I hate you; don't leave me.

There is a book on borderline personality disorder entitled "I hate you; don't leave me." I never knew until somewhat recently that the title of that book would, at times, perfectly describe my thoughts and actions.


In my last post, I wrote a poem to my favorite person, but I didn't really explain to all of you neurotypicals out there what exactly a favorite person is. The favorite person can be anyone; like a family member, friend, therapist, collegue, etc. The fun thing about it is that I've never really picked my favorite person, they've just kind of fallen into the role. For me, it's been a teacher, a couple of best friends, and now my former therapist who has become a friend. Once I have a favorite person, they become everything to me. I want to be around them all of the time; if I can't be with them, I want to be talking to them. I want to know everything about them, I want to be just like them. I take on traits that they possess and fall into being like them (we'll get to that later).


My favorite person becomes, in my mind, the only person who can support me emotionally. I must run to them in times of distress or elation; they have to know. Surely they care as much about my stuff as I care about theirs, right? They shouldn't have anything going on outside of me. After all, I don't have a whole lot going on outside of them since other people no longer really matter to me. So I pester, texting and calling over and over looking for attention that I feel like I desperately need. Attention, praise, love, etc from other people doesn't really matter to me; I need the attention of my favorite person to feel like I matter to someone in this world. When they give me that attention, they are the single greatest human on this planet; they can do absolutely no wrong. The thing happens when they can't give me the amount of attention that I feel I need.


When my favorite person is too busy to text me back, taking time for herself, or spending time with people who are not me, my brain spirals out of control. The first thing that happens is I get extremely anxious; telling myself things like, "you don't matter, she hates you, she's going to leave you forever, you deserve to be abandoned because you are the worst, etc." So I freak out and begin begging to be told that all of that isn't true; the "please tell me you don't hate me" and "please, please, please don't leave me" text start to fly even though I know that I shouldn't send them. Irrational Jacque takes over and runs with the terrible thoughts. I want to push the person away because suddenly they are the worst. They are a liar who was just putting up with me the whole time and never actually cared; I must rid myself of them before they can abandon me like everyone else has always done. Eventually I hear back, sometimes it's with a message asking me to chill out. Other times, it's just the reassurance and love that I'm looking for. And all of the sudden, a switch flips and rational Jacque is back. Then I beg for forgiveness, sending a million apology messages because I realize what I've done and I feel horrid for it. How could I have been so awful to the person that I again see as the most amazing human on the planet?


This terrible cycle is referred to as splitting. Basically, this is a thing people with bpd tend to do because we see most things in the world as black and white; people are either amazing or terrible, they love us or hate us, they're staying forever or walking away right this second, they can do no wrong or have never done right. These are things I believe even when the person's past and present actions probably don't prove what I think. There is no grey area. You can't be too busy to answer my text and NOT abandoning me forever, it just isn't possible. Makes no sense at all, right? Unfortunately for me, it makes perfect sense; it is a simple reality of life.


The thing that I hate most though isn't what this does to me; which I do hate, don't get me wrong. What I hate most is how I end up treating my person, I feel like I'm abusing them in a sense and I hate myself for that every single time it happens. I've already pushed one away, I don't want to make anyone else leave me when ultimately I act the way I do because I'm afraid of being left. I just can't figure out how to stop it, though.
Maybe one day.