"I'm sorry, but there *is* something wrong with your personality."

Being one of those people who can be highly sensitive to perceived insults, it would make sense to take it personally when a professional diagnosed me with a personality disorder. Heck, the whole point I’ve been trying to make to the world since puberty is that I am an inadequate ratbag of a girl with no personality worthy of love, acceptance or respect.

But on the contrary, it opened up a box of understanding and as I learnt more about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) I came to feel relief to have some explanation behind my emotional instability. That’s actually the explanation, in a nut shell – having BPD basically means you are emotionally retarded. A social retard (sotard) is defined as someone who has no idea how to act or communicate with others appropriately, but does not get embarrassed because they are unaware of their own deficiencies. An emotional retard (emotard) is just a similar deal, different issue: an emotard is defined by yours truly as someone who has no idea how to handle their emotions or control destructive thought processes which cause such emotions, but does not recognise a problem with the way they cope or think because, having only experienced their own mind, they are unaware of their own deficiencies.

That is, until someone points them out and sticks a label on them, then hands you a list of symptoms and possible causes which all seem to be in accordance to everything in your mind and life.

Here are some symptoms which I have found match my characteristics and behaviour:

Deep feelings of insecurity
· Difficulty coping with fear of abandonment or loss and frantic efforts to avoid such things.
Nothing scares me more than losing someone I love, or someone deciding they don’t want to know me. My ‘frantic efforts’ mean I will pretty much do anything to make you not leave me. Yes, I am el-desperado.

· Continually seeking reassurance, even for small things.
I get super-dooper worried if you look at me like you hate me, even if maybe you were just frowning cos the sun was in your eyes. Especially in relationships. E.g. I’ve been called a ‘bitch’ [apparently] ‘jokingly’ but have ended up in tears over the comment.

· Expressing inappropriate anger towards others who I consider responsible for how I feel.
I kind of disagree with this, because while I do get fuckin agro and extremely catty when someone double crosses me, I believe it is well in order.

· A fragile sense of oneself in the world.
Why is my name Laura which means ‘victory’? Why have I become an only child due to an unforeseen road accident? Why was it her and not me? Does everyone love me or does everyone hate me, or are they just fascinated? Or do they even think twice about me and all my fuckedupness at all? If I have no family around me, what is the point in being on this earth?

Persistent impulsiveness
· Abusing alcohol and other drugs.
Why the hell not? I have BPD.

· Binge eating.
Yes, I am aware that I am 5’3 and weigh 47kg. But I LOVE food, as long as it’s not my parent’s cooking. And I will eat as much of it as I can. I haven’t mentioned that chronic feelings of emptiness is another trait of BPD, but this will cover it. Maybe I eat so much to acquire some kind of fullness. I’m just lucky that I have a fast metabolism. Maybe I could even compare it to an evolutionary or adaptational type of thing, like how plants cleverly develop those extra features so they can survive in arid conditions and stuff like that.

· Spending.
In worse off times when it was Monday and payday wasn’t until Thursday and I’d have $10 left on my card, I would have rather purchased the pink tab-top curtains on sale than staple food to ration out to myself for the next 3 days, just because I might use them one day.

Unstable and intense relationships
· Idealisation of potential friends at the first or second meeting.
If you’re nice to me, I tend to think the sun shines out of your ass even though I don’t even know what kind of dickhead two-faced biatch you may be. Further description of this trait usually points out that a BPD sufferer will demand spending a lot of time with you and/or share extremely intimate details with you early in the relationship. I would like to:
a) disagree; and
b) agree with both points respectively as:
a) I’m not a sotard; and
b) I’m sharing intimate details of my mental condition with possible strangers right now.

· Switching quickly from idealising people to devaluing them.
Once you do something which I perceive as ‘dogg’; you’re in the bad books immediately. I do apologise. It just goes back to the bullet point ‘Difficulty coping with abandonment’. I’m terrified that you don’t care, and start to believe that you don’t.

If there are people so emotarded, it has to be for a reason. But that is another story, for another post, best left to another day as it currently be that time of evening where I am alone on a Friday night and chose not to be ‘mindful’ (mindfulness is part of the object of the Dialectical Behavioural Therapy I am currently undergoing; but that too is another story for yet another post on BPD), and partook of some prescribed negative-emotion-numbing drugs. In other words, I need bed or something to eat.