Hello and welcome to my BPDLife blog. I have been living with my BPD diagnosis for over 7 years now with a side diagnosis of Bipolar. I’m nearly in my mid-40s, have worked since I was 16 years old right up until my second admission into my local psychiatric hospital in 2011. I haven’t been able to return to work since. I live in London, England.
I am considered high functioning. I call myself a high functioning nutter. I am not addicted to drugs or alcohol. I barely drink. I can, on some days, keep myself clean and tidy and predominantly safe. I don’t spend my entire day sitting in a chair, rocking backwards and forwards gently dribbling although on occasion, it has been known.
Most of my days are spent just trying to get through the day. I consider it a major achievement to pay my bills on time. I live on my own since my marriage broke down. It is exhausting just to keep on top of that. There are days I sleep too much, days I don’t sleep at all. Days I don’t eat, days I eat too much. To be fair, it’s mostly the latter. There are days I self-harm. There are days I don’t speak to anybody, there are days I can be fully engaging. I can spend days at a time in the house basically living in my pyjamas and not moving off the sofa. Then there are the days that I feel I can achieve so much.
I consider myself to be self-aware. I have been through various group and individual treatments and am currently taking Venlafaxine on a daily basis. I believe I am intelligent and articulate and that is one of the reasons why I decided to start this blog. One of the things that I learned in Group Mindfulness treatment I attended a few years ago was to do different things and do things differently. I am trying to employ that now. I wanted to start this blog not only to selfishly help process my own feelings and frustrations, but to also let others know in the same situation that they are not alone. If people read this who don’t have BPD but know a friend or relative who does have BPD, then hopefully this blog may also give them some insight into what life is like dealing with BPD on a daily basis and reacting to big life events.
This Blog is also to share the journey I am about to go on. I am trying to return to work and I have recently got divorced so I’m starting again at nearly mid-40 and doing it all with Mental Health Issues. This is going to be tough. There will be highs, there will be lows. There will be days where everything I touch turns to gold and there will be days that I do genuinely want to die to stop the pain.
I warn you in advance that there will be discussions of self-harm, suicide attempts and all potential triggers for these two events. There will be sarcasm, anger, self-deprecation and frustration throughout these blog entries. Fingers crossed, there will be some giggles too. The views and opinions expressed in these blog entries are mine and mine only. I will also add links and recommendations of websites, books and things that I have found usual as I plough on through this journey and may be of use to some of you out there.
Living The BPD Life 