Hunters

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) (called emotionally unstable personality disorder, emotional intensity disorder, borderline type in the ICD-10) is a cluster-B personality disorder the essential features of which are a pattern of marked impulsivity and instability of affects, interpersonal relationships and self image. The pattern is present by early adulthood and occurs across a variety of situations and contexts.^[1]

Other symptoms usually include intense fears of abandonment and intense anger and irritability, the reason for which others have difficulty understanding.^[1][2] People with BPD often engage in idealization and devaluation of others, alternating between high positive regard and great disappointment.^[3] Self-harm and suicidal behavior are common.^[4]

People with BPD feel emotions more easily, more deeply and for longer than others do.^[11][12] Emotions may repeatedly resurge and persist a long time.^[12] Consequently it may take longer than normal for people with BPD to return to a stable emotional baseline following an intense emotional experience.^[13]

Impulsive behaviour is common, including: substance or alcohol abuse, eating disorders, unprotected sex or indiscriminate sex with multiple partners, reckless spending and reckless driving.^[19] Impulsive behaviour may also include leaving jobs or relationships, running away and self-injury.^[20]

People with BPD act impulsively because it gives them immediate relief from their emotional pain.^[20] However in the long term people with BPD suffer increased pain from the shame and guilt that follow such actions.^[20]

People with BPD can be very sensitive to the way others treat them, feeling intense joy and gratitude at perceived expressions of kindness, and intense sadness or anger at perceived criticism or hurtfulness.^[26] Their feelings about others often shift from positive to negative after a disappointment, a perceived threat of losing someone, or a perceived loss of esteem in the eyes of someone they value. This phenomenon, sometimes called splitting or black-and-white thinking, includes a shift from idealizing others (feeling admiration and love) to devaluing them (feeling anger or dislike).^[27] Combined with mood disturbances, idealization and devaluation can undermine relationships with family, friends, and co-workers.^[28] Self-image can also change rapidly from positive to negative.

Not to be confused with multiple personality disorder.

Dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder (MPD),^[1] is a mental disorder on the dissociative spectrum characterized by at least two distinct and relatively enduring identities or dissociated personality states that alternately control a person's behavior, and is accompanied by memory impairment for important information not explained by ordinary forgetfulness. These symptoms are not accounted for by substance abuse, seizures, other medical conditions, nor by imaginative play in children.^[2] Diagnosis is often difficult as there is considerable comorbidity with other mental disorders. Malingering should be considered if there is possible financial or forensic gain, as well as factitious disorder if help-seeking behavior is prominent.^[2][3][4][5]

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My story? I used to tell my friends that it was better than fiction, but that was more for the dramatic angle. Everyone appreciates a good story.

How do we know what our story is?

Memories are odd things. When I was fifteen sitting in a session eating goldfish crackers and staring at the magnets that hung heavily on the side of my therapists filing drawers an image came to me. I think it was the first time it was a memory, the first time it had re-entered my consciousness since the actual incident that etched it into the folds of my grey-matter. I found it oddly amusing how clearly it hit after such a long period of nothingness in that corner of my mind.

When I was three years old my brother drowned in a bathtub. This wasnt the memory that came to me during that session, but I think its the beginning of my story. I think that my life began at his death because I do not remember much before that, really. I remember when he died, though. When I close my eyes enough to still see light filtering through my lashes and it looks like headlights in a rainstorm I remember.

I remember the crunching sound of gravel beneath my yellow, plastic adjustable roller skates as I held the short brick wall next to our apartment and pulled myself along.

And I remember how the fire looked like a tongue flicking out of the roof while the windows glowed hot and dark with soot.

And I remember the man with the kazoo and being pulled up on stage, so embarrassed, and when I was asked where I lived I was shocked to see my parents in the back of the group shouting "39 Owl Pine!" and how I wouldnt say anything into the microphone and the clowns face looked angry and I just wanted to cry.

I remember the cockroaches that scattered when we opened the cutlery drawer, and the night we had no food in the house except ketchup and freeze-dried ice-cream but it was on a shelf too high for me to reach. I remember the night my mother went into labor with my baby brother, and how my father helped me hold him in the hospital as I sat on my mothers bed. He had a tiny blue cap on and I was impressed the hospital gave it to him.

My best friend was a midget. Her family had a clown act and she played a corn cob. I would go into their apartment to watch videos of their show. My father would get incredibly angry every time I did and I never understood why.

I remember the boy that made me be his magic genie and grant him three wishes and how my mothers best friend caught us hiding between two awning piles while he humped my leg. She told me I was a slut for taking his quarter.

I remember the trail of blood droplets when the nieghbor boy fell and broke his head and how, after seeing him with his head wrapped, I thought all turbans were wound dressings. I remember when my brother broke open his head on the coffee table after falling off of my shoulders and my mother wouldnt wake up. When we walked into the hospital with no shoes the doctors seemed distant and I felt frustrated.

And then my new best friend was black and wore a baby pink frilly&fluff dress for picture day and I thought she was beautiful.

I remember.

Walking in on my father and his friends with lines of speed as thick as my nine-year-old fingers going all the way across the table and how angry he was at me for coming into the house when I should have been outside playing.

Under The Bridge was my favorite song. My best friend was white trash, like me, and she saved up her money to buy me the single on a cassette for Christmas and I had never been so touched in my life. She was two years older than me. She taught me how to do hair wraps and ride a dirt bike. Her dad wasnt angry when we came inside and they were doing lines. They had huge mastiffs and her little brother would tell me that their peniss looked like red lipstick. She taught me that girls have a place they pee, and another hole. She made me pee on my own hand to feel where it was coming from to prove it. I learned how to draw roses that year from a female tattoo artist that I thought was a hippy and would come up to our property to get high with my father. I think I had a crush on her, she wore beaded brown leather shirts and her hair down. I remember...

I remember.

When my mother went into rehab and my father was finally clean and she sent me a letter to apologize for murdering my brother and then blaming it on me. It was one of her twelve steps, to apologize to those she had wronged, and she was giving herself a metaphorical baptism. My father locked the letter in his safe and gave it to the detectives a few years later. I remember when she ran away.

I remember the first boy I ever fell in love with going crazy and putting mix tapes of heart breaking songs in my mailbox while he was dating his new girlfriend. I remember him yelling at me across the city park and his notebook that he left on my desk in which he said I was a black witch. He thought I was inside of his head. And I was angry. And I still loved him. And sometimes I worry that I still do, but hes sick and hell never be the same.

And I remember when Mikee shot himself and blamed it on me and I could never see him again because he was rotting somewhere in a Ohio cemetery.

My story? Its convuluded and I dont know where it starts. I think it starts at my brothers death, but maybe it starts when I was born, or before that, when my mother was born. When my grandparents moved to Willits from Washington. When my mothers father died of a heroin overdose. It starts the first time I noticed someone looking at me.

This is getting confusing, I know.

I remember when my daughter was slippery and bloody on my chest screaming brand new and all I could say wa