduct searches and a hundred other things.

Some of my brightest memories are of going through the kill house and learning the skills and techniques of building clearance and just how much fun it was. It was my first real glimpse at what it’s like to operate with a group of people that are all moving as one body and can anticipate what you’ll say before you say it because they’re running from the same page as you at all times.

We weren’t quite there but we learned quickly and by the time we were out on patrols in January 2009 (having deployed late November) we were operating as a platoon of infantry who were attuned to their environment and were ready to rock when needed.

The lessons learned from the 9 months that I spent mobilised and the 3 years I spent in the Army Reserves have shaped me more than almost any other experience of my life to a degree that I’ve only recently realised and become comfortable with.

The will to win and to push through on bleeding knuckles and broken bones if needed is a much needed trait in combat infantry and leads back around to what has helped me the most in my quest to understand how my mind and body work.

My family and I have been through some horrendous times since I got back from Iraq 12 years ago with a brand new Fiancée, no work in a recession and living on an Island that had hundreds going for every minimum wage job.

The Mental Resilience that was forged in training and under the tutelage of men who’d learned to duck and shoot faster than the enemy was what drove me forwards for the next 9 years through bankruptcy and repossession and all the other hardships of trying to make it in a society I struggle to fit into, until I suffered a complete mental breakdown in 2018 and was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder soon after that.

It took me 2 years of staring at the walls and interacting with barely anyone to get to the point of starting to ask for help and everyday I’d look at the rope pulley I’ve got set up and think about what it’d be like for my wife or son to find me hanging.

I’d use that revulsion to stop looking at it and take myself back inside to a YouTube video or a Podcast and gradually I started to take an interest in parts of existence again and a chink of hope opened ever so slightly.

I researched BPD and found references to Dialectical Behaviour Therapy and then how to ask for the help I thought I needed. I had to tell my GP what it was I wanted and that she had to refer me to the Personality Disorder Team who would then assess me.

I finally started on a DBT course in March 2021 and that coupled with the lessons learned from Iraq and the Army in general woke me back up out of whichever dungeon my mind had been hiding in for 3 years.

It took a huge amount of effort and wrong turns taking decades before I arrived in this place, writing these words for you to read and the act of writing has become one of the best therapies I’ve found to date.

This is me warts and all.

I haven’t got all the answers, not by a long way, but I’ve done a lot of things over the years in order to understand more about myself and the environment I live in whether that’s out in the woods and deserts or inside my own mind and I’ll write more about going through Dialectical Behaviour Therapy and what it entails in my next piece.