Borderline
Personality Disorder Life Stories
16 year old female with history of eating
disorders and sex addiction
I guess I've been depressed for a long time. I'm 16 and I've been
diagnosed with clinical depression and a borderline personality. When
you have something that not everyone else has it makes it hard for you
to believe that you could ever be loved and accepted.
When I was in junior high I was over weight. Kids teased me pretty
badly and I would go home every day feeling awful. I wasn't asking
anyone to call me beautiful, nor was I expecting one of the most
popular guys to take an interest in me, but I didn't want anyone to
tease me. It crumpled my self esteem every time someone uttered
something negative about my weight. Even within the realm of my own
family I was criticized about my body. My aunt who is 300 pounds and
obese was constantly telling me that I needed to go on a diet, or she
would do things like compare me to the nearest skinny girl. Despite
the fact that she had no room to talk, she made me feel terrible.
Finally, from both a combination of being made fun of in school and
from my aunt I decided to lose weight. At first it was a normal
diet, then it spun out of control and for almost four years now I've
been bulimic. I've lost 30 pounds since junior high and have
managed to be at my "suggested" weight according to doctors
and weight charts since my freshman year of high school. But I have
not maintained that weight because I'm a normal person and eat 3
meals a day with regular exercise. I maintain that weight by throwing
up my food after each meal, exercising sometimes and taking tons of
diet pills.
I don't want to continue on throwing up and taking diet pills until it
kills me, I want to get better. It's just a battle that I fight every
day. No matter how much I want to shed it and leave it behind it is
always with me. There is always a voice inside my head telling me that
I'm this 'fat blob' even though people are saying the exact opposite
on the outside now. I have guys at my finger tips fawning over me;
telling me how beautiful I am. I've been getting this constant
attention for over a year now. None of it matters to me, it never did.
No matter how good looking the guy or how much he buttered me up, I
never bought it until a guy named John came into my life. He single
handedly probably brought me more happiness than anyone could have and
at the same time caused me so much pain.
I don't know what it was about him that pulled me
in. Maybe it's was the whole "We always want what we can't
have" saying. John had a girlfriend, but I didn't care. Why
should I have cared when he didn't seem to care? From the very first
day that he met me, he had this overwhelming affect on me.
Consequently, I found out that he was a player, but he knew just what
to say to me and he played the game well.
We flirted, we kissed, our ''relationship"
progressed. I opened up to him. I told him about all of my problems.
He never thought less of me for them and he always knew just what to
say to make me feel better. If I was having a bad day, just to see or
hear from him made it all go away and the day felt fresh again like it
had just begun.
I instilled every bit of love that I had in my
heart inside of him. He seemed to hold and posses everything that I
had ever wanted.
John and his girlfriend had a very unhealthy
relationship so I was convinced that I was the one that he really
loved. He claimed that he couldn't break up with her because she was
suicidal and a bunch of other stuff that he piled on to his wagon of
lies, but I believed every bit of it, I believed that I was special
and that he was an honest person and that I was different and that he
had never cheated before and that he would never cheat. I believed
that I was the exception because I was so "Wonderful and
beautiful and not like anyone else" as he told me.
Well, push finally came to shove and I realized
that those 'things' he said were all lines. I showed him that I was
interested, I focused all of my attention on him and he knew he could
feed me lines and I would bite because I was vulnerable when it came
to him.
It didn't click until I saw him do the exact same
thing to another girl who wasn't his girlfriend. I guess I wasn't so
special. My friends had warned me for months but I just didn't think
they understood the situation.
I felt like someone cared about me. John was gorgeous and he appealed
to me in every possible way. I'm a picky person so it is hard to do
that. I guess when you go through a lifetime of problems and you
finally find something that makes you happy you cling really tight to
it so it doesn't slip away like everything else. With John I got some
"innocence" back, something that had been taken from me at a
very young age. John is four years older than me, so a 16 year old and
a 20 year old are on somewhat different levels and it's obvious that I
would portray "a young demeanor."
I needed to feel my age. A 16 year old girl
chasing a 20 year old guy was normal. My whole life I was forced to
grow up so quickly and for the 7 months that John was in my life I got
a break. At 5 years old I was exposed to my first "sexual
experience." I wasn't raped but I was touched inappropriately by
a teenage boy that was 14. I didn't tell my Mom until 6 months ago.
I've been in therapy for over a year for my many problems and not too
long ago I just got around to telling my therapist.
To put it all in a nutshell my life has been one disappointment after
another. From my weight struggles, my inner demons and just 'problems'
in general I only had one escape, my grandparents. They were there for
me to fall back on when I needed to get away, when my brothers and
parents became annoying at times. By the time I had gotten to 8th
grade, they were gone. My grandmom died at the end of my 7th grade
year from pancreatic cancer, and that December my grandfather died in
a car accident. I have no place to get away now, no escape, no outlet.
The things that I choose to do usually get me in trouble. My sexuality
is out of control. I'm a nympho probably because my whole life has
revolved around sex. When I was 5 I was sexually abused. Throughout my
life I was always throwing myself at some guy. I didn't care about
them, but I had hormones that were out of control. John was the only
one that I ever cared about.
I've gone through periods where I am so out of control that I do
things that later make me feel dirty and unhappy. At parties I will
strip off some of my clothes and make myself look like a complete
tramp just to get a rise out of guys, just so I get some attention, so
even if it's for only 5 minutes I know that someone finds me
attractive. It's the wrong way to get attention and I know that but
sometimes I feel that I'm not in control of what I do. This force over
comes me and there is no stopping it. That same force has cause me on
several different occasions to cut myself to release the inner pain I
feel inside. It's caused me to burn myself with cigarettes, lighters,
irons. Some days I actually fear that I'll end up strapped to my bed
in the psych ward of a hospital screaming at the top of my lungs.
I would give up what people seem to think is "the perfect
physical image" and trade it in for inner happiness, because that
is what counts and the only time I ever experienced that was with John
and that was not true happiness because he was feeding me lies and I
was living in a fantasy world when I was with him.
I pray every day that I will be okay and that I will posses both
physical and inner beauty but the chances of that happening seem slim
to me. I can only hope to overcome my obstacles.
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