Some months I ago I really started thinking that I am finally beating this. For the first time I felt successful at the therapy, getting a grip on the DBT skills I was learning, being cheered by my therapist. I found a boyfriend who did not run away from me for a whole year. Things seemed to be going well..

..untill I collapsed under strees and pressure that I was not even aware I have been bearing. The relationship turned out to have been toxic and abusive towards me. I realised that the whole feeling of things going well was just a facade built on top of my problems - perhaps because I wanted so much to feel normal (whatever that means).

I don't want to describe all the weird feelings or states that are part of being emotionally unstable and having BPD. There is enough shit on the Internet about that. I want to document my progress from this point, ie starting from today. I want to write what I have tried and what worked and what didn't. Because maybe it helps someone who is in a similar point. Because maybe it helps me to stay organised. I feel as I have been finishing an awesome sand castle and some jerk just ran over it. My first reflex is to take a photo and start re-building it as soon as possible. If I do not do it now, I won't do it ever.

First, mistakes that I have recently made: I thought that being able to stay in a relationship will be the life turning point for me. Because I will have someone who will accept me for who I am. I thought that once I will stop being afraid of breakup, I will clear out the main source of BPD - fear of abadonment - and my disease will be cured. Nothing more wrong.

I also thought that learning all the DBT skills will mean having the disease cured. I believed that it is enough to learn all the life "tricks" and "workarounds" to social and intimate situations, in order to be "normal".

But there is something, something very deep, that still radiates pain onto the whole self. The very deep and basic feeling of inadequacy and being "nothing". This feeling will not be fixed with any skill learned. This feeling has became part of my identity. Changing it is like trying to build an Ikea chair while sitting on it. I honestly have no clue how to go about doing it.

I am aware of my problems. I am aware of the massive gap between how good I perceive myself to be at things that I do and how good I really am. I am aware of my victim identity. Of my paranoia constant thoughts about other people judging me. Of my conviction that I cannot be liked or loved. Of my feeling guilty for being alive. (People tend to think that if I say things that extreme it is because I exagerrate things, they do not realise that I actually feel that way.) Of my every day projections of childhood events onto the current situations. I came as far as to be aware of all of it - and it feels like I cannot get any further. Well, time to change it.