There is Life after Borderline Personality Disorder

I Can see Clearly Now the Rain is Gone

Now that the clouds have cleared, I see what is to be learned from my whole experience with the BPD sister and even before her, the NM/P mother.  And it comes down to ME.  I learned about ME.  And I can keep choosing to get even better.  What they do with their own lives and the possibility of getting better is best left to them. I learned that  for once in my life, this is all about me.

The picture, here, is such a good illustration.  This is what it's like blasting through the confusion of personality disorders - finally seeing inside the seemingly unreachable place above all clouds.  And the knowing - the understanding which leaves you just standing there looking like this guy here.  Hmmm is that all. So that's what it all meant.  I need not ever get on board.  But oops, is that a bit of me I see in there?

The reading of the minds, the walking on eggshells, the navigating of false-self personalities, and enduring gaslighting and lies, arrogance, righteous indignation, punishment, and revenge is exhausting.  But, the passive aggression, and intermittent acts of kindness, followed by abuse with the giving and then taking back, and the distorted view of actual events... are just the mean expressions of the twisted world of personality disorder.  . Hence, they don't care about almost anything or anyone.  If they don't even care about their own children - why would you think you could reach them to care about anyone or anything else - beginning with themselves - It's not going to happen.

MOVING ON ... Let's talk about me.  Did I see a bit of me on that plane of insanity?  Oh yeah.  I'm the one still writing about it... trying to decipher it, trying too hard to avoid my own culpability.  I allowed them to abuse me by giving them years to 'get better' before setting boundaries to protect myself.  Who does that?  Family or not.  Who needs so desperately to reach 'loved ones' that they allow themselves to be abused?  I guess me.  But there's more. I'm not so innocent.

I can be passive aggressive.  I have a lot of trouble confronting people who have wronged me.  I spent a lifetime putting others' feelings above my own, then resenting them for abusing me.  THIS stops HERE.

I learned here with my BPD family member that a lot of those very traits, I have in past years suffered upon especially my eldest son.  I got better as the years went on  -  but, he took the brunt of it. Much of that 'nothing is enough' attitude I put onto him.  Poor kid was a challenging child, but I surely made him worse.  Feeling how I did around my BPD sister this past year, I know now that this is how I must have made that poor child feel.  I have told him a hundred times in as many different ways how sorry I am and he is so sweet and precious and forgiving, but it can't be taken away.  BPD loved ones or those with some of the traits make those they love feel useless, stupid, and unloved.  It's not what they say, it's how they make you feel. And I think I did some of this to my kids as I struggled over the years to understand all of this and get better.

I wouldn't be satisfied in saying, "I'm happy with a phone call three times a year.  That's good enough for me", and  I never was so empty that I really just didn't care about family.  Thankfully.  But in seeing this in a loved one and trying my best to get them to first be AWARE, then to learn and to love was both painful and useless.  Except for what I learned about myself.

I don't have to help my family.  I have no business being an authority on how to behave.  I see their unhappiness manifest in the hurting others and me, but it's NOT my responsibility to save them or help them or even care about how their ongoing behavior is causing pain anymore.  If I move on, it's not causing me pain - and if others do the same eventually it won't hurt them any longer either.  Very sad.

There is Life after the effects of  Borderline Personality Disorder