The Road So Far…

I look back over the last five years to see the road behind and see a road of many twists and turns and hills and valleys.

A radical shift in my life started right around this time five years ag someone in late May to early June 2007. I was five to six months removed from separating from my now ex-wife and had just started dating someone I met online.

They lived a few thousand miles away from me, but we had a strong connection. The relationship would change my life forever, even though it would turn out to be brief.

Not long into the relationship, a series of events occurred that led to the young woman almost dying, her being diagnosed with BPD and my blaming myself for what happened.

I blame myself, present tense blame, for what happened to her because I still feel I triggered the nearly fatal events, but that is a different story altogether.

The events led to two major changes in my life. The first change was that I found a therapist for myself. I knew that I would need the emotional support to help me cope with I knew would be challenging relationship at times. I also started going back to a therapist to learn more about BPD and how to safely interact with her. I wanted to make sure that I understood how to interpret her behavior.

I also needed to learn how to put up protective boundaries for both our sakes. At that point, I had no boundaries. I also started seeing the therapist for my own problems, but that was secondary for me at the time. I knew she needed my support and stability.

After a few things happened, none of which being her diagnosis, we had to go our separate ways. That triggered the second major change, I became intent to not just learn everything I could about BPD, but to do everything I could to raise awareness for it and try to prevent others from feeling the same pain I did when we broke up. In essence, it gave my life the purpose I knew was there all along. For over decade I knew that my life was meant to be more than a 9-5 work day, come home spend time with the family life, but until then I didn’t know what that purpose was.

All of this happened within the span of a few months in 2007.

Over the next few years, I would keep seeing my therapist. After about twenty years of struggling, I was finally diagnosed. I was finally able to start properly addressing my problems. During this time I kept reading about BPD, going to conferences on BPD, talking to my therapist about it and trying to connect with as many people with BPD as I could find. I personally have found, that the people with BPD that I have met are some of the nicest and best people I have ever had to pleasure to know. I would much rather have them in my life than most of the so-called ‘normals’ I know.

A lot of what I read and learned, I was able to apply to myself, even before I had any kind of diagnosis. During this time, I was also drawn to the writings and teachings of the current Dalai Lama, including the concept of mindfulness. Between that point and June 2009 I had a series of ups and downs and bad episodes that led to me self-harming.

Things got to the point where a few times I considered signing into a mental health ward for inpatient therapy. I never did sign-in, partly because my therapist did not feel I needed to do so, but also because of work related reasons. I would then start clawing my way out of the pit. I would then to a plateau and feel good, only to have the bottom fall out from under me after a short while. It was a vicious cycle on clawing up and then relapsing.

Finally, around May 2009, I reached a good stable point in my life. My therapist and I agreed that I only needed to come in every other week instead of every week like I had been doing for about two years. My therapist even asked me how I got to the point where I was at, so she could see if there was anything she could leverage to help her other clients.

Things were going well. I started dating my wife, I was making progress in a number of areas of my life that I wanted to make progress in and things were going well.

Note: The link below opens a blog entry on one of my other blogs. Please note that I consider the entry full of severe triggers. It describes a severe auto accident, and includes pictures of the car.  If you are sensitive to these things, do not even think about clicking the link. Be careful.

Then July 3, 2009 came. My wife and I had a severe accident that once again turned my life upside down. The result of the accident was a major relapse. It almost set me back to day one of my time with my therapist.

The last three years, I have been spent clawing and fighting my way back to where I was in May 2009, you can see the struggle in the blog entries on this site.

I do not know that I am there yet, but I am getting close. I am back to only seeing my therapist every two or three weeks and doing  relatively well. I still have hard days and moments, but I am resisting the urge to self-harm. As a rule my outbursts are less frequent, shorter and less intense.

I wonder, if it had not been for the accident, would I have been able to achieve the dreamed of ‘recovery’ or at least remission? I guess there is no point dwelling on what might have happened, and deal with what can and will happen going forward.