#what if my family starts blaming the autism every time i get on their nerves

[measuredoutinyears]

How do you tell your own family that you're autistic

[iamjjmmma]

tldr: I have bpd. (Loong text ahead)

Note: All names have been changed for privacy.

 I never like to open up about mental health. Not only is it messy- it's also degrading. But this is an exception. 

So I'm going to lay it out for you. Right here, right now.

 I have borderline personality disorder.

 I'm telling you because, unlike with so many other things about me, you deserve to know this. And the way I got my diagnosis was long, narrow, and harrowing. So get comfy. 

Of all things, it all started with a death. About a month ago, a family friend who wasn't any older than three or four died. My entire family was devastated, but for seemingly no reason, I seemed to be the one who cried the most, who felt the most heartbroken. Not even my cousins, who were closer to her, cried this much. Of course, my sister noticed and encouraged me to get myself into grief counseling. I love my sister more than anyone else in the whole wide world, so it didn't take long before I was booking my first appointment with a Catholic counselor 45 minutes away who knew me ever since I was little. 

"Hey there, Sk3ltal. Something seem to be a problem?

" I get angry. I'm in your office, I think. How the hell would there NOT be a problem? I think. But over five years of this kind of anger gives you a kind of knack for brushing it off as hormonal and pretending your fine.

 "Well, Manuela...something does seem to be a problem. Somebody...close to me died. And she was young..."

 At this point, I'm bursting into tears. I wonder why. I get the "oh, honey, it's okay" treatment. She gives me a hug, offers me all the tissues I need, even lets me hold her dog if I can get past the fact that he's just about as still as a blast of wind. Thirty seconds later, I'm fine again.

 "Manuela, I want to make sure that I'm fine. That it's not grief and just sadness. I want to know how not to lose it in public. Because I feel crazy."

 Manuela bites her lip. "Grief does make the most ordinary people act like insane asylum patients, no?" 

A week later, I'm back in her office. By now, it's almost the end of September. And something"s eating at me. For the first time in my sixteen years, a movie not only humanized the villian, but made me relate to her. Relate to her enough to do this. BPD. Only heard about it once or twice before. Asked my mom if I had it, then she laughed and said it was just me being a teenager and that yes, crying four times a day and slamming the door EVERY TIME YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO was completely normal.

 So was the scratches on my skin I convinced my parents was "wicked eczema", and so was me pulling out my hair and banging my head against solid objects. And now, people were talking about how a movie character had it, and how many symptoms she exhibited. Suddenly, hunger for knowledge reached out its hands. I wanted to know.

 Could it be I had this? And what was it? 

Manuela was a little concerned, but considering I was getting bored as usual in her office, she let me take the questionnaire. Five minutes pass by, half of which I spent taking the quiz. And I think the moment I saw her face turn pale was the minute things started to fall apart and go back into place, all at the same time. "Honey, I...you're positive." ... 

Of course, I wasn't diagnosed right then and there. I had to make sure I could point it back to a specific event when it started- in this case, what happened when I was ten between my childhood best friend and i; she ghosted me, and i haven’t heard a word from her since- so they couldn't blame it on my "womanly teenage hormones" (yes, I was telling the truth; the event just helped to rule out those hormones). My family and close friends, whatever the hell the last one was, were interviewed. When my dad was interviewed, I could feel his face turn pale this time as he whispered, "Oh, my God. You just described my kid. Something's wrong with my kid." 

Next was a rudimentary physical with my family practitioner. to make sure nothing physical, other than me being a teenager, could be causing the symptoms. When the doctor said "nothing's wrong other than what you keep on seeing me for so far", my heart didn't sink. I didn't feel anything. The diagnosis was made official a short time later, but I didn't feel anything then either. And that's, ironically, a huge part of borderline personality disorder.

 Borderline personality disorder, to flaunt it in a more colorful way, is your mind constantly being fucked by a tornado of emotion while the borderline, which is what the disorder is named after, obtains a corporeal form and joins in the fuckery to create a massive threesome. Four if you count Lonely, my friend in the back. 

Getting my diagnosis may havw been one of the most quietly difficult things I've ever done. 

There's the fact that some mental health professionals are afraid with those with borderline personality disorder, or think it's completely impossible for children or adolescents to have it. If not for the relationship Manuela and I already had, I most likely would have been misdiagnosed again. On to the misdiagnoses, which are staggeringly common in those with borderline personality disorder. I was diagnosed...

 -three times with some type of anxiety 

-twice with PTSD 

-once with bulimia 

-accused hundreds of times of being demonically possessed because of my "temper". that priest now knows better.

 But now to the real criteria. There's nine of them, and to be diagnosed, you need to get at least five.

 -Abandonment issues 

This was the biggie. It was almost like I grew up, then regressed. This all started when I was eleven, and my mind would switch from being 4 to being the 11 year old I was. I have too many stories of me being left alone for a ridiculously insignificant amount of time, then me acting like a scared toddler in solitary confinement about it. The time at the high school when I got locked in the bathroom. The time I got left in the car for 5 minutes and almost broke the door trying to get out. There's so many more, but this one, I think, takes the cake.

 I was twelve. They had the house childproofed because of my sister, who was 7 at the time and had autism, so she tended to be grabbier than then average bear. The acting out was at its peak back then, and my parents made the mistake of putting me in time-out by locking me in my bedroom for five minutes. 

What happened next was almost indescribable. Imagine the outright terror the character in the movie feels when he or she is stranded and realizes they're utterly alone. No one will come to save them. No one. The helicopter they came in is empty. The island always has, and always is, empty. Or imagine the terror you felt at school during that one time it WASN'T a drill. Now multiply that feeling by about sixty. I was nothing more than an animal that day. I screamed.

 "LET ME OUT OF HERE!" "SOMEBODY HELP ME!" "DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE!" "I DON'T WANNA DIE HERE!". Bang, bang, bang, bang, BANG, BANG. 

My parents always tell me that I would've beat that damn door down had they not gotten me out. They open the door. I practically jump on them to hug them. They bump me off, and while I'm not hurt, it's not like that made me feel any better, either. 

"What is your problem, young lady?! Can't we leave you alone for five minutes? How are you going to be able to be an adult and be like this?"

 Tears poured down my face. I didn't know. 

Hell, I still don't know. 

-"Borderline" way of thinking when it comes to relationships...always seeing others as either perfect angels or a bucket of nasty-ass toxic waste. 

-Self-harm. 

No, I don't cut myself. that's the stereotype, although there's people I know who self harm in this way. I didn't know what it was called or what I was going.

 but all I knew was that I was relieving whatever tension I had, even if it meant hurting myself. I quickly learned how to keep it hidden, and that was by realizing the millions of nerves on the surface of my skin and how that would cause pain without much overall damage. so I scratched myself. and scratched. and scratched. and scratched. pulling my hair was also a good option. if I feel really crummy, I start to bang my head into solid objects or bend one of my bones, although not enough to break it.

 at first, it was to transfer emotional pain into physical pain so I wouldn't have to feel it emotionally anymore. 

and it's still that now, to an extent. except it's more about controlling my anger and not letting it show in public, instead keeping it chained to my skin. and I'm sorry if this sounds emo or cringy, but it's true.

 now, it's turned into an impulse.

 -unstable relationships.

 my friends can all tell you that I love them dearly, more than the vast majority of the people they know. and they also know that I'm also more prone to lashing out or doing things in the relationship that don't make sense, like purposefully ignoring texts and phone calls for a day.

 -shifting self-image. 

what I wanted to be when I grew up was sometimes as fickle as the time of day. I wanted to be an actor during one point in my childhood. it consumed my everything, kept me from eating, from sleeping. and at another short point, I know wanted to be a singer.

 in the course of one particular year, I wanted to be a nun, then an author, then an engineer, then a truck driver, then a nurse, then a teacher. it was ridiculous,

 and all happening during a period where the education system expected me to decide what I wanted to be. 

and what about who I was? was I a girl? a boy? young? old? the best Catholic there was? a solid atheist?

 I have my 5. there's more, but I don't want to share it all, at least right now. and most of it is actually because the program I'm using to type this is really shitty when it comes to saving huge chunks of text lol. 

Treatment:

 I've started therapy. So far, both Manuela and I are still researching BPD so none of us are blind to stigma. However, there's a long road ahead of me, and a road I most likely wouldn't even consider taking if it weren't for my love for my sister (which I'm begging is genuine and not just a product of my mental illness). Finding a medication will be tough, seeing as there's no official medicine for BPD but so far, for the first time, I can feel the "BPD me" fading away when I drink tea with ginseng (a mood stabilizer). 

getting "better" from BPD, or at least working to alleviate the symptoms, requires just that: work. lots of patience, persistence, and just lots and lots of hard damn work. 

it'll take us getting rid of societal stigmas and working through the root causes, which unfortunately I can't just be "taken away from" as with those whose BPD diagnoses came while they were still living in broken homes. 

 And the worst part of it all is that I still love my best friend.