Pultizer Prize-winning American columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote a front page feature story on Melanie Cane the author of Poisoned Love. Click on the icon to read Jimmy Breslin's cover story:
Stories about BPD (borderline personality disorder)
Stories about BPD abound. Here are a few stories about BPD. Like many stories about BPD this one starts with childhood. As a child, she was a victim of emotional, physical, and ritualistic sexual abuse. She never told anyone and her symptoms began to manifest themselves in 9th grade. She earned a 3.9 GPA the first semester and it dropped to 1.9 the second semester. She then discovered “cutting,” and did this regularly for the next 6 years. By the summer after 9th grade, she developed severe depression, anorexia, agoraphobia, and social anxiety. She dropped out of school due to anxiety in 11th grade and then began drinking, drugging, and being promiscuous. At age 18, she left home and moved 2500 miles away, where she floundered and continued her self-destructive behaviors. She was handcuffed, thrown in jail because of an angry outburst and lost jobs due to being incoherent. Then, she turned her life around with professional intervention and sheer determination. She went to college, got married, and had a baby. She is about to graduate college and is doing very well.
In reviewing many stories about BPD, I came across this one about a man, which is rare, given the relative infrequency with which men are diagnosed with BPD.
This man describes himself as sensitive and creative with his feelings always at the surface. He cries a lot both in joy and sadness and has “weird” episodes of anger. He takes many things personally and wonders why he pushes people away. His diagnosis came at the end of a difficult summer when he was nearing the end of his Master’s degree. He was dating someone he was madly in love with, but “burning the candle at both ends.” After two months, the relationship seemed very serious and he started having debilitating panic attacks, and leaning on his girlfriend more and more for support. She started pulling away, then he graduated, and “something clicked off inside him.” He had unbearable sadness and obsessive thoughts and was soon hospitalized for his panic attacks because he could not stop crying and shaking. “The bottom dropped out of my life. All of a sudden, there was nothing but silence.” This is one of many sad stories about BPD.
Other typical stories about BPD involve people feeling like they exhibit Jekyll and Hyde behavior, with extreme mood swings and rages. One moment they feel like everything is true bliss and the next moment, they feel excruciatingly suicidal. Stories about BPD even suggest a possible link between demonic possession and BPD. In one of these stories about BPD, a man described his experience with is ex-wife who was BPD. She had bloodcurdling rages, was an aggressive seductress in the beginning of the relationship, and held him high on a pedestal. She used to hold their children hostage to manipulate him into doing what she wanted. She was either threatening suicide, or euphoric, or irritable and anxious. She went on shopping sprees and got caught shop lifting. She used to call him at work demanding he come home because she was having a panic attack. She was intensely jealous of girls at his workplace and used to show up at his job to check on him. She sent him on guilt trips for her feelings of emptiness, and often verbally abused him. He described his struggles with his wife like being in a war.
Mothers’ stories about BPD in their daughters are plentiful. One of these stories about BPD told by a mother is that when she was at work, the school nurse called to tell her to come to school right away because her daughter, who was in 8th grade, had been cutting herself. The mother was shocked. Nobody in the family had any idea that her daughter had been cutting herself and said the daughter seemed totally normal to her. The daughter was admitted to a psychiatric hospital where she was diagnosed with depression and discharged after 2 weeks. She seemed to being doing well, but then came the next crisis. In ninth grade, the daughter overdosed on some pills at school. Again she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for 2 weeks and seemed much better when she was discharged. Again, the family was shocked and had no idea anything had been wrong with her. A year or so later, the daughter dropped out of high school and took a menial part time job. She started disappearing for hours and sometimes days at a time. Then she seemed to be doing well and was going for her GED. She started dating a man and seemed to be doing very well, but then she quit her job, broke up with him, and once again left home. This time she left behind a letter saying she was nine months pregnant. The family was shocked as they hadn’t even realized she was pregnant. Then she came home with the baby, started college and seemed to be doing well again. She graduated college, started working and then suddenly had another episode, she quit her job impulsively and overdosed on drugs while home alone with her child. Finally, the mother got her into a long term care facility. She talked about wanting to kill herself and continued cutting herself while there. Then she started talking about giving her daughter, who was 3 by then, up for adoption.
She was finally put on 3 different medications, including an antipsychotic, an antidepressant, and an anti-seizure medication and diagnosed with BPD. She has been doing much better, but the family no longer trusts her, and they feel like their lives are constantly on the verge of being turned upside down.
This story is typical of stories about BPD, in that there were several crises in rapid succession, the family was unaware of the BPD’s illness, the BPD’s illness threw the family into turmoil, the BPD acted impulsively and almost killed herself several times, and the diagnosis of BPD was missed for almost 10 years. A recent program on National Public radio featured a discussion by an expert on borderline personality disorder and the personal stories about BPD by two women who suffer from the disease. It took many years for both of the women to receive a correct diagnosis.
Stories about BPD in literature include, Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” Swann in Proust’s “Swan’s Way,” Miss Lonelyhearts in Nathaniel West’s “Miss Lonelyhearts, and Susan Kaysen’s “Girl Interrupted.”
Stories about BPD cross the front pages of the tabloids everyday, although they are not called this. For example, Lindsay Lohan and Brittney Spears, are both putative Borderline Personality Disorders.
In my book, Poisoned Love, I tell many stories about BPD.
Interested in reading more stories about BPD? Get your copy of Poisoned Love today!
