It's been one year since the person I loved left my house forever, and in the end, I couldn't be happier.

The first emotion I felt after she left was sorrow that something so beautiful had to come to an end. The second emotion I felt was an overwhelming relief that I didn't have to put up with her any longer.

Let's rewind.

We met online on social media around October 2020, and I was immediately drawn in by her bubbly personality and her attitude of sweetness and kawaii about the world. She shone a positive light on everything, and I loved being around her and talking to her.

As these things tend to go, we didn't put a label on it, so I can't definitively say when we started dating. We spent a lot more time together, did more activities together. She introduced me to some of her interests, like fighting games, and we giggled whenever she'd overpower me in Guilty Gear Strive.

It became harder to spend time together after I graduated university and got a job, especially due to time zones. My new fixed schedule meant I'd be getting home from work around 6 pm, which was about the time that she was going to bed. It was tough, but we made it work.

We both knew that we eventually wanted to take the relationship offline and try living together. We ended up planning for her to visit me in Aotearoa New Zealand in October 2023. The stay was limited for 6 months, until April 2024, for both visa and healthcare reasons. We had discussed which of us would travel to visit the other, and we decided that I wanted her to come and visit me for a few reasons. She was living with her parents, who seemed like neglectful people. She'd told me about times she'd suffered because it was hard to get to sleep while they were yelling at each other, or there wasn't any good food in the house for her to eat. I would also not be able to live in Canada without a job, so finding a place to work and getting the appropriate visa would complicate things, whereas she could just come here on a visitor visa and I'd pay for her living costs. I was keen to get her out of that hostile environment and let her live somewhere safer where she didn't have to worry, so she could focus on growing as a person and preparing for her future. I provided the best environment I could.

Arrival

I took a week off work for the start of her stay to help her settle in better, and so I could help her get involved in activities that she can do on her own while I'm at work, so that she has an enriching life here. She settled in really well in the first couple of days, but things quickly became more stressful on me than I had expected. I was used to unwinding by spending a lot of time alone, or mostly alone, on my computer in the evenings. I would spend hours online, just surfing the web or watching videos or chatting in text with friends. This habit became impossible when she started living with me, because she would indirectly demand that I spend all of my time with her and not on my own. This created a lot of stress that I couldn't release because I didn't have down-time anymore. I spent all my time being with her, doing things she wanted to do, rather than the things I wanted to do.

Meltdowns

I was also surprised by how she acted in terms of mental health. Back when she was in Canada, she would sometimes have these meltdowns where her patterns of speech would completely change in a scary way, and she would be unable to think or talk about anything else until the feelings had passed. I'd always assumed that these events were triggered by bad things happening in her living situation that she couldn't emotionally deal with, like parents yelling. I get it! I wouldn't be able to cope well if I were in that situation either. That's a big part of why I wanted to get her out of that place and let her live with me instead, so that she could have the freedom to truly live.

I expected the meltdowns to stop after I removed the physical triggers, so I was surprised when the pattern seemed to continue even when her environment was a lot better than it used to be. Early on, she'd be able to justify the meltdowns and tell me what caused them. I would improve the environment for her so that it wouldn't happen again, and over time, the things triggering her would become more and more trivial, or become things that I didn't understand, and eventually would be caused by nothing at all. I felt really stressed out by this, like I was walking on eggshells around her, trying my hardest to not activate any of her hair triggers.

The way her meltdowns manifested in person was a bit different to how they were online. In person, she tended to act in a less self-destructive way — she usually wouldn't want to physically harm herself. Instead, she'd seclude from the world, wrap her entire body in as many soft blankets as we had, get in my bed, and become completely unresponsive to any attempts to communicate with her. Okay, so she needs alone time? Wrong. She wants me to be around, she wants me to keep trying to talk to her when it feels like my words are unheard, she wants me to stay by her side and use gentle words for 20, 30, 40 minutes, an hour, an hour and a half, however long it takes until she's able to form words again, and then however long it takes until she's back to her usual self. I'm not allowed to do anything else while I'm beside her. This is very difficult to do, especially for long periods of time, especially when I'm never allowed a break. It's like trying to talk to a table. It often felt like she was being stubborn on purpose. I'm not sure whether that was the case.

I always ended up blaming myself for these incidents. It's because I'm not a good enough person, I didn't provide a good enough environment, I need to try harder, I need to be better at using gentle language around her, at guessing and avoiding her triggers, I shouldn't be getting frustrated with her when she stonewalls me.

Nights

When I was alone, I'd stay on my computer fairly late at night, usually past 12 am, maybe until 2 in the morning. I liked the calm, dark environment this gave me. It was the perfect isolated space to do whatever I want, to feel whatever I want. I couldn't have this anymore, because she'd always make me come to bed to sleep at the same time as her, which was between 10 and 11 pm. The exception to this was Saturday, when she'd see herself to bed and I'd stay up a little longer to do the dishes. (I have to do the dishes once a week because I take turns with my flatmates.) After I was done, she'd already be asleep, so there was no reason for me to take myself to bed right away. I had a precious hour or so of freedom apart from her.

One of these nights, in January, I worked up the courage to talk to S., my flatmate, about how I was feeling. I showed her some of the messages that my partner had sent me on my phone.

S. was shocked. "What the fuck is happening, Cadence?! That's not okay! That's not normal!" I just shrugged. It was normal to me. I'd received dozens of strings of messages like that before. They didn't affect me any more.

S. insisted that this was unreasonable. She was right, this wasn't how I'm supposed to be treated. This isn't a reasonable way for somebody to treat their partner. I wondered if I should end it early, kick her out, send her home. The original plan was for one of her friends, Aubrey, to come and visit for two weeks in April, and then they'd both go home together. I actually messaged Aubrey to tell her I was at the end of my tether, and to ask if she could come sooner, in February instead, to get my partner out of my hair as soon as reasonably possible. Aubrey tried looking into it, but unfortunately wasn't able to make it happen, so we had to stick with the original schedule.

I never felt like I was able to ask her to allow me to have some alone time, either. I tried a couple of times, but she'd always get stroppy or she'd demand that I do something else with her, so it felt hopeless, and by the time I was on walking on eggshells around her to avoid the meltdowns I was too afraid to request anything like that.

Last two months

After February, everything passed in a blur. My flatmates helped her find a new place to live after she moves back to Canada. I don't remember why I didn't involve myself in that. Maybe at this point I was too tired to care.

I was definitely stressed, but I still felt like I was making it work.

Leaving

She went home on 20th April 2024. That was one year ago.

The first emotion I felt was sorrow. I was in tears when I said goodbye to her at the airport. I felt overwhelmingly alone going to bed, in a bed that was too large for just me. I looked at the Hello Kitty stickers that we'd decorated the walls with on the night before she left, and I sobbed.

The second emotion I felt was relief. It wasn't long before she had one of her meltdowns, the first one she'd had in 6 months that I didn't have to deal with physically, that I didn't have to spend hours by her bedside, by my bedside, hoping that she would recover and I could stop spending more emotional labour. I didn't have to do that any more. When she starting having a meltdown, I turned off my phone.

Ending it

I wanted to feel like we could still make it work. We spent time together online, like before. I wanted her to play the Portal game series, so I watched her play and we talked about how things were going. But it felt wrong. The whole thing felt wrong. Her very presence was grating on me. I did not feel comfortable around her any more, like a fight-or-flight response. I tried to ignore it. It must have just been the digital medium interfering with the way I wanted to communicate, because after all, I'd enjoyed being around her in person so much, hadn't I? We just needed to make that in-person connection happen again.

Now that we'd lived together once already, and shown that it could work, I did start looking into whether I could move to Canada to continue things, because she wouldn't be able to move to New Zealand again for another 6 months, and I didn't want to go back to long distance with her, especially with how uncomfortable it was feeling. There was just one small problem. Memories started to resurface of specific events where I had to get S. to intervene to fix a conflict between me and my partner that I could not salvage on my own. I realised that, if it was just us two living together, without the support of my flatmates, I would not be able to survive.

I also felt like, despite the meltdowns, I'd succeeded in my goal in giving her a safe, comfortable environment for her to branch out and grow as a person. While this was positive for her, it was unfortunate for me. I just didn't like the person she'd grown into. She'd changed a lot. She'd lost a lot of that bubbly lighthearted personality that I'd fallen in love with in the first place.

It was for those two reasons that I realised that the relationship between us wouldn't be able to continue. If we aren't able to live with only the two of us, then we don't have a future together. And also, I just don't like the kind of person she is now. And it's definitely not worth uprooting my entire life out of New Zealand to make that change. So I broke up with her. That happened on 6th July 2024.

Aftermath

So, after all I've talked about, the breakup might not have been for the reasons you thought. But those were my reasons at the time.

Initially, even though we broke up, we were on good terms. But the freedom of having properly emotionally separated from her and having zero obligations left to her, zero reasons to keep a veneer of politeness, I realised just how much I did not like her. More memories surfaced, reminding me of times that she had mistreated me during her stay. I talked to her less. I left her group chat that she started, which had mostly turned into her wailing about her problems and how sad she is and how nobody wants to talk to her.

Borderline Personality Disorder

Some time later, I went to the library, and as I do occasionally, I went to the non-fiction section and looked at the shelf about mental disorders. My eyes scanned the spines: a whole area about autism spectrum disorder, a few about narcissism, and then one caught my eye: Stop Walking on Eggshells. I was like, damn, sounds like what I was doing! Almost laughing hysterically, I pulled out the book and read the rest of the title on the cover: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder.

I checked out the book and read it over a few days. It precisely described my ex: so precisely that I can only compare that feeling to how I felt when I was learning that I had autism spectrum disorder. To explain this analogy, when I was fairly young I felt out of tune with the world and with other people, like the world wasn't designed for me, and like nobody understood me. I got checked for mental disorders, and they found out I had autism spectrum disorder. Together, my mother and I read through a guidebook about it, and I was starstruck. Even though it was just ink on paper, I felt like it understood me and the ways I acted better than anybody I'd ever talked to. The book knew who I was when I didn't, and I really appreciated it for giving a name and identity to the way I'd been feeling. It totally explained everything.

Stop Walking on Eggshells totally explained everything about her, starting with its list of symptoms. The Wikipedia article for BPD is pretty good. They outline 9 symptoms, which can be seen as the 9 primary ways that BPD affects somebody's behaviour. I've highlighted the ones which I particularly noticed in my ex:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined emotional abandonment.
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterised by alternating between extremes of idealisation and devaluation.
3. A markedly disturbed sense of identity and distorted self-image.
4. Impulsive or reckless behaviors, including uncontrollable spending, unsafe sexual practices, substance use disorder, reckless driving, and binge eating.
5. Recurrent suicidal ideation or behaviors involving self-harm.
6. Rapidly shifting intense emotional dysregulation (e.g. intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours)
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness.
8. Inappropriate, intense anger that can be difficult to control.
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

This is quite the medicalised overview. If you want to read Stop Walking on Eggshells' more human explanation of these with examples, you can check it here on archive.org.

To elaborate on point 6, this is what I described earlier as the meltdowns. Her mood would suddenly and unpredictably swing between being elated (normal) and being distraught (meltdown), in a way that couldn't be explained by triggers.

Point 7 is what I like to call "the black hole", and it explains why no matter how much physical support, emotional support, and attention I gave to try to make her life happy and comfortable, it was never enough, and could never have been enough. A black hole is so heavy with such a massive gravitational pull that it sucks in light from the surroundings, never to be seen again. My ex sucks in people's feelings, emotions, efforts, life essence. Lost, gone forever. It takes a strain on the people she's around, and it makes no difference to the black hole inside her, which is as empty and hungry as ever.

I think point 1 is the most important one, which I didn't understand from Wikipedia but I did understand from the book. It's why she wasn't able to spend any time at all separated from me and was acting obsessively clingy and not giving me the freedom to do things I want to: she sees time apart as abandonment, it feels to her like a declaration that I do not love her any more. Obviously, logically, it isn't that way, but BPD is a mental disorder, and this is how it feels inside her head.

Imagine the terror that you would feel if you were a child lost and alone in the middle of Times Square in New York City. Your mom was there a second ago, holding your hand. Suddenly the crowd swept her away. You look around, frantically, trying to find her.

This is how people with BPD feel nearly all the time: isolated, anxious, terrified at the thought of being alone. Caring, supportive people are like friendly faces in the middle of the crowd. But the moment they do something that the BP [borderline person; the person with borderline personality disorder] interprets as a signal they're about to leave, the BP panics and reacts. The person may burst into rage or beg the loved one to stay.

It takes little to trigger fear of abandonment: one borderline woman refused to let her roommate leave their apartment to do laundry. The fear of abandonment can be so strong that it can overwhelm the BP. For example, when one man told his BP wife that he had a potentially fatal illness, she raged at him for seeing the doctor.

If I'm five minutes late coming home from work, my wife will call to find out where I am. She pages me constantly. I can't go out by myself with friends anymore because she reacts so strongly — she'll even page me while I'm watching a movie. It's so stressful that I've stopped going out with friends unless she feels like coming along.

Therapy for BPD people generally involves giving them coping tools that allow them to approach situations logically and suppress these gut reactions of fearing abandonment.

In general, the book tries to bridge the gap in communication and understanding between a borderline person and a non-borderline person. It includes some example conversations showing healthy communication; here's one where the non-borderline person uses de-escalation tactics to stay in control of a highly-strung situation and assert their needs, and trying to get the borderline person to understand those needs:

BP:

You're a bad (selfish, etc) person for making this request.

Non-BP:

I understand you think that I'm a bad person, but I feel good about myself and I'm proud that I respect myself enough to set this limit.

BP:

You must hate me.

Non-BP:

No, I don't. In fact, I care about you so much that I want to work together to make our relationship better. I also care for and respect myself, which is why I'm bringing this up.

BP:

You're manipulative and controlling.

Non-BP:

I understand that you think I'm manipulative and controlling. I feel it's your job to make choices and decide how you want to act. And it's my job to think about the things I'm comfortable with and the things I'm not. I've thought about this a great deal, and this is very important to me and my own self-respect.

BP:

You shouldn't feel that way.

Non-BP:

Perhaps if you were in my position, you wouldn't feel this way. We're two different people and we each have our own beliefs, feelings, and opinions. I am asking you to respect my feelings, even if you don't share them.

I read this book a bit late to be able to make use of it, because the relationship had completely ended and I'd mostly stopped talking to her, but reading this was still massively enlightening to me because it let me know that this wasn't an isolated case, she wasn't unique. It also showed me that I hadn't been doing anything wrong that made her as disagreeable and hard to take care of as she was. Over the three and half years of knowing her, I'd actually become remarkably good at communicating with her. Unfortunately, learning why she's like this doesn't make it any easier to endure the abuse. What the conversation above shows is that practising healthy communication takes a lot of continuous mental strain to be able to speak constructive sentences and hold a conversation when faced with blunt, short, hurtful responses, or no response at all from the BP. It is possible, but it is not sustainable, and it doesn't make me happy to talk to someone who responds like this. It is like walking on eggshells.

Bombshell

After going through this book, I decided to talk to her about it to let her know that she should probably get therapy to help her cope with BPD, or if it's not BPD, then whatever it is that she may be experiencing. She needs to come up with better strategies for dealing with her difficult feelings, otherwise the same story will play out again with the next friend or partner that she gets close to. It'll make them both miserable and drive them apart. Even though things are over between us, I still want her to have a brighter future. I suggested she go to therapy. She replied,

I know that I need therapy I just haven't been able to get it because you didn't let me.

I was stunned and speechless. It felt like the most absurd, reality defying thing I had ever read from her (and I'd read a lot of reality defying things from her). And I was 🤏 THIS CLOSE to believing her, to asking her why she feels that way, to try to understand where she comes from, to approach the situation calmly and with forgiveness towards her. But I couldn't. She tried to bend my will too far, and I broke. I snapped. I was enraged. I was furious at her. That is such a fucking unreasonable thing to say after I had spent six months of my life housing her, meeting her needs, buying her things for her hobbies, spending as much time as possible with her. I had done these things because I loved her and I wanted her to be happy.

For me, this was finally the point of no return. This was the event horizon of her black hole. Up until this moment, after everything that had happened, I was still doing my best to try to help her improve her life, because I cared about her.

After this, I didn't care about her any more. I have not forgiven her for saying this. I have not forgiven her for the choices she made. I have not forgiven her for the ways she took advantage of my trust. She is evil. I genuinely think she is a horrible, irredeemable person. I do not say this lightly. It took so much abuse to get me to this point.

I told her that she was horrible for saying that and I blocked her on everything.

Why am I even writing this post?

I literally don't know.

I've spent months talking to my friends about the things I'm feeling, about what she had put me through, and that helped me a lot to cope. I don't know if talking about it to a wider audience is helping at this point.

Maybe I'm writing this post because when I write things into this blog in a structured manner, when I let everything out, holding nothing back, it stops me from thinking about it as hard. Like how I haven't been thinking about my identity as hard since writing my previous blog post about it. It's a weight out of my mind.

Maybe I'm writing this to try to warn other people about borderline personality disorder.

Maybe I'm writing this looking for sympathy.

Mental Health Awareness Week

Now that the floodgates had opened, even though it had been 6 months after she left, I was still recalling more and more memories of my ex that had previously been suppressed or repressed. Each one made me feel worse and worse as I realised the extent of the abuse I'd suffered. I was not doing well.

This actually made me really (ir?)rationally angry.

• what is the fucking point
• I, a person who suffers from real serious mental health issues, do not feel helped by this
• mental health is when you buy something

I felt like I was going so insane about this that I talked to HR about my feelings. They mostly made excuses for capital and tried to make me feel bad for the petite bourgeoisie, but there was a good outcome from the meeting: I found out that the workplace would sponsor a small number of therapy sessions. I figured it would be good to go ahead with these to help me deal with the shit I was trying to process.

These turned out to be unhelpful. In short, the person I was seeing more or less refused to believe what I was saying about my ex having BPD, which is like, the whole reason that everything is the way it is. Sure, maybe it's not BPD, I can't diagnose that, but the outcome is the same, and what I experienced is perfectly consistent with what I read about, so it wouldn't make a difference. Her refusal to acknowledge this critical part of my story made me feel like I wasn't being understood or listened to.

Memories

One piece of advice the therapist suggested for me is, when I have a memory or a flashback of something that happened, I should write down what I remembered and how it made me feel. So I started doing that.

Since I haven't been talking to my ex, the story has not continued developing in the 6 months between then and now, apart from me continuing to write down increasingly horrible memories. Horrible memories that I am now sharing with the world, some of which have been kept in just my head until now. Some of these are pasted verbatim, and might not make much sense, because I wrote them for my own reference. You'll get the idea either way.

She kept asking me to "talk about feelings". At first, I thought this was an innocent request, but it's become one of the things I fear the most. I don't understand what she actually means when she says she wants to talk about feelings. I was never able to make her feel satisfied with what I said. I would try and she said I hadn't done it at all. It made me feel frustrated at her. I don't even know if it had a meaning. It was impossible to please her by trying to talk about her feelings - I don't think it did anything *at all.* Another day, she'd say she wants to talk about feelings, and my heart would sink. I know how she's going to treat me next.

When we would go and walk around outside after dark, at 11 pm or 3 am. I don't remember who took the other outside. I think I took her outside because I was hoping it would take her mind off things and let her talk about her feelings, per her request, and I didn't feel able to do that sitting still in my room. Oh my god. That's the same sleep deprivation behaviour but I was able to deal with it that time as I wasn't totally exhausted at that moment. This was before new year. It made me feel stressed that I had to help her and didn't know how, but it also made me feel excited that I was doing something unusual at night time. I remember getting home and feeling fulfilled but she was still displeased and said that she still hadn't been able to talk about her feelings. I was confused because I thought that was what we had been doing. I also felt stressed and despairing again. And I had to hold it in.

When she is stable she talks so convincingly and reassuringly it makes her sound so mature and makes me feel like everything will be okay next time. That's why I had such trouble realising that there was a persistent problem. The negative mood swings were inconsistent so I assumed they could change. But the cycle of mood swings as a whole was consistent and it will never end.

I liked the first time we approached each other sexually. We sat next to each other and smiled and started gently and carefully undressing each others bodies. It felt like a special moment. I felt nervousness but also confident at the same time, like this was right, like things were finally where they were supposed to be in the relationship. It felt right.

I can't remember another time it felt right.

She said people were stalking her and lacing her skirt with fentanyl to make her drug addicted and dependent forever. I felt taken aback. I didn't know how to respond. I thought that she often says strange things but this was very much out of the ordinary even for her.

I felt a little bit scared because I didn't expect her to be that deluded. I don't even know what fentanyl is. I took a deep breath and began to talk her through it, like I always did.

I felt scared when I saw I had messages from her because it was likely that they would be about her suffering or her calling me evil. I would ignore her when I could because I felt stressed and it was time consuming to deal with that. Sometimes I would choose to help her, sometimes because I felt bad for her and she relied on me, but other times out of a sense of obligation.

I miss her.

I would want her back if it weren't for her mood swings, being clingy, needing all of my time, needing all of my emotions, not being able to split her emotional needs across others, forcing me to form my schedule around her, traumatising my flatmates, demanding that I talk about feelings with her, not meeting my sexual needs, not meeting my emotional needs, not being interested in my life or the things I want to do with her,

So why do I still miss her? Why do I want her back? Which parts of her do I appreciate?

We were going home from the shops after 9 and the sun was setting. She got upset while walking and sat down on the ground. I was unable to convince her to return home. She would not make any attempt to communicate with me. I couldn't pull her up to a standing position. I gave up and walked the rest of the way home myself. [note: I pointed out the way home, she also has a cell phone with internet and GPS.] She didn't follow even when I waited. She didn't return my texts either. She stayed sitting on the ground. I had to return later after dark to look for her. She hadn't moved. When I found her, she was trying to slit her wrists with rocks. She still would not communicate.

She threw everything off the bed, including the mattress, in the middle of the night. I don't even know why. Another time she launched herself off the bed onto the floor and started thrashing around.

Yesterday the bus driver asked me what happened to my little canadian friend.

Holy fuck. I just found out that most days — most days — when I was out at work my flatmates would be listening to her loudly sobbing in my room. I assumed she was keeping to herself or doing her own things or going around town with all the freedom and opportunities I gave her. But she was just in my room. Giving my flatmates more trauma. Fuck. I can't process this.

They weren't able to tell me this is what they were putting up with, because whenever I was at home, she was with me. My flatmates never had a moment alone with me to talk about what was happening. Not a moment in 6 months.

I tried to take her along to the gamedev meetup at Nate's - this might have been in December - but she refused to enter the room. I had to go out into the hallway and tried to coax her into talking. She said she didn't want to join in the group. I said ok, but I do want to join in, so I'm going to go back to them now. I told her when the next bus was and how to get there if she wanted to go home (she could also check this on her phone any time). I went back to the group, but there was a pit in my stomach. I had a bad feeling about this. A few minutes later, I went back to the hallway. She was still there. She was even harder to talk to than before. I felt unsafe. The only thing I was able to do was leave straight away and take her back home with me.

Oscar was talking about an event he'd been to and said "did some singing"— I involuntarily took a breath and shuddered. It reminded me of that time we walking down the road together, beautiful day outside, to go to the shops and get her treats. As we walked, she was getting steadily more and more upset because her throat had hurt from some singing that she did that she had not prepared for. I saw the breakdown coming, I knew it would happen, I could see her becoming more and more one-track and less responsive. I told her we could get some soothing medicine for her throat at the shops. She did not react. I saw it coming, and I couldn't do anything. We had to turn around and go home. What else was there to do.

We physically fought once.

I do not call it physical abuse because the fighting was mutual. One morning she was just. So........ her. Disagreeable, stubborn, silent, needy. It is my Saturday, probably. I tell her that I can't spend time with her yet because I have to make sure I put the washing out and feed myself first. No good response, of course. It's going to be one of those days. She goes into my room and slams the door. Whatever. I turn away and start doing the stuff I want to do in the kitchen. And then I hear something hit the wall.

She is curled into the tiniest ball in my bed, I'm not sure if she threw something, but my gut fears the worst. I tell her, I'm busy now, and if you want to talk to me, you have your phone, okay? You can talk to me on that until I'm done. I take her phone from the dresser and put it in her hand. I reach the door when the phone hits my ankles. I tell her it's not okay to throw things, please don't do that again.

You'll never guess what she does next. I now CANNOT leave my room without her destroying it for me not giving her sufficient attention. I don't have a problem with her throwing stuff in general, but like, that's my stuff!!! I like my stuff!!!! She can't do that!!!!! It feels like a fucking hostage situation.

I don't even know what to do. I try to physically tug her from my bed and get her to go outside, just so she stops throwing my stuff, but she's resisting with all her strength. and she's strong. Why is she so strong? I manage to get her on the ground, and start literally dragging her out the door, she's grabbing on to the door frame with all her might, and then she starts screaming the loudest scream I've ever heard, continuously, for minutes. Nobody comes to save her. When the scream subsides, she's out of breath, out of strength, out of everything. She curls into a ball and starts sobbing. Now I can't leave her in case she throws my things again. But I can't approach her either in case she thinks it's a physical attack. So she's lying there, a ball, in the middle of my room. I'm sitting, passively, neutral, emotionless, in the doorway. We stay there, locked in a stalemate of mutual digust, hatred, and fear. Finally, my flatmate S. (god bless their soul) emerges from their room to see the situation. They totally heard everything. They attempt to talk to her and provide care while I go for a walk outside to get the fucking rage out of my body. What a nightmare. It's only after she spills coffee on my duvet inner mid-recovery that something in me snaps and I tell her I don't care about her any more.

Marking up a quote from Stop Walking on Eggshells:

Some adults who enter into relationships with borderlines feel brainwashed by the person's accusations and criticisms. Says Benham, “The techniques of brainwashing are simple: isolate the victim ✅, expose them to consistent messages ✅, mix with sleep deprivation ✅, add some form of abuse ✅, get the person to doubt what they know and feel ✅, keep them on their toes ✅ ✅ ✅, wear them down ✅ ✅ ✅, and stir well.”

I've been wondering whether she is... worse? Than the average person with borderline personality disorder? Based on what's shown in the book, I think she's about average. She is easier in some ways and worse in other ways.

The emotional black hole and wanting to spend every second with me seem to be average for bpd people. Throwing my stuff and intentionally sleep depriving me were worse. Not showing risky behaviours or threatening serious self-harm or suicide was fortunate.

There was one time she started becoming less functional while on the bus into town, and it's like, well we can't turn around now can we, tried to ask if she still wanted to keep going, didn't get a real answer. She was previously excited about what we wanted to do at the shops - get ingredients for cheesecake - so turning back would be a wasted trip and she'd be sulky at home. I decided to continue. Taking her into the shops was certainly overextending, but what else could I do, abandon her at the entrance? I held her hand in my left and the basket in my right to get around the shops. we'd just gotten to the vast milk refrigeration area when she stopped, wouldn't budge, and sat down. I couldn't leave her and continue to do the shopping - she'd feel worse from abandonment, she'd scream. So I sat down next to her, by the giant milk refrigerators, and held her hand and pet her hair. she continued looking directly ahead with her stubborn empty eyes and quiveringly stiff neck. It was about five minutes before the shop employee saw us.

"...Is everything okay?"

I knew this would happen. My mind had my response planned out, and my throat was able to say it without choking up.

"She has a mental disorder. She'll be okay, she'll be able to move again in a few minutes."

A nod, and the employee was gone.

I never got to do the stuff I wanted to do, because she would have to be okay with it too, and if she didn't do it, then I didn't get to do it. She always got to do the stuff she wanted to do, because I would always help her to make it happen, at whatever cost to me. I did it because I wanted to give her the very best that I could. And because I was frightened of how she'd treat me if I didn't.

Graffiti on Great King Street reading, "have you ever met someone?"

I feel pissed off that I keep seeing reminders of what could have been. It reminded me of when I said this while we were walking, this must have been VERY early on because I didn't understand her triggers or cycle patterns at this point, and I assumed she just had moods. She responded badly to me saying it out loud because she assumed I was talking to her and she got upset that she hadn't met anybody. Even after I explained that I was reading off graffiti she was still displeased and acted more subdued for the next while (though not an extreme meltdown).

It makes me want to scream and hurt my voice thinking about it.

I thought I saw someone who looked like her moving in the way she moves and I involuntarily gasped out a "no" sound and prepared to shut down

It would always be somebody else's fault...

you know, I think I did love her. she just made herself unloveable

That time when we were out in town by the ice cream shop. She rapidly became less functional and stopped communicating entirely. Usually I can get yes/no indicators out of her when she does that, but this time she was acting stubborn and did not respond to me at all. I thought that we should take the bus home so that she could be in a more familiar, softer environment rather than having the cold wind tug at us on this outcrop. After what felt like an eternity of trying to get her to move, communicate, anything, I felt so frustrated to have all my attempts at heartfelt communication be stonewalled. I pointed her to where the bus stop is (about 80 metres away), told her that the bus is coming in a moment, and that I'm going to get on it because I want to go home. I told her she can come with me now or she can take the next bus when it reaches that stop. She did not react. [note: she can also check the schedule and the stop locations any time on her phone.] I strode off to the bus stop, muttering under my breath, out of eyesight of her. The bus came, but I didn't get on it, because something felt wrong, a gut feeling, the same feeling I had at Nate's. I felt like it wasn't the best decision to go home right now. I let the bus travel on without me, and she must have seen it continue past the outcrop and must have assumed I had gotten on. I waited there, at the stop, because I still couldn't bear to face her and her stubbornness yet. And then I heard her shrill, ear-splitting, continuous scream.

Why did I always introduce her to others as a friend, rather than as my partner, the love of my life? To this day, I still don't know. I think it might have been something to do with wanting to lower the chances of me being cast in a bad light by proxy if she was to misbehaving around people I knew? Or maybe I wasn't as committed to the relationship as I thought I was? Or maybe I felt embarrassed about the relationship, about her? Or maybe I didn't feel entirely comfortable with disclosing a lesbian relationship?

[15:33]

cadence

when my ex was here she lost one of her soft toys, a plush cat in the colours of the transgender pride flag, and I only found it after she was gone. I reached out to offer to give it back but I didn't get a response. so it's just been in my room for months. it's adorable and well-loved but it just reminds me of the bitterness of her.

[15:34]

cadence

today I gave it away to the queer support centre at the university, and they were so happy to have it. I will never see it again. I didn't expect to be so emotional over this that I'd be crying

[15:41]

Tomskeleton

Excellent handling of it honestly

[15:41]

ash

severing those final ties to your former abuser is extremely liberating

[15:41]

ash

yeah, it catches ppl off guard but shedding that weight is immense

[15:42]

ash

Thank you for reading. Like always, you are welcome to email me regarding this post if you wish, but I request that you please do not criticise my actions. I do not need more self-doubt. I need to move on.