“This is the book I never readThese are the words I never saidThis is the path I’ll never treadThese are the dreams I’ll dream insteadThis is the joy that’s seldom spreadThese are the tears…The tears we shedThis is the fearThis is the dread
These are the contents of my headAnd these are the years that we have spentAnd this is what they representAnd this is how I feelDo you know how I feel?‘Cause i don’t think you know how I feelI don’t think you know what I feel.” Annie Lennox

I have been given the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), and while I used to identify with it, I’m starting to hate this label more and more each day. No one wants to give a person with BPD a decent length hospital admission because they think it will make us “dependent”. Then the other day my two psychiatrists came to visit me in hospital. One of them asked me if I was putting all this on just to emotionally manipulate them into putting me back with my old case worker. There is so much stigma about BPD, especially amongst people who are meant to be the experts. We are not seen as people suffering from trauma. Our pain is not seen as real. We are seen as manipulative. All I could say to this psychiatrist was “no, I hate this”. I do hate this. It is the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. I would take anything for it to stop. There are episodes that they may never find out about, like the traumatic stress attack I had the other night, and the time I was crying and screaming at my previous hospital. But each time they see me like this, their instinct isn’t to show compassion and reconsider their decision to change my case worker. It is the complete opposite. They stand firmer in their decisions (to change my case worker and to discharge me) which are traumatising me.  They see my behaviour as “bad” which they will not “reward”. My psychologist says they are not acting out of malice, rather ignorance, but I don’t know. I am starting to think my case management team are run by psychopaths. You don’t need a Doctor of Medicine to recognise a person who’s suffering. They have the power to do something about it, but they won’t. They just turn their backs on me. Well maybe it is time I turn my back on them. Sometimes I think I am better the hell away from these people.

jordan14