How I would love to go back to those days of wellness and joy I described in the previous post! Today things are drastically different. 

Not too long before I left the church in 2016 where I had experienced the great love and happiness I have described so far, I was diagnosed with features of borderline personality disorder (BPD). My life was reduced to frequent  depressions – every day or two. These depressions were not like the bipolar depressions I knew. They descended suddenly, sometimes after waking from sleep. They were triggered by bad memories and also when I saw how I had become so different from who I had been. Although the depressions were intense, they did not usually last long .

Receiving a diagnosis of BPD at the age of 70 is highly unusual. It’s more often caused by mistreatment as a child and diagnosed when a young adult.

But I have excellent professional help. My story – the good and the bad – is well-known in the hospital. Although BPD is highly stigmatized, stigma does not show in my professional caregivers. I’m treated with compassion and respect. My therapist is a great guy and very helpful. I’m so grateful for them all. They know better than anyone the severity of my condition and understand what it’s doing to me. They do all they can to help.

Some changes in my life as a result:

  • my husband had to take over the cooking
  • I’m very disorganized
  • I have very little energy
  • I nap a lot – partly to seek comfort and safety
  • except for Sunday church and occasional visits with friends, I isolate
  • as I said, frequent depressions bring me close to suicide
  • I’ve gone to the ER three  times in the past three months, once staying for four days
  • I have no one to call when in need emotionally or spiritually- so different from Living Room days
  • I frequently call the Crisis Line
  • I no longer have a spiritual mentor

BUT, thank God, I can still write and I still have God with me in it. What would I do without that gift?