Borderline Personality Disorder

The lessons of recovery continue.

A few years ago, I hooked up online with this friend, Calvin. We actually knew each other from working together at a wellness center for a couple years. I always loved Calvin. When I found him on social media, I had to reintroduce myself because he had pretty much forgotten me. That was ok because he was older, a LOT older, had more history on earth before we met, and I figured maybe he didn't remember as much of that time when we worked together because what's 2 tiny years out of 80 something under his bridge? Nevertheless, he said he remembered me, so I assumed he did. He used to call me "Pinkie Louise" because at the time we worked together I started wearing pink for the first time in my life, and I wore it a lot. When I reminded him of it, it sounded like he remembered it, me, whatever. I didn’t really care because I liked him!

He had a silly, elfish quality. He was wise, loving, masterful in his trade, a bit of a jack of many trades and a bit of a trickster, too. He always looked at me as a sort of daughter when we worked together. He gave me sagely advice and confided in me about things around the office which he thought were funny. We shared notes on clients we both worked on. He taught me some techniques in Hellerwork which was his specialty. We used to throw balls to the border collies he raised when he brought them to work. His business card was a picture of him with his pet parakeet on his head. He always had a menagerie of pets at home he talked about. He really was some kind of animal friendly elf.

As we got to know each other again on social media, he got to know me more as I am now. I was just getting into anarchy at the time. I was crossing that bridge with trepidation. We often debated about politics. That was fine because I liked and respected him even when we didn't agree. We really got to know each other more often as allies about Obama bullshit since it was during that reign of tyranny when we reconnected. Once Trump got elected, he had major issues with my posts pointing out Trump's bull crap. Calvin became less respectful in his disagreements. He would bring insults and derogatory remarks into it. For a long time, I excused his reactions as common among those who don’t really have a good argument, but I never took it personally.

One day, Calvin went too far, and I couldn’t ignore it. I tried. I tried sending DMs and working things out in private. I extended the olive branch to the best of my ability. I asked him to reconsider name calling and tried to remind him of how we had always been friends. Instead of taking what I was saying gracefully, he doubled down with the name calling. When I told him that I always thought well of him even when we worked together, he said, "We worked together?"

I realized, he didn't know who I was from Adam. At that moment, I was just a faceless internet entity to him that he sparred with online. It was hard to hear, but I said, "That's ok. I remember you, and I loved working with you and everything I learned from talking to you back in the day all the way up to now."

In response to this, he RAGED. He went into overkill, doing his best to ignore everything I said to deflect his anger and became downright caustic. He said some very sexist, degrading and horribly inexcusable things to me. It was stuff I couldn't with any self-respect abide or tolerate having said to me. I didn't even take it personally, but he made it clear he was not joking. I just can’t let people talk to me like that. He wanted to hurt me. He didn’t, but he clearly was going out of his way to make a punch land. I was only sorrowful on account of him going so far to push me away when I really liked him. I was sad to let him go.

This is one of the main issues with kids who grow up in abusive homes like I did. We can love people for who they are and literally, unconditionally expect less than nothing from them toward ourselves. We can overlook toxic and abusive behavior perpetrated directly at us, and we can see where it is coming from underneath, knowing it wasn't really about us. We have been conditioned not to take anything personally. We can love people who behave badly just the same.

However, we do eventually learn and grow. We understand that we don't have to tolerate people who don't love us back. No one should keep people in his or her personal space who are being callous or rude. Most importantly, it’s important to practice a little relationship feng shui. Don’t have person who doesn’t care about you taking a space of importance in your life that could be held by someone who gives back and cares back, even if you think that person is really magnificent. After all, just because someone doesn’t like you certainly doesn’t make that person less magnificent. It just means you’re not for them. More to the point, it means they aren’t for you. If you do engage, it’s more hero worship than anything else. It’s not really a relationship.

I ended up unfriending Calvin that day with regret for what he had done and what it felt like he was making me do. After unfriending him, he kept prodding me with insults hoping I would return the jabs. I had to block him. I still liked him, loved him even, because I knew him. But he apparently never really liked, knew or cared about me, at least not in a personal way. By the end, he only saw me as someone he wanted to provoke. I realized, I, just by being me, was not bringing out the best in him, the parts I really loved about him. It was so unfortunate. Sometimes, if two people aren’t right for each other, refusing to acknowledge it can cause so much unnecessary friction.

After about a year of separation, Calvin found me on Instagram and tried to reach out to me to see if I'd be friends again. I think he finally remembered there was a part of our communication on FB he enjoyed. He still never remembered us working together every day for two years. I ended up telling him I was sorry, but it was not going to work out for us again after all the inexcusable things he said. He wasn’t taking “no” for an answer. He was very friendly, but unfortunately, I had to block his account on Instagram, too. It sucked.

It was so hard for me to come to the final decision to block him the first time knowing he'd ultimately regret it. I told him that the first time, too. I could see he just wanted a reaction out of me to justify his own angst about politics, which was stupid. He wasn't stupid. He was just digging his heels in some egotistical, self-sabotage program. But that first time, he just pushed way, way too far. He went way past the point of no return, to make me block him. Blocking him was all I could do to keep him from saying ugly things to me that made him just come apart, just destroying himself with mouth vomit.

To this day, I still don't believe he is a bad person. I know in general he is a sweet, lovely person. But people lose sight of humanity behind computer screens. It can so easily become just 1's and 0's and positions and principles over people. It can be poor argumentation, emotional bullying that we seem to win with as a tactic that drive wedges into our friendships. It can be guilt and shaming or just having an egoic attachment to our beliefs and opinions. In one of my favorite books, “Stillness Speaks” Eckhart Tolle says, “Here’s a good spiritual practice for you. Don’t take your thoughts too personally.” I sat with that wisdom for a decade. That’s some powerful stuff. Most people haven’t. Most people think my position is my side and the contrary position is the enemy.

Part of the agenda in this world which seems clear to me is to create psychological "splitting," a key component of borderline personality disorder. The experiences that happened during the most gruesome MK Ultra experiments would split individuals to the point they couldn’t even be at one with themselves. It was beyond borderline disorder. It was disassociative, multiple personalities. These people literally became whatever aspects they identified with in a current moment. Talk about taking your thoughts too seriously. With borderline personality disorder, however, people who split see other people as good or evil, devil or angel, godly or ghastly. I grew up with one parent who I am certain had the disorder. The other parent also had traits. It's hard to love people with borderline personality disorder. Well, I take that back. It’s not hard to love them. It’s hard to love yourself. You never know when you'll be demonized and then abused. There’s a lot of self-blame. Those of us who have experienced it enough, start to have a hard time forming attachments with people in general, for fear a disagreement may send them over the edge.

Personally, I began to love myself enough as an adult that I put my heart out there anyway and loved people regardless of the outcomes. I couldn’t deprive myself of good human interactions. I have been blessed with some really special relationships that made the few bad ones that slipped through the cracks less hurtful. I became sort of bullet proof. That’s probably why nothing Calvin did seemed to be about me. It wasn’t. As I learned about why people are motivated to hurt others, I was able to detach from their bad behaviors.

With time, it also became easier to see the disorder in people online and in general. I could kind of avoid it. With the ease of blocking and unfriending online, people with borderline personality disorder tend to more easily and openly describe people they associate with in these dualistic, polarized caricatures. It's easier for me to witness it and evaluate it online when there's no human contact or personal interaction. These people do this fairly easily, dehumanize others at whim.

I have seen the patterns my whole life. I have gotten close to people who I knew were likely ticking time bombs, people who obviously have the disorder. Some I kept at arms reach. Some I wanted nothing to do with. Others, I thought might be worthy of pursuing a relationship with anyway. Borderline personality disorder doesn’t make someone unlovable. It just means there’s a likely expiration date on the relationship. I love them, and figure I know well enough how to avoid the shrapnel if I want to have them in my life. The authoritative book on people dealing with borderlines is called "Stop Walking On Eggshells." I know how to walk on eggshells. It’s my default program. The people with the disorder will always gravitate toward me as a person who can get along with them codependently. If I am behaving in my default program, which is rare anymore, they will tend to seek my friendship. I also have changed a lot over the decades. I tend to avoid like the plague those who expect this from me or rely on it. I can sense this pressure pretty acutely in most circumstances. The red flags go up. It took me until my thirties to get to that point.

I still give some people that I haven’t been in my default programs with the benefit of the doubt. Some people just have traits of borderline, but ultimately, it’s not controlling their entire behavior. For many, it’s just some occasional fluke. Everyone has some traits of it. I do. Everyone does. So, I would be isolating myself to avoid traits. I have mistakenly placed my hope in people from time to time thinking it’s a fluke. I hope people are sensitive and caring enough not to be a complete douche 24/7 and sometimes, they are great. Sometimes, I miss the signs and signals that all the person's perceived sensitivity is only focused inward. Oops! Live and learn.

I’m not talking about Calvin. He was tender and sweet. But he probably was more manipulated by the world of politics to split than having inherent characteristics of borderline personality disorder. His behavior was actually a fluke, but it was a fluke he refused to back down from. In the end, he took the fluke too far.

The lesson this year for me is to listen closer to my instincts and to notice if people care about feelings or if they care about my feelings. I’m coming to learn there is a big difference. I’m learning that some people hang out with only those who agree with them because they can’t handle or process loving someone they don’t always agree with. That’s not even borderline. That’s just people in general. Just because I agree with someone most of the time, doesn’t mean I will agree with them ALL of the time. Certainly, with someone who can’t take disagreements, it only takes one thing to ruin the entire relationship, regardless of how inconsequential that one thing is. Usually, unless you are naturally all too agreeable, that becomes apparent pretty quickly.

I am learning that boundaries are best when they operate like the frame of a camera or a canvas. When I am focused on what kind of people I want in my frame of influence, that is the best kind of boundary. Do I want people I like and respect regardless of our differences, or do I want people with whom the relationship is truly mutual? This year, I will pay more attention to how people respond to our disagreements. Do the people seem loving and do the disagreements seem silly and insignificant to the larger picture of our relationship? Can the person debate the topic without debating whether or not I am a good person or calling my character into question?

One of the saddest things about the world right now is that after public schooling, polarizing politics, spanking parents, rampant alcoholism and media brainwashing so few people are really healthy and evolved human beings. There’s just not enough good examples out there of what it truly is to be respectful and loving and really, unconditionally loving. So we are stumbling over a lot of hurt people who unconsciously hurt people without knowing any better. It’s monkey see, monkey do out there, and there’s not enough well behaved monkeys leading the way.

Long story short, it’s been more sad for me when I ignore my instincts and don’t pull away from people I know are not on the same page. By the same page, I do not mean in total agreement. I mean: healthy. I can avoid a lot more sadness and disappointments if I realize the Divine appointments with myself, check in and do what my heart is telling me rather than getting attached sentimentally to someone I know is going to blow up in my face. It sounds bad. I know. It sounds like something recent happened to me to instigate all this, and it did. This process is tough when it happens. But- it’s really better to know than to not know, acknowledge than to disacknowledge and to evolve knowing the future will be better for having had this moment than to sit around waiting in fear and angst for the next ticking time bomb whom I gave the benefit of the doubt to explode.

Cuz, baby, I’m worth it.