The Chapter Ends

Well, it's time to close this chapter of my life. What a chapter it has been. I've grown more in the past few years than I have in the rest of my adult life, and I've emerged that person that I always wanted to be. I've renewed my faith in my religion, have gotten to a point of content, and have truly believed in myself and in the goodness of humanity once again.

As I'm reaching this point of being content and pushing out this positive energy, this positive energy attracts someone who's amazing, and someone who I knew over 20 years ago. I went to high school with her; we were acquaintances that were in similar, but always different circles.

We met on an online dating site and didn't realize that we knew one another or went to the same high school until we had been communicating for days. The initial attraction was there and was developing quickly without each of us knowing that we knew each other, but it all gelled -- quite quickly -- once we knew who each of us was.

The strange thing is that I remembered her voice, yet she said we never talked. I remembered it vividly. I also remembered the jacket she wore, although she said that we never talked. I remembered that vividly and remembered the people that she hung around with as well.

Despite the picture that I had in my head of her, she still looked a little different in the picture. When I saw her though, I knew that it was her - she looked the same except she dyed her hair blonde. What did she say to me? "You look exactly the same."

Since seeing each other the first time, we've spent quite a bit of time together. We spent an entire weekend together, away and playing on the beach.

We fit quite well together from every perspective. We have fun like there's no tomorrow, we laugh together, we love together; we are affectionate all the time, and we support one another. We have a true partnership, and the care that we have for one another emanates from us.

You Can Have a Healthy Relationship After A Borderline Relationship

I stayed in the relationship with the BPD for a long time because I was afraid that I would never have many of the things that I had with her. With my new partner, I have all of those things and more without any drama, dysfunction or abuse on me. It's all possible, if you do the work and believe in yourself.

I believed in myself, and it happened. Anyone who was in a relationship with a partner inflicted with Borderline Personality Disorder can heal themselves and have a functional relationship after their relationship with the BPD, but they must properly heal themselves. It's probably the most difficult process that I've been through, but I now feel much better.

I've replaced most of the bad memories that the BPD had put into my head, but some will still emerge. When they do, I easily clear them and laugh about them quite regularly -- someone should never accuse you of sending text messages when you're going to the bathroom -- that's just silly.

Like I've said before, the relationship made me grow quite a bit. Now, it's time to develop a solid, functional relationship with a wonderful woman that shares my spirit, my soul, my faith, my love of life. We have infinite possibilities together, and we know that. We also have a long road ahead of us before our relationship can be permanent, but we're both optimistic, which is nice.

You can have a quite happy, healthy life after a relationship with a Borderline.

I hope you've enjoyed these journals and the story of this part of my life with a BPD. With that, I bid you adieu.

My Angel

I've recently learned that angels come in and out of your life every day, and most of them don't have wings.

I had an angel come into my life on Saturday, and I think she's going to be staying for some time.

A kindred spirit. She gets it. She gets me, and I know that by what she's said to me and told me, how she's spoken to me, and the experiences that we have shared. I think I get her too. I feel so comfortable, yet so excited.

I've known my angel for more than 20 years; I wasn't ready for her until now, but now I'm ready. She even said that she was looking for someone who was ready. I haven't told her, but I'm ready.

I think she's ready.

I did the work. I became content, happy with myself. Happy to do things as a single man. I renewed my faith, prayed for God to help me heal and let go of my baggage. I've felt the bricks come off my shoulders, most of them about a month ago, but they continued to fall off.

Once that happened, the world changed. I felt it. I began to feel like I was walking on air all of the time.

Then she came into my life.

Her words. Her mannerisms. Her attitude. Her heart. Her appearance. She is beautiful, inside and out.

Only time will tell, but I think I met my angel.

Sunshine In My Eyes

I want to be that person -- the one who always has sunshine in his eyes.

I want to be the person that others look at, and they see light beaming from me. They see hope, they see joy, they see happiness.

I want it to emanate from me, and I want others to feed off of it (in a healthy way), bringing relationships, situations, whatever it may be, to new levels.

I want the sunshine, the positive energy, to pour out of me.

I want others to feel it, use it constructively, and I want them to believe. I want them to believe in themselves and in the good of mankind.

Goodness must emanate from our souls. It must pour out. If it does, what a wonderful world.

What a wonderful world.

Birthday

Today's her birthday. She's 41. Happy birthday.

They say that it takes one year to fully heal from a relationship like this one. You have to go through the anniversaries, the holidays and the birthdays. I understand that.

Actually, the birthdays I spent with her were okay; they weren't wonderful. Last birthday, I got her 40 gifts for her 40th birthday. I know that a 40th birthday is supposed to be a big one, but unfortunately, she had kicked me out two weeks before and I had just moved back in the week before, so I wasn't able to plan any celebration for her. Not only that, she told me that her friends couldn't do anything because it was Mothers' Day weekend.

She made me feel bad anyway for not planning a huge celebration. We went to a local restaurant with her sister, parents (who were in town for her birthday) and kids, and she got drunk. Quite drunk. Her father wanted to talk to me later and tell me that I was an abusive man. My God, look at your daughter for once.

I still wonder how I could have planned a huge celebration when I didn't live with her before her birthday. I think that I moved back in a week before her birthday. Still, I managed to figure out 40 gifts for her that ranged from a golf bag and some special clubs to tickets to see a concert.

It still wasn't enough. Never enough for her. The woman was so selfish and so self-absorbed that it didn't matter what she did to me. All that mattered is what she felt. Her sister didn't plan a huge party. Her parents didn't have an enormous gathering brewing. She didn't kick them out of the house and refuse to communicate with them.

That was me. Yet I endured. I stuck with it. I jumped through hoops, being told that I was an abusive person by her father. And I took it, all in an effort to get her help and help her see.

I thought that she would see the light in time. I thought that a counselor would start treating her. No one ever did.

I now get to shed this baggage. I want it gone. I want the ill feelings gone. I want it all gone.

I never thought I'd say that, but the time has come.

Her birthday wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Is was actually quite good. I met up with a group of friends by happenstance and going to see a band play. We couldn't find the bar, actually I couldn't find the bar because I knew where it was. We joked that it was like high school again when you were going to a party, and it really felt like this.

I realized that this is what my new life is like. I don't know what's happening day to day, and it's a life of uncertainty. But that's okay right now. The nice thing is that anything could happen, and it's pretty nice having this feeling right now.

I'm getting comfortable in my new life, and I'm about to make big changes and try to live my dream life. I'm also starting to look around at houses, and church is back in my life. I'm starting to really get it together. Nice feeling. A real nice feeling.

A day that I thought was going to be so tough ended up being okay. That's what I'm shooting for -- okay. Don't need the moon and the stars yet, just need a state of stability.

Now that's cool. The Me Project is working.

Intensive Care

I completely forgot about when I had to be admitted into Intensive Care in 2006. What a story...

On June 25, 2006 (not that I remember dates or anything), my exBPD and I were cleaning out her kitchen when I found a box of sandwich toothpicks, the ones with plastic tassels on the end of it. I also found straws and started blowing darts across the kitchen. The second dart, I put into the straw, and inhaled, getting ready to blow the dart across the kitchen.

Unfortunately, the dart went the wrong way.

When I inhaled through my mouth, the dart went into my mouth and down my throat. I swallowed hard, and the dart was gone.

I felt like the dart was sitting in the back of my throat, but it must have scratched my throat as it was going into my stomach. We called the hospital and they advised us to go right in.

I went to Somerset Medical Center and was checked out. A specialist came and gave me an Endoscopy, trying to get the toothpick out of my stomach.

The specialist couldn't get the toothpick out of my stomach. They said that I had eaten too much for lunch and couldn't find it. They told me to go home, and it should hopefully pass.

The next few days were relatively uneventful. I periodically checked to see if the toothpick had passed, and I'd periodically feel pains in my stomach, but didn't worry too much about it.

The following weekend was the fourth of July. We were scheduled to go to my friend's for a barbeque, then drive down to my place in Delaware to spend a weekend at the beach with all five of the kids. Fun for all. Unfortunately, I was in great pain at my friend's house, but hung tough. She drove down to Delaware because I was in such pain, and I decided that if necessary, I would go to the hospital down there. That evening, I was in great pain, but I decided to wait the night.

The next morning, I felt fine. We had a wonderful weekend in Delaware, and I wrote our Commitment Declaration, which we celebrated on the beach and had a great time overall.

We came back from Delaware on Tuesday, I believe. I felt fine. By the end of the week, however, I was in great pain whenever I urinated. On Friday, I went to the doctor, who said that I would need to go to the Emergency Room and get a CAT scan. They needed to see if they could find the toothpick.

I spent the entire night in the hospital and got two CAT scans. At 4 a.m., the doctor admitted me into the hospital -- Intensive Care. They wanted to watch me because they thought that the toothpick was floating in my body cavity. I had a fever and they put me on an IV right away.

In the morning, I prepped for my surgery, couldn't eat and had two operations.The first, which was like a colonoscopy (forget the name), produced nothing. The second was surgery where they went into my body and retrieved the toothpick.

In recovery, my lung collapsed. Back into Intensive Care I went for 2 more days.

The BPD was with me for much of the surgery, and she stayed with me the first night after my surgery. She was quite supportive overall, but of course, when I asked her to get my phone because I wanted to call my friend Mike, she suspected that I was going to call women.

Her anxiety got worse though. On the second night, when she was going to stay over, I was flipping TV stations and in my own world, according to her. I guess that I wasn't paying enough attention to her, so she was upset and she stormed out around 11 p.m. There I was, upset, and she had left because I wasn't paying any attention to her while I was in Intensive Care.

Does anyone see the problem with this?

The next day, I was moved out of Intensive Care, and my Mom was coming to see me. They (my parents) had been there through all of the surgery and the later days, but she was coming to see me. I asked her to stop at my house and pick up my laptop, as I had a credit card bill that was about to be late. She stopped and picked up the laptop, which caused yet more anxiety with the BPD. She thought that I was going to email others or reach out to people, I guess.

She came to the hospital upset and not happy with me. Anyway, I was released the following day, and we had 1-1/2 weeks to spend together as I was told to stay out of work by the doctor.

The Tour de France was on during this time, and I love the tour. An American was in contention, so I was particularly interested and I tried to watch it every day.

This again was not good. The BPD felt that I was so focused on the Tour and not paying enough attention to her. She was greatly upset by this.

Some of these episodes became the BPDs reasons for telling me that I had Dissociative Identity Disorder -- because I did not pay enough attention to her or would focus on something other than her.

I returned to work after 2 weeks of being out. The BPD made the entire time, just like when I was in the hospital, about her. I couldn't recover and not pay attention to her, as the BPDs narcissistic tendencies make them the focus and require them to be the focus regardless of others' needs.

Looking back, I should have walked after the episode was over. How can someone justify walking out of another when they're in the hospital? That's downright abuse and something that I wish that I had brought up in counseling.

I told my coworker about this, and her response was appropriate: "That's not a sick person, that's just the most selfish, most immature person that you'll ever meet."

So true.

Good riddance.

Grace

At church on Sunday, Pastor talked about grace and how it has to flow freely from you. You need to be able to forgive others for their sins against you, and he cited a passage from the book of Acts. Tears ran down my face as I heard him say that. I feel real bad, but I'm having difficulty following the Lord in this instance.

I cannot forgive her for what she did. I just cannot forgive her.

The way she treated me, the way she acted just wasn't right. It was mean. It was heartless. It was not the way she told me she would treat me. She treated me much worse than she ever promised.

She was so hurtful. She did things with the intention of hurting, or with the intention of not being hurt herself. The world was all about her, and it was at my expense. I tried to show her who I really was, but she just never got it.

It didn't matter what I did or how I acted. She still was bent on the fact that I was bad. When I was there, I was the man in her eyes, but when I walked out the door, I was the devil.

Grudges were held not for months, but for years. She would cite things that happened early in the relationship that were not against her, but she thought that it was something against her, years later.

My children were hurt by her. Her children were hurt by her. The family was split apart because of her actions. I have not seen her girls since September because of her actions.

I am having difficulty forgiving her. All that I can do is pray that I can get the strength to forgive her, and hope that with time, I will be able to do this.

In time, I hope. In time...

The Pain Still Comes, Then Goes

The pain doesn't just go away, no matter how many times I say goodbye to Oz. It stinks, but it's true. You can't, I can't, just walk away from the pain. I committed to fully healing myself from this relationship, and I'm doing just that.

Unfortunately, I'm very impatient.

I want to get on with life. I want to move on. I've done the work, read the books and gone through all of the exercises to heal me. Unfortunately, it does take time. I'm much better than I was in February or March, but I'm still healing.

What's been hurting the most is that I'm now reprocessing all of the events that took place. I now believe that I was played in many instances, and I took it, I was abused and I let it happen.

I believed. I can't believe that one person would manipulate and take such advantage of another person. The worst thing is that if, when she was doing things like break up with me, kick me out or the like, if I did something that she didn't like, I was punished even more by her.

I don't want to go into specifics, but this woman really did mean things. They were manipulative, controlling things, and she knew what she was doing. What a monster.

The worst thing is that she told me every day that I was bad and doing bad things to her, again in an effort to control and manipulate me. The best defense is a good offense, and this woman just unleashed on me. She unleashed whatever she needed to get what she wanted.

My God, how could someone do this to someone that they said that they loved?

The amount of pain that I felt because of her childish needs, wants, insecurities and desires was enormous. I don't know if I'll ever forgive her for some of the things that she did. The worst thing is that she tried to blame me in the end.

Change is hard. I'm obviously making good, constructive changes in myself, but I'm still hurt that someone would tell me every day that I'm a bad person. I tell no one, let alone the person that I love, that they're a bad person. My kids would never hear those words out of my mouth.

Control & Boundaries

One of the biggest aspects of a relationship with a BPD is control. I never realized this until I was out of the relationship, but BPDs have to control every aspect of the Non's being, or they go absolutely insane.
- When we broke up, she would get angry with what I did or how I acted
- I was not allowed to join a gym when I moved out because the time I went to the gym was conducive to single people. Yet she could go to the gym every day
- I could not go out with my friends, even to play whiffle ball, because she thought I'd be meeting a woman. Yet I encouraged her to have a girls' weekend and watched all the kids when she went out with friends
- I worked every day, and for a good part of the time we were together, she would pick me up and have lunch with me. So I had NO free time. Yet, every day, she had all the free time that she wanted because she did not work. With all of her accusations and assumptions, she could have had torrid affairs with people and I never would have known about it (I trusted, so it didn't matter -- only now that I'm out of the relationship am I starting to question all of her motives, projection and the like).
- She would make up excuses to kick me out -- twice. Looking back, I should have never taken it. All my things were at that house, and I'd be left with a bag on the porch and have to go and stay with my parents. What a pathetic way to live.

The control becomes quite hypocritical, as you can see. It's sad, because the relationship becomes so unbalanced. I complained about the unbalanced nature of the relationship, but it fell on deaf ears.

Boundaries Are CRITICAL

One of the times when the BPD kicked me out of the house, I went and stayed with my parents and went to a counselor that we both had seen. The counselor informed me that she was borderline. I wasn't ready to leave the relationship (didn't understand at that point), and I asked the counselor if I stay in the relationship,what should I do.

Her response was to establish boundaries with the borderline. This is the best thing for BPDs as they live without boundaries. I used to tell the BPD that she had to get a job because it would give her structure and boundaries that she needed so desperately. Of course, she never got a job.

Unfortunately, my exBPD girlfriend could not respect any boundaries. That's one of the problems with BPDs, but you need to give boundaries to them. It's critical.

Examples of good boundaries with borderlines include:
- Not letting borderlines running every part of your life. Borderlines, if you let them, will not let you have any personal time. They will invade on any time that they can, including your time at work (she called me regularly at work and accused me of things, including sleeping with coworkers, etc) and time with others. It threatens them, and in the case of my exBPD, often triggered her fight or flight response.
- Establishing clear consequences for their actions, and following through. Borderlines will test, like children test, every part of the relationship and what you will and will not tolerate. The BPD in my life knew that I would not tolerate cheating. If she did cheat (which I think that she did in the beginning of the relationship), she hid it very well from me.
- Not accepting Borderlines' projections. Many borderlines project their fears and anxieties onto you and make them reality. There were times when I would address and accept these as reality, to my demise. If a borderline projects their fear onto you, tell them that you do not accept that. Do NOT accept non-truths as it erodes your self-confidence and self-esteem

Try to remain strong and not take things personally. I did, and she hurt me badly as a result of it. I've grown enormously since then, but being in the relationship was quite painful at times.