Living with Borderline Personality Disorder: My Story of Trauma, Love, and Survival

From childhood grief and teen motherhood to addiction and relationships shaped by BPD, this is my story of surviving borderline personality disorder — and learning I am not too much.

🖤 Borderline Personality Disorder & Me

The diagnosis that explained everything and still left me searching for who I am.

I’ve always known I felt things more deeply than most. When I love, I obsess. When I’m hurt, I collapse. For years, I thought I was just too emotional, too needy, too unstable — and so did everyone around me.

What I didn’t know was that I was living with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

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💔 How BPD Showed Up in My Life

Before I ever touched class A drugs, before I ever had the language to say “I’m struggling,” I was already carrying trauma.

I lost my dad at 9 years old.

I became a mum at 14.

I was self-harming, dissociating, wetting the bed, and having constant nightmares long before I had my first cigarette — let alone anything stronger.

After the birth of my son, I battled severe postnatal depression and ended up under the care of psychiatric services before I even really understood what “mental health” meant. I was just trying to survive in a world that never once felt safe.

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🧠 BPD & Relationships: The Push, The Pull, The Chaos

The older I got, the more intense it became — especially in relationships. I craved connection like oxygen, but the moment I felt vulnerable, I’d lash out or shut down. I didn’t know how to stay steady. I went from “I love you so much I could die without you” to “You’re going to leave me anyway, so fuck you” in the space of an hour.

Most of my romantic relationships turned volatile. Some of them were abusive. Eventually, I got arrested during one of those relationships, and as part of the court process, I was psychologically assessed.

It was during those crown court proceedings that my BPD diagnosis finally came.

And as painful as that chapter was… I was relieved. Because for the first time in my life, there was a name for what I was feeling. A reason I was so intense. A reason I felt like I was drowning even on calm days.

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💉 BPD & Drug Use: Trying to Escape Myself

Drugs didn’t ruin my life — they mirrored how ruined I already felt inside.

When you live with BPD, your emotions are so loud, so unbearable, that you’ll do anything to numb them. Crack, heroin, anything that could drown out the noise. Anything that could shut off the grief, the fear, the panic, the self-hate.

At the time, I didn’t realise I was using. I thought I was surviving.

But the comedowns made the BPD worse — the mood swings more violent, the self-hatred even deeper, the shame more unbearable.

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🌷 Owning It Now

BPD has affected every part of my life — my relationships, my parenting, my drug use, my identity.

But what’s changed is this:

I’m no longer ashamed.

I’m learning to feel the emotions without falling apart.

I’m learning to love without losing myself.

I’m learning that I am not too much — I was just never shown how to hold this much.

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💌 If You’re Still With Me…

If any of this sounds like you — or someone you love — I hope you know: you are not alone in this.

You are not dramatic. You are not crazy.

You are surviving emotions that were never taught to be safe.

Let’s talk about this, openly. Let’s make healing loud.

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💬 Share your story in the comments — you never know who it might help

📥 Grab your free BPD symptom tracker, quote images, and journal cards from this week’s resource pack

🖊 Or just send me a DM if you’re not ready to talk publicly — I’m listening

You're not too much, babe. You're just enough.

With love, always,

Elle 🩷

elleunfiltered.substack.com