#Bpd is 'my parents shamed me out of being able to deal with my emotions in a healthy way and they made that

[crush3dmary]

I would not wish BPD on my worst enemy.

[futurefrenzy]

I generally try to keep this blog as positive as possible, excluding my general hissy fits at Crash or the odd sadboy aesthetic post or whatever, but my mental health has been declining lately and I feel like it’s too overwhelming to’ve not crept on this blog over time.

This post is gonna contain mentions of self harm, suicide, disordered eating, dysphoria and possibly drugs? Just a warning.

I started self-harming when I was about 13-14. It was originally a punishment type thing if I felt I’d done something wrong (e.g, gotten into an argument with my parents, got an answer wrong in class), and the number of cuts would like, reflect how bad I thought the situation was (anxiety/depression n just general teenage loneliness didn’t help)... but for a majority of high school and college I was clean, like, I’d only do it in very dire situations near the end stress-wise, and I thought at one point it’d be all in the past and I’d never have to deal with it again... and then this year happened.

Earlier this year I was with a partner who was quite abusive, really intense mood swings at the drop of a hat, just escalated everything etc, one time he even argued with me for hours then decided to block me and consider breaking up with me just because I made a dumb joke about a typo he made. It filled me with a lot of anger and frustration when I wasn’t able to speak to him during those periods, and I found myself harming again to channel those intense emotions somewhere. I feel like I’d much rather inflict it on myself than accidentally lash out at someone else because they don’t deserve it. He’s very much out of my life, but gradually through this year I’ve had a really volatile headspace. There’s been good and bad days, but on a long-term scale I’m pretty sure things are getting worse.

It’s getting to the point where I’m pretty much living off eating bread once a day, thinking of eating anything more frequently than that makes me feel bloated and sick, and the very little hunger cues I have are numbed by caffeine from coffee that I drink all the damn time, so I intentionally don’t eat just for the fuck of it cuz of low self-worth, or maybe cuz my body doesn’t feel like mine, or maybe it’s gender dysphoria, or something subconscious, idk.

I self-harmed like 2/3 weeks ago cuz I was in a state where it felt like my meds weren’t doing anything, there was no soft cushioning with any situation at all and I was just hit full force again. I spoke to my psychologist that week and he told me it’s possible I have Borderline Personality Disorder. He said he’d think on it, but I don’t see him again till late November and since then I’ve felt like my symptoms have peaked. I’m like, hyperaware of every little thing I do in case it’s associated with BPD, like trying to back off when I think I’m being too overbearing, getting frustrated with myself for panicking over dumb shit, which, in turn, has made the cycle worse.

Thursday night, I was feeling like this tenfold, I hated myself for not being able to cope with things, to just leave my friends alone, to not be so clingy and obsessive, to just hate my inner being and my past trauma to the core for making me like this. I harmed myself again, this time like an association affect kinda thing - like when a smoker tries to quit cigarettes, they might snap a rubber band against their wrist when thinking about having a smoke - I hurt myself whenever I thought about liking one of my friends/being obsessive about it, hoping that it’d stop. Just... feeling so much anger and shame at myself, and needing a release. My chest started aching and my heart was on the fritz so I took 12 hours worth of codeine, told my two only friends what I did, and told them I’d go to hospital the next day. I was waiting in there for two and a half hours, and was there for 5 and a half in total. It was recommended I see a general nurse for my cuts, but they weren’t concerning in the slightest apparently, and then I was referred over to a psychiatrist. I told her about the night before, a bit about my life, and mostly my past, and after a while of filling out her form, she told me she believes I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and she sent a letter to my doctor about it. Since then things haven’t really been better or worse, but I do feel pretty broken. It’s clear at this point that anxiety/depression is not all I have, and it makes me pretty worried. I feel broken... and just, day-to-day life doesn’t have much real-life sensation for me besides stress, I’m mostly just trapped in my head or totally zoned out. I don’t really know what to do besides just following up with my doctor. I am grateful for my friends but... it’s just not enough. I know ultimately, I have to be the person that helps me get better, but... it just doesn’t seem possible. Atm, my life seems fine; I’m in a safe home, I have supportive friends, I have two programs where I can go and do my art, nothing is really bad atm, so idk why I’m like this.

[hoshira]

` mini headcanon o3. * the perfect family

invisible. <sarcasm> with a title like that, you definitely know that this post will be nothing but sunshine and rainbows. </sarcasm> okay, but seriously, this post will tackle some things regarding tooru and his narrative─ particularly how he consistently disillusions himself. this will be done in the lens of his backstory, however, as i’ll delve a little bit into his family life and what he does in order to deal with them.      post contains mentions of parental neglect, so if that’s not your cup of tea, just scroll past this post like nothing happened.

     i think by now we’re all aware of tooru and his rather terrible parents. but what i’ve yet to write about is how exactly he deals with them. now, my mini meta delves a bit into this, so i’ll post the snippet about his family here, so you can get a sense of what his relationships with each family member is like.

     about parents takashi & misao:

     They love their children, but they love it them in such a monotonous way – as if familial love were a formula as opposed to an emotion. The way they handle things is almost absurdly professional. [...] They’re cold, seemingly emotionless, and if it weren’t for the fact that they had blood in their veins and a heart that beats, you honestly wouldn’t be able to differentiate them from robots. The way they do things is so unnatural because it’s so perfectly executed. 

     already, tooru’s parents are painted as aloof and kind of unfeeling. they see no real emotional attachment nor value in even the most large of tasks, which makes them seem almost artificial. this detachment from their own family in preference of conducting things in a polite and businesslike order, almost to the point of obsession, is why tooru’s family is so disjointed, and why his siblings are very independent. unlike tooru, aika and kaito were given proper attention and care at a younger age, and by the time that they knew how to fend for their own was the time that their parents chose to become less caring. it was as if they had a task to do, and once done, they moved onto the next one. granted, it isn’t the best method of parenting, but at least the older siblings had a chance with making it out on their own. even kaito, who is similar to tooru in disposition, turned out to be fine. but why is tooru so different ? why does he depend so much on people, and rely on the approval of others to feel validated ? well, it’s because his parents were never there to begin with. when tooru was born, they pretty much left him to fend for himself with nothing but a name and high expectations set by his family. but even so, he never blamed his parents. he disillusioned himself into thinking that they were constantly absent because they were busy. “ they’re not home yet because they got caught up in traffic. ” “ they’re late to my birthday party because their boss is super mean and made them stay in ! ” “ they’re not here at my school show yet because they’re preparing a big surprise for when i do my part. they’ll be so happy and proud of me, and that’s why i’ll keep their seats reserved for them. ” “ they’ll arrive. ” “ they’ll arrive. ” they lied. in the midst of all these lies, tooru began to feel how crippling and empty loneliness felt. that emotion, like your heartstrings are the chords to a guitar, taut and strum to one’s leisure, a cacophony of noise, because his parents lied to him so many times, broke so many promises that were always empty to begin with, and─

     so he learnt to deal with it. he turned to watching TV and reading manga. what was he reading about ? stories about children with no parents. stories about children with only their siblings as family, because he related most to them. he could see himself as those children, was inspired by their adventures, felt as if he could become heroes like them, revered and adored by all. he put himself in the shoes of those characters, saw things as how they saw them, and developed his personality based on traits that he saw as admirable, and thus "stole” from them ( though, this was actually one of the earliest emergences of a trait for his bpd ). but i also mentioned the fact that he read of sibling relationships, and that is also something that influenced his personality.

     from the start, he had no one to trust in except kaito, who was only a child at the time, as well. aika initially thought of tooru as a shame to the family name, and so she kept her distance from him ( though this mindset changed the more she realized just how wrong her parents were in thinking of him as inferior or not even part of the hoshiumi line ). already, he was cut off from so many people in his life. and thus, kaito was the only person that he could learn from. who you are as a person is just as much nurture as it is nature, and it is increasingly difficult to develop when the main figures in your life ( aka your parents or guardians ) are absent. it is even more so when the only person you’re able to look up to is your brother, who is only eight years older than you.

     a snippet from kaito’s portion of the meta shows you just how important he was in shaping who tooru is now, however:

     It’s from Kaito that Tooru got most of his morals and aspirations from. He is kind because Kaito showed him kindness. He “adopts” those with horrible parents because Kaito “adopted” him and protected him from their neglectful parents. A lot of who Tooru is comes from Kaito because Kaito was the only person who was there for him during his youth. He taught him right from wrong, taught him how to take care of himself, and most importantly, taught him things that even the most brilliant of teachers could not instruct upon – because Tooru has always been an intelligent child, but emotions are not learnt by reading a textbook or answering questions on a test. They are experienced and felt. And Kaito taught Tooru the most important sentiment of all – one that Tooru embodies in his entirety: love. Because Misao and Takashi showed none in their neglect. Because Aika showed none in her own. And yet the constant in Tooru’s life is the reason why he’s so altruistic, why he gives so much, why his affection blooms in his heart, yet never wilts in the face of decay. Because Kaito taught him love. 

     and that’s the thing─ i’ve called tooru the embodiment of love in so many replies and threads and headcanons because, honestly, that’s what he is. tooru is the love that blooms in face of bleakness, that thrives in drought; not because he has / needs to, but because he wants to. he wants to remain kind and gentle, wants to remain serene and loving, even though he has reason to abandon all prospects of being a good person and instead become callous and cruel.

     when kaito left, tooru was devastated. though he always visited, always checked in on tooru, aika even beginning to make more trips from tokyo to sendai as best she could, tooru felt alone─ as if he had been abandoned on an island, the rest of his family waving goodbye from the cruise liner eastbound for home. so he turned to media again. but instead, he read and watched material about happy families. families that were complete. families that were always together, and loved each other no matter what. he could imagine his own family in their stead, filled his imagination with scenarios of him coming home from school, running in to hug his mother, who would smile and pet his head, of his father taking him out on father-daughter ( and once tooru came out as trans, father-son ) excursions, of his siblings going shopping together with him, of christmases spent watching american movies and wondering if westerners really celebrated the 25th of december like this, of birthdays filled with cake and presents and balloons, and most importantly of all─ a table seated with grinning faces, wishing tooru a happy birthday. he consumed media like this, pictures of smiling families, anecdotes of silly families, so that he could use his own to fill in those slots, and imagine what his life would be like if he was part of that, too. as he gets older, he realizes that these are nothing more than fantasies. but even so, when sleep is threatening to lull his thoughts, tooru wishes he could wake up to loving parents and siblings. but he never does.

     because he knows that what he imagines is something that he can never have. it’s something that will be forever kept in the confines of his mind. something locked deep within his heart’s desires.