I Have a Monster That Overcomes Me

I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder at the age of 28. It's a mental health issue that becomes apparent in relationships. Your emotions go from 0 to 60 at things that seemingly don't make sense to other people.

A fictional video game character hit on my boyfriend at the time, and I completely lost it on him and ended up smacking him pretty hard in the arm because he jokingly went along with it.

To other people, he was just having fun. It's a game. The whole situation is silly.

To BPD me, he was threatening our relationship—I thought he might be capable of spending all of his time on this game just from the satisfaction he gets from this one game character. She could replace me at any minute, and the worst part was she had a sexier voice, a flatter stomach, and bigger boobs.

I compared myself to video game characters, to actresses, to every woman on the street.

I was living in hell, and hell was created by me. My boyfriend told me he loved me, he would love only me, and he loves everything about me, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I was at the top of his list, and no one could beat it. He reassured me again and again. For hours on end.

Yeah. That was before I got the diagnosis, the dialectical behavior therapy, the antidepressants, and the most drastic: the antipsychotics.

It took about a year to heal from years of torment, and I'm still healing. The problem was that I took bits and pieces of every guy's opinion on which type of girl they liked best, and I tried to be all of them. Having BPD can mean you don't have a stable sense of self. And I sure didn't. When I was by myself, I was fine. But when I settled into a relationship, I would look in the mirror, and I would wonder who the hell is staring back at me. I would feel like I wasn't a real person—like we were all living in a dream.

Except, of course, that dream was a nightmare.

Those who have BPD are notorious for having a fear of real or imagined abandonment, and that was the root of my issue. It stems from a trauma in the past, or genetics. My psychiatrist chalks it up to the preteen year in which my dad left us, my grandpa died, my aunt died, and my dad's friend died.

Since then, I was on edge that everyone around me was going to die, especially my mom, my grandma and my other grandpa. I had constant nightmares at age 12 revolving around death, and I even went into the hospital to get my fluttering heart checked. The doctors said it was just anxiety over being in middle school.

BPD is unsurprisingly comorbid with anxiety disorders, and sure enough, I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and, later in life, I would experience a trauma that resulted in PTSD. I had a laundry list of things wrong with me, and I wanted it all to go away.

I broke up with my boyfriend, which, in the end, was a great feat. He was gaslighting me on top of everything that I had to deal with in my own head.

And then, my next relationship started.

It was my ex-boyfriend's friend. There was definitely a stigma around that. Judgement from our families and our friends. Not only that, but he was still living with his ex, who had turned into just a friend. It was overly complicated, and, for some reason, I wanted to get into it.

Why? He is the sweetest, funniest, most caring, understanding and cooperative partner that I have ever had. Of course I didn't want to let him go over something that was in my head.

But as time went on, everything about his roommate bothered me. The way she left the bathroom messy. The way she laughed at his jokes. Even the way she existed, spending time alone in her room.

I wanted her gone from his life, despite her being a friend. They had a past, and I wanted it all to end.

My therapist disagreed with me.

"The roommate is just there," she said. "Not bothering anyone. Has she interfered with his past girlfriends?"

"No," I admitted, immediately trying to find another reason to jump ship on my relationship entirely.

She invited me to her birthday party a couple months into the relationship. I said hi, ate some pizza, and hid in the basement with my boyfriend and his nerdy friends.

I'd greet her as she came through the door, home from work. But that's about it.

I was nothing like the way his past girlfriends would get along with her. Most times, I'd go upstairs, directly to his room, in avoidance of her.

Then, 5 months into our relationship, I visited again, in a good mood, with my BPD under control from the meds and the therapy. It had been about 3 weeks since a major blow-up with my boyfriend, and I couldn't have been more proud of myself for getting this monster under control.

"There's something I need to tell you, and I don't want you to get mad at me," my boyfriend began. "I told her that you were coming over, and she burst into tears and said, 'I don't care, she hates me anyway.'"

Just then and there, my true colors were revealed. Those with BPD tend to "split"—to see the world in either black or white, never gray, and that went for people, too. You either put them on a pedestal, or you hate them. And the monster I'd tried to manage, the monster that kept reminding me of how they used to date had taken over, and it finally showed.

I practiced looking in the mirror, telling myself I was pretty. Saying my name to engrain the fact that who I see in the mirror is indeed me. Smiling at myself to practice confidence. But all that anyone saw on the outside was ugly. An ugly attitude from the hell created from my imagined scenarios.

Yep. The imagined scenarios in my head had now manifested themselves into scowls, avoidance, and visible hatred onto others.

I blew up and immediately blamed my boyfriend for all of it. If he had never dated her, if he had moved out earlier, none of this would have ever happened. And while that may be true, I knew, deep down, that this was because of me.

"You do make it obvious that you hate people when you're splitting," he said calmly. "You're very easy to read."

But that's not the Lisa that I know, that my friends know, that my family knows, that my co-workers know, the volunteer shelter knows, that strangers I hold doors open for know. I was a good person. And I couldn't believe I'd let my monster overcome me.

My unlikely fear had turned into my reality. And it was all because of me. I fed the monster what it wanted, and the monster grew, and grew, and grew.

My stomach sank as I paced around his room, wondering how I would ever approach a shy introvert about my BPD. It was hard enough to explain as it is. It sounds fake. And the name itself is misleading. It sounds like I'm schizophrenic, when really, it's sister diagnosis would be bipolar disorder.

I began with that.

"I have a condition, and I'm basically bipolar," I started, after knocking on her door.

"Uh huh," she muttered, trying to avoid confrontation and hold back tears.

"I am sorry if it seemed like I didn't like you. It's just that...this condition I have..."

"Uh huh," she said. I couldn't tell if she wanted me to stop talking or go on.

So, I did what my chatterbox boyfriend did best and went on, despite the interest.

"I get hung up on the fact that you two dated," I began.

"That was years ago," she countered.

"And he tells me that all the time. But the condition I have makes it hard for me to understand that. And I'm working with a therapist to help me understand that. But that is the reason why it seemed that way. I like you as a person. I think you're an amazing artist. I would never want you to think that I didn't like you," I said. And that was the truth.

I didn't hate her. I liked her a lot. I thought she was funny, thoughtful, creative, and I admired her and her art. My BPD had convinced me that she was a threat, and it was trying to protect me.

She began to cry.

"Sorry, I cry easily," she started.

"Can I have a hug?" I intervened.

We hugged, and my boyfriend came up the stairs with a smile, ready to go play Pokémon Go.

"Do you want to come with us?" I planned to invite her to dinner and to include her in our plans.

Sometimes I avoided her because I thought she didn't like me, either. But in that moment, it was as though we reverted back to children. I told a girl who's feelings I hurt that I didn't hate her, I hugged her, and we became instant friends again. And then we went off to play a game together, have dinner, and laugh all the way to the restaurant.

Sometimes life really is that simple.

It's simple when I don't get in my head.

It made it so much easier to be me when I was my most authentic self—and even though that may be hard to find as someone with BPD—it shows up as speaking my mind, showing what's in my heart, and thinking about how I wished the world could be.

Think about what my life could be like if I imagined scenarios not of my boyfriend cheating, not of his roommate hating me, not of strangers hurting me, but of my boyfriend loving me until I'm old and gray, painting and laughing over wine with the roommate, and greeting every stranger on the street with a smile.

My monster would be slain. Killed with kindness. Destroyed by honesty. Mutated by positive thoughts. Splattered to bits by a love grenade. Murdered by an endless open fire of imagined happiness.

That day, I realized that if I could create hell in my mind, I could create heaven, too. Heaven could be my new reality.

And I could keep that reality, as long as I keep being the me I've always dreamed I could be.