Borderline Personality Disorder

Coincidences. Some say they are God's way of being anonymous. 

There are events  in my life that parallel my mother's; sometimes I sense that I too am leaving my own shadow across the generation that comes after me. I want to do my best, to not leave breeding ground for coincidences.  

Sometimes I fear that those things in our family stories that repeat themselves are the price of unconsciousness.  Optimism might see that repetition is God working towards greater understanding. 

Even as a child, I noticed how some things repeated themselves. Some were big life-changing events we had no control over. 

When my mother was still seven years old, her family was on the move.  It was 1943, in the ravages of war, and her parents were trying to avoid being sent to Siberia by Stalin, or worse. As a child, when I moved with my family from the east coast to the Pacific Northwest, I was on the verge of turning eight myself. 

When I grew up and had my own child,  a crack opened in my psyche and landed me in the hospital.  I was involuntary only because I languished too long in the emergency room without action being taken. My child was four years old at the time. 

Coincidences.  Once I had some perspective I could see my vulnerability was a repetition of something similar in my own family. How I wish to God that there had been less secrecy around my mom's own recovery. 

In the year I was four, my mom, too,  was put in the hospital by my father. Her story to me was that she had had a miscarriage. I picture it this way: all of her that was untamed was released in the surge of hormones, the grief and the loss of a child who would have been my sibling. I remember there was chaos and lots of emotional drama and then there was peace and a sense of loss. Dad was the one who arranged for a babysitter while she was away. I reveled in the peace of the babysitter's home. I was happy to be alone. Happy to spend alone time with my dad in the kitchen each evening while he concocted meals created out of  cans.  Green beans are still a comfort food for me to this day. 

From my own perspective, I know that nutrition can affect women's mental health during pregnancy.  So can emotional stress and isolation.  My mother's new family in the early 1960's  was small and she had no extended family nearby to help while I was very young.    

I know my own break with reality forty years later had multiple triggers. I nursed my son well beyond the usual time of one year.  I'd not known I needed to supplement for the omega-3's hre was needing in order to maintain my own brain health. 

On the psychosocial side, I'd discovered a low self-image around motherhood. I did not measure up to other moms, even though I had made it my primary job.  I had given up, willingly,  a work identity to be a mom at home. There was a lack of structure in the days, so that it was a challenge to have fulfillment for both my son and I.  

Further, I realized very recently that I have few memories of being held and nurtured by my mom. Somehow, my mom was honest with me about my early rocking behavior as a baby and toddler.  I comforted myself, because she did not. Witnessing my self-comforting made her angry.  Still, I know that she left me in my crib for extended periods.  I think there were parts of me that were broken still, when I came into motherhood. That I was able to do as much as I did for my son, until the time of my own hospital stay, means I have left a different legacy. But how different? We shall see.

My son's roughest years with me would have been the pre-K year following my crisis,  when I was most afraid of relapse. The following summer was another big challenge in which I did a dance with fear and stumbled again.  In kindergarten our family achieved greater normalcy, but the following summer was again touch and go, with one last relapse this time just after school started.  

During those three summers, I had a hard time knowing where I stood and initially lacked any confidence to deal with the psychiatric profession.   I knew there was no diagnosis that fit me, but the professionals could not allow that.  Even with my last relapse, I had a doctor who insisted on a superficial assessment and  insisted I was a chronic case of schizophrenia. It was very aggravating to be ignored and discounted. Getting angry and taking back my authority over my own illness was what finally restored m to my place in my family and gave me back myself.  

The turning point was the summer after second grade.  By the mid-point of my son's third grade year I was in the midst of menopause and the crisis of hormones had largely passed. I asserted myself, told the doctor the story that I felt best explained each of my crises,  and came off medications with my doctor's blessing. 

Today I feel very much out of the woods. Two years in which I've not needed the serious drugs usually given for people who have had crises like  mine, demonstrates fairly conclusively that I am not chronic. Am I ever grateful to  have been allowed the freedom to find this out. Had I simply followed doctor's orders, I likely would still be on medications. No one would have taken the chance to take me off given my history. Intead, my current level of  sanity would be attributed to the medications, rather than all the other things I have done to foster my health. 

But back to coincidences.  A final coincidence came to pass this past November. It was a terrifying one for me. I have always known there was something amiss with my mom, but rejected my brother's conclusion. His diagnosis was schizophrenia. In light of my own experience, I knew that to be impossible. I chose not to argue with my brother about it, thinking that my mother had just been damaged by her war experiences.  I thought we could redeem her by being kind and compassionate.

Then, this fall, I came face to face with my mother's need to repeat the past and her complete inability to see my brother as the good person that he is. My stomach did not like the stories I was hearing from my brother, nor his assessment: that she could never change. And indeed, that she could relapse to the dangerous person we witnessed during times of childhood crisis. This shook my foundation, almost as much as my fear of relapse had several years before. 

Next day, while I was at the point where I was ready admit defeat and write my mom off, a book in my therapist's waiting room literally jumped off the shelf at me.  Stop Walking on Eggshells had a checklist on the back and I answered yes to each one. Finally there it was. The characteristics my brother had thought were schizophrenia, were  Borderline Personality Disorder.   I would not have brought the book home with me. There was so much still I did not want to know. My therapist told me I was welcome to borrow her book. 

Thankfully bringing the book home to read, helped me to let go of  my  picture of my mom as a real Wicked Witch of the West. It helped me see her humanity, giving me understanding that set me free. It opened a new path for me to grieve what I will never be given by my mom. For in our mom's case, we likely have someone who is incurable. For a BPD must seek help and our mom never will. 

Now my brother and I had something to agree on. As soon as I shared what I had learned, he began the work of locating books for himself.  Later, comparing notes, we were stunned to agree on too many points in our experiences of our mom.  Further,  my brother always knew it was my dream to do the right thing and redeem my relationship with my mom, by bringing her into our home to care for her as she aged.    So, he made sure I listened while he read aloud, that caring for a borderline parent is not safe for parent or child.  I found my stomach again lurching, even as I knew he was right.