Dreaming New Meanings Into Borderline Personality Disorder

Although tempted to begin by qualifying myself as a borderline — telling the story of how I was diagnosed; listing the diagnostic criteria; describing how and when I started cutting myself, how and when I started drinking, how and when I became crazy, how many times I’ve tried to kill myself, how many times I’ve been hospitalized — I’m instead going to begin from a place of reclaiming. I’m writing for the borderlines who are sick of clichés, who are looking for new ways to describe ourselves, to dream ourselves. I’m writing for borderlines who wish to recreate our own meanings.

Rather than beginning with an origin story, I’ll begin with a suggestion, a dare: Let’s imagine the diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder as poems that were written about us, but not for us. Let’s imagine we were used as muses for the professionals who wrote the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Let’s imagine they’ve been at their easels and keyboards and sketchbooks and guitars for too long; now they’ve set down their artistic instruments and are in the next room taking a break. Here’s our chance to escape.

Let’s resituate ourselves. Let’s become the artists. Let’s escape their studio, rewrite their poems, and live our own meanings.

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