Previously, I was so sure of my own self will, so arrogantly set on the belief that I could conquer all obstacles in life with just my own power, that I never once realized what truly lurked beneath all of the outward so called confidence – a terrified little boy who hated himself and never believed he was capable of doing anything good at all.

 

Waking up in jail for the last time after honestly trying as hard as I possibly could to get better was the last straw for me. I was living with my fiancée at the time and we had enough genuinely bright aspects to our relationship for me to finally catch a glimpse of what real love and real happiness could feel like. Just enough to give me something to reach and hope for. Just enough for me to believe that I had finally made it and was on a path to lasting health. What I did not see however is that I was still locked in the madness of my past, continually repeating my past mistakes by recreating downward spirals of external attachment and dependence on others for my own identity. Just that short 10 months ago I had no conscious awareness that I am Bordeline; none what so ever. So, all the waves of internal chaos and confusion that comes with my condition never made any sense to me. Yet somehow, despite all my erratic emotions and behaviors, I still held the idea that I was finally where I needed to be simply because I had a glimmer of what life could be like. The unfortunate truth is that the glimmer came from the wrong place. Rather than coming from inside myself that glimmer into a world of joy came through my fiancée. I saw what real happiness could be like not through my own eyes, but through hers.

 

After waking up in jail for the last time, finding myself struggling desperately to figure out what had happened and how I ended up that horrible place again, I felt something change. It was a profound and spiritual experience. Something at my very foundation finally said “enough” and I felt something inside me come to a grinding halt. I had submitted; absolutely, completely, and utterly submitted. Right then and there I knew without any doubts that despite honestly trying as hard as I possibly could to “get it right”, I as an individual can not do this on my own. Suddenly, I was willing and able to admit total defeat to what ever it was that I had been fighting all my life and finally look outside of myself for help and guidance. It was a monumental change for me that is redefining my entire existence.

 

The next step for me after this experience was to get sober. I was a binge drinker with random frequency, random amounts, and random impacts from drinking. In other words, my drinking paralleled the constant emotional 3 ring circus I experienced inside. After 4 years of trying to stop drinking on my own there was no way I could mess around this time. I listened to my family and attorney without question and went straight to the big guns – a 3-week in-patient stay for chemical dependency. Those brief 3-weeks of life rocketed me solidly onto the path of real recovery that now defines the journey of my life. For the first time in my life I was outside of myself, able to see myself from a completely new perspective than ever before. I no longer felt the crippling shame that had plagued me all my life and kept locked away from the multitude of helping hands that had been extended to me over the years. The difference was astonishing. For the first time in my life I began to understand the word acceptance on a deeply fundamental level. The concept was still in its infancy of course, but the seed had been planted by the simple acceptance that I can not do this alone, that I needed help from forces outside of myself, and there is nothing at all wrong with any of that.

 

By the time my in-patient treatment was over this simple submission and acceptance that I needed help quickly turned from a source of shame to a source of pride. I still can’t really explain why or how; I just know that I feel proud of the fact that I can finally ask for help and fully open my heart and soul to receive help. There is something deeply profound for me about simple submission to an existence outside of myself, one that is more powerful and omnipotent than I can ever hope to be as an isolated individual in this universe. The way I see it, I am just a cell on the cosmic body of the universe and just as the individual cells of my body can not function on their own, I too can not function on my own.

 

So that is how this radically new journey of my life took sail 10 months ago. Since then I have continued my recovery from alcoholism and extended the concepts of that work onto every aspect of my entire being. My brain has cleared from the cycles of binge drinking which kept it in constant chemical turmoil and my therapist has been able to finally identify my BPD. Now, I use the framework that I have learned about BPD as a roadmap for navigating my life. The bombardments of what used to be random emotions and thoughts all day long are becoming an increasingly easier road for me to follow.

 

Although it may sound simple, and indeed keeping it simple plays a vital role in my recovery, the path contains countless unseen twists and bends along the way. Most notably, this past month has been a particularly difficult struggle for me which required me to reset my course a bit by once more taking a deep breath and fully submitting to the unspoken guiding force that comes from outside the confines of my own warped mind.

 

Prior to a month ago, my fiancée and I had been trying to piece our relationship back together after I blew everything apart with my drunken explosion. Luckily, my violence this time was only verbal, albeit psychotically out of control verbal, so I believed that I still had a chance of a future with her. From the start I could feel that something was wrong but I could not figure out why I felt that way or where the feeling even came from. I was so fully focused on all the positive feelings I received from contact with her that I failed to listen to that new inner guiding force to which that I had previously submitted. Just as I had done countless time before, my own identity and my own sense of self worth started to become fully dependant upon her. Upon her opinions of me, upon her actions and words towards me, upon the very fact that she loved me at all.  Needless to say, that was the opposite direction from real recovery and that showed up in every aspect of our dynamics together.

 

Even though something quiet and deep inside me felt these things I was still consciously unaware of the situation and therefore powerless to stop. The cycle with her had started before I even learned that I’m a Borderline and by the time I had learned, which was only a few short months ago, roots already planted themselves into the artificial realities that my mind spins around me. Previously in life, entrapment like this would last until I created some kind of enormous explosion to wipe away all structures around me, forcing me to start rebuilding from scratch. This time, however, that inner guiding force lead me on a different path. A new path. A healing and loving path rather than a self hating and self destructive path.

 

I have seen the same Domestic Violence counselor off and on for a total of 8 years now so by this point he knows me and my history extremely well. Since the day I started this last round of work with him he has continually told me I need to be alone rather than involved in a relationship. Until now, I refused to believe that I was not strong enough or not “good” enough to be successful at my own recovery at the same time as being successful at repairing the relationship with my fiancée. I had taken back that piece of my submission and was trying to do things my old way. At the same time though, I still had that unspoken force inside me trying to tell me that something was wrong; that I needed to give that piece back and submit again; that I needed to trust the healing powers of that unspoken force inside which I knew was greater than the madness which came from the confines of my own mind.

 

Of course, my conscious mind refused. My conscious mind was already so caught up in the vicious externalized circles that I create as a Borderline I just could not do it. Contact with my fiancée was truly like a drug for me; the injection and rush of positive feelings from contact with her was like a shot of heroin to me. On a conscious level I was powerless to resist. My subconscious, however, could stop the cycle. I arranged a session for my fiancee to meet one on one with my therapist and I opened the patient / therapist confidentiality so they could speak openly about me. My therapist knew everything; I had been completely transparent and honest with him because despite the fact that I was not taking his advice about needing to be alone, I still had an inner faith that he knew what is right for me. To this day I still do not know what was said in that fateful 1 hour session between them but the impact was quite profound; that was one month ago and that was the last time I have ever seen my now ex-fiancée. She left me immediately after her session with him and vowed to never return. The weird thing is that somewhere deep inside I knew that would happen, and that is exactly why I did it. This is my pattern. When I can’t do what is right for me I create a situation to force others to do it for me. The only difference is that this time I was able to make it happen without any explosions, without any violence, with hardly any drama at all other than the class 5 hurricane of my own emotions.

 

Over the past month that my hurricane has felt intensely painful and confusing because it is hitting so many foundations of my being as I deconstruct the past 10 months through the newfound framework of BPD. It is clear to me now what was happening and why I can not be in a relationship with my ex-fiancée or anyone else right now. I was doing the exact same thing I have done over and over before in life; defining my sense of self and the entire foundation of my self worth on her and her love for me. I was loosing touch with the new internalized sense of self and value that began 10 months ago during my in-patient treatment, replacing it with something else that is not me at all but rather someone else. This past month has been so difficult for me because I deconstructed the false and doomed externalized identity and reconnected with the real yet still very young self identity which I disconnected from.

 

The most painful, although most important, part of this experience centers on the concept of her love for me. Until just the past few days I have been stuck on the thought that her love for me was not real enough or not strong enough and that is why she left me. This thought created endless cycles of self abuse and self loathing because my sense of value was once again so dependant upon her love and acceptance of me that without constant injections of those things into my life I lost touch with love and acceptance of myself. I honestly believed that her leaving me meant I was unlovable; meant I was simply not good enough to deserve acceptance and love from anyone, especially myself.

 

Over this past month of deconstruction my mind, given the framework and insight of learning about how BPD shapes my entire being, was able to make sense of what I had been doing and why I was doing it. The rest of me though has been lagging behind until now. No matter how many times I consciously told myself what was going on, that I had created these external attachments and this external self, the other parts of me still had to fully experience the emotional impacts from the loss and the deconstruction of what I had created. Just simply thinking about things did not do it for me. I had to grieve the loss. I had to learn how to fully accept myself on an emotional level for who I am, right now at this very moment in time – the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the everything. I had to learn how to deeply and tenderly care for myself, on my own, without someone else doing it for me. As I move closer and closer to honestly letting go of the self I created through my ex-fiancées love for me I bond more and more with my true inner self.

 

So that is where I am at today. Just a couple days ago I severed the last remaining tie between my ex-finacee and I. Ever since I created that structure obliterating explosion 10 months ago we maintained a connection to each other through our Myspace pages. This past week I realized that tiny seemingly meaningless connection, that ability to look through a window into each other’s lives, was keeping me inappropriately and enormously connected to her. So, just a few days ago I severed that umbilical cord by removing her from my friends list. At the time I did this, I don’t’ think I fully understood the impact that connection was having on me; at least not on a conscious level. I just knew that the unspoken inner force was telling me I needed to do it, and so I submitted and broke the link. That was the understanding I had when I wrote this note to her:

 

This note is to let you know that I have removed you as a myspace friend. Continuing to give you access to my full page with my blogs and everything else has been reinforcing my emotional connection to you and I can’t allow that to happen anymore. It would be different if I was not still in love with you; we probably could even become great friends if that were the case. But, sadly, I AM still in love with you; completely and fully still in love with you. So, I can’t even allow this one last tiny connection to you anymore because it is keeping me stuck in the false reality that maybe someday you will want to see me again. Well, you’ve made it clear that you will never let that happen so it’s time for me to do everything I can to stop believing it myself as well. I’m sorry if you wanted to keep this last connection to me so you could watch my growth from a distance and I just took that away from you. I’m not doing this to hurt you and I’m sorry if it is in any way. This is just something that I have to do in order for me to stop believing in us so I can fully move on with my life. I hope you understand.

 

Now, after several days of fairly intense and painful reflection, I see the broader scope. I can put into words how that miniscule connection to her severely harmed me and kept me trapped in my old cycles. That tiny external link keep me connected to my own fictitious and externalized sense of self that I had created through her. Despite my best efforts to dispose of that self the link kept me connected to it and powerless to move on. When I finally did sever that last link I fell a lot like I had severed a link I had to myself; kind of like I had just cut off my arm or something. In truth, of course, I had not cut a link to my real self at all and now that it is gone I am able to both see as well as feel this truth. While active though, even that one tiny link had immense power and kept me flying in circles like a bird with a broken wing, unable to change my course to anything other than a spiral heading straight down.

 

I clearly still have a very long way to go on my journey of recovery. This experience, however, is living proof that change really is possible for me. This is the first time in my entire life that I have created the same decaying downward spiraling patterns as I’ve done over and over before yet did not need an enormous violent explosion to unlock myself from the patterns. While that may not seem like much to someone outside the infinite chaos of my own head, for me this experience provides a bright beacon of hope. It is yet another example that simply submitting to the new unspoken guiding force that I feel can and will provide real and lasting recovery for me.