The Great Escape is a Blog about Borderline Personality Disorder. The name came about when my friend asked “How’s life?” I replied, “It’s like a prison, where the guards take me out to be tortured for most of the day and then throw me back in the cell with the rats and mold at night. And there are other people who talk to me from outside and tell me it’s all going to be ok, but it’s like to them the entire dungeon is invisible. They have no idea what I see because we have different eyes.” Nevertheless, I keep fighting every day for the Great Escape.
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Warning: My style of writing is extremely obvious and frank and will probably offend you at one point or other.
In this blog, I plan to write about the difficulties faced by people with borderline personality disorder, or as I prefer to call it, Dyslimbia. First, I must introduce you to borderline/Dyslimbia symptoms.
There is a big fat book used by psychologists to categorize the the mental disorders. The book is called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the DSM. Version 4 of the DSM lists nine criteria for Borderline, or Dyslimbia as I’ll call it. If you meet five or more of the criteria, and they are life-long patterns, not a recent identity crisis, then you are said to have the illness. Rough paraphrased, the five criteria are:
1)
I MUST NOT BE ABANDONED OR REJECTED! Even if it turns out I totally imagined that I was being abandoned.
2)
I either love someone with all my heart or I hate their guts. And a person I loved one day might switch to someone I HATE the next day.
3)
Who the f*ck am I? I feel like I don’t have my own identity!
4)
I’m impulsive in ways that could hurt me—examples: massive shopping sprees! Lots of sex! Getting sh*tfaced or high off my ass all the time! Reckless driving!!! Eating EVERYTHING in your fridge AND all the ice-cream!!!
5)
I hurt myself—usually cutting and burning—and/or I want to kill myself and/or have threatened or tried to kill myself before.
6)
I HAVE MOOD SWINGS!!! What a beautiful day! Oh my god I hate the world, why does my life suck? I’m so scared! Haha, I can take you, let’s fight! I’m going to kill myself now.
7)
I feel empty all the time. There is this great nothingness or numbness inside me.
8)
I have anger management issues. I DO NOT HAVE ANGER PROBLEMS YOU SON OF A BITCH I WILL PUNCH YOUR FACE IN!!!
9)
Bat-sh*t crazy paranoia or loss of sense of reality, space, time, or body, etc. EVERYBODY ON THIS BUS CAN READ MY MIND!!! Luckily this doesn’t last long. Phew.
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Unfortunately, people with Dyslimbia are in the hospital a lot, even though they’re not as psychotic as say, schizophrenics. Dyslimbia occurs in 1-2% of the population. But in hospitals, up to 20% of inpatients there for mental reasons have Dyslimbia. In other words,
we get in trouble a lot.
Even though up to 80% of Borderlines have suicidal tendencies, and about a tenth of patients actually do KILL themselves by suicide, there is still hope! Many Dyslimbia sufferers get better as life goes on– most with professional therapy. There are no medicines specifically for Dyslimbia, but many medicines can be used to treat certain symptoms. People with Dyslimbia sometimes use antidepressants, anti-anxiety medicines, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotics.
Now that was a general and unprofessional overview of Dyslimbia for the masses. Now before I go any further I want to tell you all that I take this all very seriously. I have Borderline Personality Disorder (Dyslimbia), I’m a self-mutilator, I’ve totaled cars, I’ve been hospitalized and I’ve been hand-cuffed, and here recently, I have longed and dreamed for Death. That’s part of why I’m writing this. Maybe, by writing about my illness, I can find one more reason to stay alive, and help other people who have this illness.
I maintain a hope that I will get better, and one day, I will succeed in getting out of this mental prison, in my own glorious Great Escape.
(Information comes from the DSM-IV and this site http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=By_Illness&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID=54&ContentID=44780 and this site http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/borderline-personality-disorder/index.shtml .)
The Great Escape 