This Is What A BPD Splitting Episode Feels Like
“I would like to share with you some of my struggles,” my boss says on a Monday morning. We’re a small company of five, gathered in a conference room for our weekly meeting. My mood is average. I’m feeling confident: it’s just another work week; things have been going swimmingly, aside from the expected ups and downs. Everything is under control. The day is still acceptable, and my exposed nerves — a classic description of having Borderline Personality Disorder — are feeling only the slightest twinges of emotional pain.
“I received a call from one of our clients over the weekend,” he continues, and my heart sinks just a little. “He was angry about a statement that we sent in for clearance. He said, “Your staff’s writing is terrible. How can I use this?””
I freeze. It was I who wrote that statement. My boss had cleared it before the weekend. Something inside me snaps, starting a cold fire within.
“Now,” he quickly adds, “I’m not blaming anybody — because I cleared it. But I’d just like to say it’s hard because…”
I’m not listening. It doesn’t matter. My thoughts are racing, each word brewing resentment, loathing and despair in my heart. God, I suddenly hate this man — a fair, wonderful and caring boss whom I’ve worked under for the last two years. He’s been one of the rare bosses who understand I struggle with mental health and accommodates my medical appointments.
Somehow, in a blink of an eye, all of that means nothing. I want to walk out of this room and never come back. I want to quit, right there on the spot, because he doesn’t trust me anymore. Maybe he never did. I am furious, deeply hurt, and I want to die. I hate his existence just as much as I hate my own. I hate that I’m always never good at anything. You’re worthless, my mind whispers, just like you’ve always been. Go hurt yourself. Or just die.
I’m screaming inside my head. Tears sting my eyes, but I will not cry — that’s unprofessional, right? It’s unprofessional to release my feelings, even if my chest hurts so much I want to tear open my ribs and rip out my useless heart.
Hate is a river of fire in my blood, ravaging my veins. I’m melting in flames but no one sees or cares. I look down at my laptop and try to focus. Focus on the screen, on the newsletters in my inbox, anything but the grating noises of humans — so disgusting — talking and laughing around me. Each sound that emerges from the vibrations of a human vocal chord feels like a splash of fuel on the flames ravaging my body. I hate everything so, so much — in just five minutes, I am exhausted beyond belief, waiting for my bones to melt and the agony to end. And in the midst of it all, a single, looping thought: I would do anything to end this pain forever. Anything.
Thankfully, I do nothing reckless. A combination of therapy and medication keep my mouth shut and my expression neutral. But they can do nothing for my internal suffering. Even now, a few weeks after the incident, the agony lingers as fresh as the day it arrived. I still can’t see my worth. I still hate myself. Whatever self-esteem I had is now ash in simmering embers. Every slip-up, every mistake, is another lighted match tossed onto my gasoline-soaked body.
I’m tired. No, I’m beyond tired. Living is a torment — I am a flammable liquid easily ignited by contact with normally-harmless words, emotions, and reactions. And every time I’m ignited, I burn every waking minute — for days, weeks, sometimes even months or years. I burn until my brain no longer registers pain — and then it feels nothing at all. I become desperate to feel, to be reminded that I’m in this world, but all I can feel is this disturbing sensation of my veins and muscles separating from my bones. I’m talking and working but I am not there. Am I here? Am I literally falling apart? Am I worthy of being human?
Can’t I just disappear?
At some point I return to some level of sensation, where my hands are my own and my body is whole again. I look at myself, and I’m filled with seething hatred for what I am. A hollow, burned creature that wails at every wound, a far cry from the confident woman who sat in for a weekly meeting on a fine Monday.
I look at my boss, and I find it difficult to see him in the same light I once did. Where I once respected him, I feel only disgust. I see every decision of his in a different light, as if he has a bias against me, as if he means to destroy me.
In the back of my mind, I know it’s ridiculous. He hasn’t changed at all. He’s still the fair and honest man that he is.
The only one who has changed is me.
