as my introduction may have told you, i’m studying literature at university. to provide you with some backstory, i was a student of science during my last two years at high school, and i never really had the interest required to pursue it further. i managed to scrape by in my school exams those two years, but i believe i reached some sort of breaking point six months before my college entrance exams (board exams, that’s what we call it). i told my parents i’d had enough of science, and i’d be studying english literature in college whether they like it or not.
so that’s where i am right now. i’ve written poetry and prose throughout my life, but now that i’m doing it for a degree, i realise just how having this personality disorder affects the texts i produce. considering the fact that i also have major depressive disorder, writing isn’t something i can do all the time- for instance, when i’m in one of my depressive moods, or having a splitting episode, i find it hard to get out of bed and force my laptop open or force a pen into my hand. to top it all off, i also find it hard to articulate my thoughts out loud, so writing is the only means of release that i have which is healthy. (i do meet 6 out of the 9 criteria required to be diagnosed as borderline, so my other means of release are. um. not very healthy, to say the least.)
as anyone with bpd working in a creative career or studying liberal arts will know, writing that happens during a splitting episode is the best, most raw, most honest piece of writing that you will produce. when i was unmedicated, i would churn out two, sometimes even three pieces of poetry per day, and they would be some of my most emotionally vulnerable pieces of work. along with the radically changed view of the world that comes during such an episode, your emotions are also at an all time high- hormones are raging, your serotonin is going haywire, and maybe, you feel yourself slipping into loony territory. now, i don’t want to be an advocate for the tortured artist trope, but every trope does have some semblance of truth to it. and so does this one. i won’t say i can’t write, now that i’m medicated and going to therapy; i can, but it doesn’t come as fluidly as it used to. although i would strongly argue that i would take not being suicidal everyday over being able to write.
i am medicated now, and i am writing this blog, and i will not edit it, just to keep some of the rawness in this entry intact. all i want to say is- i was maybe a little crazy when i hadn’t sought out help, but it wasn’t all bad. but now that i am in a better headspace, i’m glad i lived to see this day.
A Borderline Indian 